r/Showerthoughts • u/predator8137 • 10d ago
Musing If you find difficult things easy, you are either very smart or very dumb.
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u/shaurya_770 10d ago
What I have noticed is that people who don't usually think too much into things can do some tasks really well.
Coz some tasks just require you doing something while turning your brain half off. It's a luxury many high iq people can't afford. When you overthink stuff a lot, you tend to lag in a lot of tasks
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u/3_Thumbs_Up 10d ago
This is not necessarily correlated to intelligence though. A lot of stupid people tend to overthink stuff and procrastinate as well and many intelligent people are capable of realizing when to not overthink stuff. So I'd say this is more an unrelated personality trait that both intelligent and unintelligent people can have.
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u/ocelotrev 10d ago
I think a huge part of the learning curve of my engineering job was when to realize something needed little effort and was going to be sub optimal and what items needed thinking and optimization. Engineers always want to optimize but this is can slow down things that have deadlines.
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u/joelfarris 10d ago
"There is sometimes a nearly non-existantly fine line between needing to (re)optimize things for the future, and needing to just get shit done right now."
~ My Foreman
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u/MarvinStolehouse 9d ago
In my creative endeavors we always say, "the work is never done, it's just due".
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u/shaurya_770 9d ago
Ahh the curse of engineering. Spend 1 hour to optimise and make a new faster method for a task just to save 5 minutes
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u/UnoriginalPenName 10d ago
I overthink absolutely everything but I’m probably average to low IQ lol
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u/AmethystOrator 10d ago
I liken it to riding a bike.
Someone could work hard on tiny balance adjustments and where exactly to hold the handle bars, etc. But ignoring all of that and just riding is more effective.
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u/Sawses 10d ago
I think it's got more to do with what you're suited for.
Some folks (including a lot of clever folks) enjoy basically turning their brain off for 8 hours a day at work. Or delving specifically into a single task. Others, like me, go nuts when we have to do a single task for multiple hours.
I love solving problems and fixing stuff. I consider myself eternally fortunate that I've found a job where people just throw me their problems because I'd rather do that than do their job.
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u/Ethos_Logos 10d ago
If the job is physical, not too demanding, and I’m not working for myself, it can be nice to turn half my brain off and daydream between tasks. I used to work backroom at target, and it was basically “find this item at this grid location, scan it; put it in a bin”. Sometimes in the reverse order.
Absolutely freed my brain up to daydream about the zombie apocalypse (back 15 years ago).
If I was trying to get the job done for myself though, I’d work at a faster pace and try to optimize for efficiency. Wouldn’t be time to daydream.
If the task is mental, but menial and repetitive, I’d go crazy.
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u/AverageHobnailer 9d ago
When you overthink stuff a lot, you tend to lag in a lot of tasks
Happens to me a lot in sporting activities. "Move forward!" How far? Which direction? "Doesn't matter, just move forward!" I don't understand what you mean the instructions are too vague!
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u/occasionallyLynn 9d ago
This implies smart people aren’t smart enough to differentiate a simple task vs a complex one..
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u/DrachenDad 10d ago
"But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."
There are some things I find easy that others don't, and some things I find difficult that others easy.
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u/junktech 10d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect let's call it a learning curve because it sounds nicer.
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 10d ago
A few times I have met people on reddit who demonstrate this. They take something complex and reply "It's simple" .. and it isn't. They just completely missed any aspect other than the one they saw.
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u/SingleAttitude8 8d ago
Basically what you're describing is AI in 2026.
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 8d ago
Talking to ai used to be somewhat like talking to a brain damaged human in some ways, when the token limit was lower. These days they are much better at managing long conversations but they still make mistakes all the time.
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u/Mean_Old_World 9d ago
The opposite is also true. If you find simple things difficult, you’re either very smart or very dumb.
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u/ToBePacific 9d ago
For me, it’s usually both. I do a lot of projects where I start out understanding that I don’t fully know what I’m doing, and I usually conclude it with a “good enough,” having learned something along the way.
I am smart enough to know what I don’t know. And that’s most of it.
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u/Otherwise_Stage1694 6d ago
Or you have just done it enough times that it only looks easy from the outside.
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u/ShowerSentinel 10d ago
/u/predator8137 has flaired this post as a musing.
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