🔵 The curse of the smart kid

Picture this:

You're eight years old, and school comes easily to you. While other kids struggle, you breeze through with minimal effort. Teachers praise you, and your parents brag about you to their friends.

Your identity crystallizes: "I am the smart one."

Being smart becomes your superpower, your source of value, your place in the world.

As school gets harder, your identity comes to a crossroads.

What happens if I try and fail?

Am I no longer the smart kid? Am I just... average? Maybe even below average?

So you develop a strategy, one you're not even conscious of.

Always leave something in the tank.

• You don't study quite as hard as you could

• You leave major assignments to the last minute

• You play it safe, pushing back any urge to try something creative.

This hedge protects your identity. When things don't work out perfectly, you have an escape hatch:

"I would have succeeded if I'd really tried."

Your identity gets to maintain its story while avoiding the "terror" of discovering your actual limits.

Fast forward to today.

Despite the self-imposed restrictions, you've achieved a reasonable level of success.

A good job with a clear trajectory for a satisfactory career path. Or maybe you have a business that's "going really well," but deep down, you know you're capable of more.

Things are good, but not great. And you really want them to be great.

Yet, anytime great is on the horizon, your "Too Smart To Try" program kicks in and sends you in another direction.

The 10% Difference

90% effort and engagement creates good results.

100% effort and engagement creates elite results.

And the gap between the two is much greater than it seems on the surface.

In competitive environments, it's often the difference between winning and losing entirely.

Think about Olympic athletes. The difference between gold and not medaling at all is measured in hundredths of seconds.

The same principle applies in business. The company that executes with full commitment while competitors hedge their bets doesn't just do slightly better; they often capture the lion's share of the market.

But the cost isn't just external results. The internal cost is even higher: you never get to discover what you're actually capable of.

The "Too Smart To Try" tries to preserve the value it believes comes from your natural gifts by not risking testing them in the real world.

But the truth is, the gifts only create value when they are tested.

Failure isn't the risk. The real risk comes from never falling short in an effort to preserve something that holds no real value.

The Liberation of Full Effort

Once you break this pattern, something remarkable happens: you discover that your raw intelligence is only a fraction of what makes up your full potential.

The version of yourself that gives 100%…

…that tries, fails fast, learns quickly, and tries again…

…that person is far more capable than the one who plays it safe to protect an identity.

Your potential isn't found in your natural gifts alone. It's found in what happens when you combine those gifts with relentless effort and the ability to quickly get back up when you fall short.

The question isn't whether you're smart enough. The question is whether you're brave enough to find out just how capable you really are.

See you next week,
Elliot Roe