IQ is only a minor factor in success

Hate to hijack the thread, but a lot of that speaks to me.

    > I have a high IQ, but I don't
    > feel I'm smarter than anyone.

Quite. My recently acquired particular piece of paper puts it beyond any shred of doubt, objectively, but it's only recently I've really acknowledged it. I suspect this has been immensely annoying for people around me.

    > it's made it harder for me to
    > actually learn new stuff
    > because my brain wants to get
    > by with as little work as
    > possible

Yes! A related symptom for me was assuming that people who were good at stuff I'd never bothered to learn were a lot smarter than me.

Millennial alert

I always retell this story when this subject comes up:

When I was 17 in 1989 I was desperate for a job in 'computers' as it was all I knew, I was damn good at programming etc, but had the usual experience trap - no experience equalled no job.

Being naive I paid attention to one of those adverts in the back of the weekend newspapers. I don't know if they were a UK only thing but they had a puzzle and stated that if you could solve it within 1/2 hour you could be a member of Mensa, which if anybody doesn't know is a club for those with a high IQ.

I completed the puzzle then got posted back another one, if I could complete this within an hour I would be invited back to a proper, invigilated exam. Passed both, paid my dues and became a member of the clever club, along with people at the time like Sir Clive Sinclair. My mum was very proud.

I went to one of their meetups shortly afterwards in a bad cheap suit hoping to meet some other clever person who'd recognise my skills and give me a big wad of cash and a job.

It didn't turn out that way. There were 30~ men at one side of the club all staring at their drinks, with 3 woman at the other side about 20 metres away keeping away from the fellas. One woman came in by mistake to the side with the men at which point they all swarmed her. The only topic of conversation they had went like:

"What's your IQ?"

"x"

"oh, mines "

When it came to IQ these people were the top of the pile, with social interaction however they were abjectly hopeless. They'd be able to build you a nuclear bomb, but they wouldn't be able to sell or explain it, or even go to the shop to buy the parts for it.

This encounter came at a good point for me - it made me relax a bit about being 'clever', and showed the importance of other indicators. I let my membership lapse and wince when I occasionally see 'member of Mensa' on a CV.

He discussed the whole plan with his family, and they agreed on it. Secondly, he studied in Harvard, so his family had at least decent amount of money by default.

And then, the thing is that family who was struggling the whole time, won't agree on dropping the best university with wonderful perspectives for some kind of crazy (at the moment it was very "crazy").

People are not "just risky" by default, they are influenced heavily by their life, and as someone mentioned here already, a lot of rich guys came from pretty decent living families, who can afford to fallback if something. For instance, a lot of world travellers, who try to live differently, actually have some passive income, property of just loads of cash, just in case something will go wrong.