Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
... but I disagree with the notion that the individuals who succeeed do so as a result of being naturally smarter and more productive than others...
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This is absolutely ridiculous.
The number of people that achieve any meaningful level of success, despite not being naturally smarter and / or more productive than others are the exception. A complete anomaly. A fluke.
Telling yourself otherwise might be comforting ("he's not smarter than me, he's just luckier" or "She doesn't work harder than me, I just got a ####ty break"), but that's all it is.
Through my career and work experience, I'm fortunate enough to meet and interact with a lot of very successful people, like the top 1% of the 1%. I can say, without exception, than none of the people I know in this group are anything but exceptionally intelligent and (at least and one point in their lives) highly productive. I'm sure some of them have been extremely lucky and some of them might be ####ty people, but none of them are anything less than intelligent and hard working.
I think most in this conversation seem to agree that there are a number of factors that contribute to overall success. I suppose opinions will vary when it comes to the degrees of importance of those factors, but (IMO), the single greatest common factor when it comes to determining success is intellect.