Reading and Intelligence are Not Enough to Create Change (Sorry)

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

Spoiler alert: reading a book about habits and how to change them won’t change your habits. Or rather, it won’t do the work of changing habits for you.

A book serves as a map that can give guidance and direction, for you to check where you’re at along a path and figure out how eventually reach a destination based on where you’re currently located. However, maps won’t walk the steps or climb the mountains for you.

The information in Atomic Habits by James Clear is $11.98 for the hardcover version, and $11.38 for the kindle version. The actual change, however, is sold separately, and it only accepts one form of payment: work.

I work with many bright students, that is to say students who are academically gifted and do well in classes. But despite how bright they are, they struggle with the darkness of the unknown, endeavors where they can’t see a clearly marked path and have to wander around with a certain blindness until they stumble upon actions that work and the changes they seek to make.

Having worked with and observed hundreds of students — many of which who have gained admission into competitive and famous colleges like Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, Johns Hopkins University, and many more — I’ve realized raw intelligence is not sufficient to succeed in life. Even with all that intellectual horsepower, you’re going to have to push the gas pedal and steer and navigate.

Potential is not enough. It sounds silly to say, but you would be surprised how many students suddenly come to a halt when confronted with additional requirements, such as:

• Courage — to do what you’re afraid of, whether it be rejection, (temporary) failure, or conflict.
• Diligence — to follow through day after day, sacrificing leisure activities you find more fun, in order to continue working gradually until you complete long-term projects.
• Adaptability — so that you don’t give up when the theory and plan don’t work as expected, because they rarely ever do.
• Leadership — to assemble, direct, manage, and support teams to achieve the loftiest of goals as the most substantial achievements were rarely achieved by a single person.

Intelligence helps. But you only need enough of it.

All those other traits listed above (i.e., practicable skills) are really what’s necessary.