By Anna Chui
Unless you think you’re the smartest,
who doesn’t want to be smarter? Of course I want to be smarter too, so I try to
find out who’s the real smart guy that maybe I can learn from. James Gardner
has got me an answer on Quoraabout whether someone’s smart or not.
Here are the signs of smart people:
1. They don’t
talk as much as you do, because they know they got smart by listening.
2. They know lots
of things other than what they’re specialised in. Theirs is the gift of a broad
mind, constantly fed with the stimulant of being interested in what everyone
else is doing.
3. They juggle
home, work and personal interests with dexterity and never fall back on the
tired old refrain about “work life balance”. And when they’re juggling, they
somehow manage to seem 100% engaged with what they’re doing, on all fronts
simultaneously, even though you know they’re taking appropriate steps behind
the scenes to make sure their lives are perfectly, serenely balanced.
4. They probably
do social media. Not always, but probably. It is not only another chance to
listen, but one they use to ensure they can feed their brains with things they
otherwise won’t have come across.
5. Even when
things go very badly wrong, they’ll be smiling. Smart people never get ruffled
because their smart brains present them with alternatives faster than the bad
stuff can happen.
6. They know they
are usually the smartest person in the room, but they don’t spend their time
dwelling on that. Instead, they take it as a personal challenge to see if they
can make everyone else the smartest person in the room too.
7. If they are
managers, they will make every effort to get people smarter, more connected and
more popular than them in their teams. They’re not threatened because they know
that smartness is synergistic. They also make sure that their smart people get
to look smarter than them for the same reason.
8. They have
hidden skills that never get rolled out until they’re needed. They don’t have
any need to show their full capabilities for reasons of proving they’re better
than others.
9. They may or
may not have expensive educations. You’d never know just by being with them
unless you had their CV in front of you.
10. They never,
ever, under any circumstances, make you look stupid, even though it would be easy
to do so. They’ve learned through bitter experience that the only thing that
happens when you make someone look bad is you look bad yourself.
Now you should know who the smart
people are. If you want to be the smart one, let me give you this extra advice
from Steve Jobs “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
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