Intelligence is overrated, especially by smart people

A final big idea we would like to present when it comes to figuring out who is a good job candidate or who is worthy recipient of an award or a fellowship, we think that very often intelligence is overrated, especially by smart people. Now, to be sure, it is true that for many jobs to do the job at all, you may need to be at some certain level of intelligence. But above and beyond that margin, intelligence and success in the endeavor are remarkably weakly correlated. So don't focus too much on smarts alone. You might wonder then, well, what are some of the other categories I would look for in a job? So one would simply be energy. What's the person's energy level? Are they going to bring energy to this task all the time they're working on it? Another would just be durability. Does this person stick with projects? And again, to repeat the earlier idea, focus on compounding continuous returns to self improvement. Does the person work well with others? Again, critical in virtually all…