“You over analyze everything.” I have only heard that about 1,000 times. The response is – yes, yes I do. I cannot help it, it is automatic. The moment I hear an issue, challenge, idea or plan my brain goes into overdrive. Flowing through contingencies, alternatives, and what will need to be done to overcome each. By the time most people have put up their first post-it, I have dismissed 3 ideas and am on step 6 of a plan. Now, my idea can certainly be influenced, even completely changed by the input of others. But once we are on a new track, off I go again with what needs to happen to get it done. Often this is frowned upon. I am sure I can modify style, but it is a huge challenge for me to hold back.
Why am like this? A few things:
-I have been gifted with this freaky brain. No one apologizes for being an amazing basketball player, musician, runner or artist. Yet “smart” is something we are supposed to hold back on to not hurt the feelings of those who think differently. I do not consider myself a genius. Actually most of what I do is based on listening to what needs to happen and being able to quickly pull from experience and more to find a path.
– I am ridiculously curious. I am a firm believer that the more you know about the whole business, the better you can do your part of it. I love to learn and want to understand everything around what I am working on. I ask dozens of questions, search the web and more. I tend to retain all of this stuff in a repository waiting for me to access it at random times.
– I test very high on applied thinking, That ability to take knowledge and experience from one situation and easily apply it in another. This was honed by something my father and I uses to do. He loves logic puzzles and so do I. Those ones in the Dell puzzle books. He would read the clues to me and I could visualize the solution without the grid. This isn’t about arrogance or thinking I am “better than” anyone else. I am just highly skilled at this and not ashamed of letting it shine.
I continue to strive to bring people along in a way that makes them more comfortable. And I love having someone with my same skill set to bounce around ideas. Getting a couple of us together is a thing to watch. Jumping from topic to topic like we had way to much caffeine.
My main thought to take away, don’t be threatened by smart people. Let them make you more successful. Let them figure out the path and the methodology. I will let you come up with the next great thing. Let me figure out the tactics to make them a reality.
