Reinvention For The Brainy

Is it me, or are there a lot more smart peo­ple around than there used to be?

Maybe it’s the increased access to infor­ma­tion, the growth in advanced edu­ca­tion, or the access to dis­cus­sion that mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion has cre­ated, but I seem to run into really brainy peo­ple more and more in my daily travels.

I was think­ing this recently while par­tic­i­pat­ing in a panel hear­ing busi­ness plans for new entre­pre­neur­ial busi­nesses. I was struck by how amaz­ingly bright some of the entre­pre­neurs were.

Most of these new ven­tures were extremely tech­no­log­i­cal, com­bin­ing some kind of sci­ence into a busi­ness model that aimed to make that sci­ence use­ful in the mar­ket­place. The plans were very com­plex, but nowhere near as com­plex as some of the peo­ple pre­sent­ing them.

These weren’t wacky oppor­tunists who had ripped the lat­est trend off the Inter­net and decided to build a busi­ness from it. Nei­ther were they just highly edu­cated. No, most were very, very smart and thor­oughly under­stood the com­pli­cated sci­ence behind their plans.

When I talk about brainy,  I don’t’ mean those peo­ple who go around wear­ing some kind of badge that says “Woohoo, am I ever smart!” and then bash you over the head with a tor­rent of infor­ma­tion that proves they are bet­ter sponges than they are thinkers.

I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who have the abil­ity to gather knowl­edge, syn­the­size it with other knowl­edge and then reach con­clu­sions to make those insights work in a prac­ti­cal set­ting. Think of that young guy on the tele­vi­sion show Crim­i­nal Minds who has some­thing like three PhDs, a bril­liant mind, but can’t han­dle the most ordi­nary sit­u­a­tions, such as talk­ing to women.

Many of these brainy peo­ple today are in ser­vice busi­nesses where they sell their knowl­edge, usu­ally in some form of con­sult­ing or coach­ing, or as some tech­no­log­i­cal prod­uct or service.

Since brainy peo­ple are always inter­ested in the new, many of them are also rein­vent­ing … or would like to.

But rein­ven­tion for the brainy isn’t as easy as it is for just any­body. There’s a kind of tyranny to being smart in that you often can’t see what ordi­nary peo­ple instinc­tively under­stand.  If you can, you may dis­miss it as beneath you.

So here are some tips for braini­acs who want to reinvent:

1.    Rein­ven­tion is not just more infor­ma­tion.  Smart peo­ple are always thirst­ing for new knowl­edge. Prob­lem is that many of them tend to slake that thirst by drink­ing from fire hoses. I can think of many cases where brainy peo­ple gath­ered so much infor­ma­tion they didn’t know what to do with it. Often, with these peo­ple the sheer accu­mu­la­tion of infor­ma­tion is the main goal.

2.    Rein­ven­tion is going from an unde­sired state to a desired one. Yeah, I know, that’s also the def­i­n­i­tion of change. That’s why I used it. Rein­ven­tion is about chang­ing your view­points, your behav­iors, your goals, and your actions for a desired pur­pose. That pur­pose is usu­ally to achieve a desired state. So log­i­cally, the first thing to do is get some idea of what that desired state is. If it involves busi­ness, bet­ter do some vision­ing –  draw­ing detailed pic­tures in your mind –about what you want the busi­ness to look like. If it’s per­sonal, then do the same, but put it into a more per­sonal con­text. Be very detailed in the men­tal pic­ture you draw of what kind of per­son you want to be.

3.    Rein­ven­tion is chang­ing your habits. Brainy peo­ple develop habits more than aver­age peo­ple, usu­ally so they can put them­selves on autopi­lot while they gather infor­ma­tion and learn.  But, unlike most peo­ple who develop habits, many brainy people’s habits are “loftier”. They may have devel­oped brusque­ness with peo­ple because they find most aren’t very stim­u­lat­ing to them, or they have devel­oped a dis­dain for peo­ple they con­sider ordi­nary. Since brainy peo­ple often grow up as nerds, geeks, or stu­dious types and so were shunned in the hot­house that is high school and teen years, they may also suf­fer from severe infe­ri­or­ity complexes.

4.     Rein­ven­tion involves philo­soph­i­cal self-examination.  As bright as they are, brainy peo­ple often avoid the self-examination that ordi­nary peo­ple go through. Their big brains often give them a con­fi­dence that negates the need for it. Some would also call this arro­gance, but I won’t go there. Suf­fice to say that those big brains should be put to work for some seri­ous soul search­ing. What do you really want? What do you really want your busi­ness to be? Then try to think about what oth­ers might want as well.  You may have to be bru­tal with your­self here.

5.    Rein­ven­tion is sim­pli­fy­ing.  The biggest prob­lem with being super smart is that the brain is always work­ing on many things at once. This think­ing in over­drive cre­ates a kind of Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der that leaves most nor­mal peo­ple in the dust. Even­tu­ally the “nor­mals” tire of lis­ten­ing to your mind move from here to there, to some­where else, and — maybe — back again. The biggest prob­lem ordi­nary peo­ple have with the brainy is that they can’t talk with them because they often use knowl­edge as an inar­tic­u­late blud­geon.  So, learn how to sim­plify. Stop arro­gantly pro­ject­ing your brain­i­ness, and start learn­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate, which is a two-way process.

So what do you think? Can brainy peo­ple have dif­fi­culty changing?

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BTW: We’re on twit­ter @reinventionist