Why being “smart” keeps you poor

so have you ever met someone when you were younger and you thought that they were destined for greatness in the future cuz they were the smartest kid in your class and now they're 25 of had a job playing games all day and you're wondering like where the hell did all that potential go and if you haven't you can always find like articles of child prodigies online who claimed to be smarter than Einstein and then 15 20 years later they haven't achieved like anything successful or like notable in their life and I think a pretty big part of this comes down to determination this clip that I saw before like actually puts it really well and actually it turns out it's not that important to be smart um it's much more important to be determined if you imagine this hypothetical person who's like 100 out of a 100 for smart and determination right and then you start taking away determination you know it doesn't take very long before you have this sort of ineffectual but brilliant person um whereas if you take someone who's like super determined and you start taking away smartness bit by bit I mean eventually you get to some guy who owns a lot of Taxi medallions but he's still rich and yeah I think a lot of small people don't end up developing enough determination when they're younger because they're so used to going through life with things being so easy for them that when they have to struggle on like a harder thing then they are more willing to give up than someone else who has had to struggle for most of Life on like hard problems so for example like if they're able to solve most math problems in like a minute or 2 minutes and it takes everyone else like 30 minutes or an hour to solve that same problem they're so used to that expectation of like things being easy for them that if they're starting a business and their business doesn't take off in like a week or two weeks then they're more willing to give up than someone else who had to like stick through the hard math problems for longer because they're willing stick through the business for like a year or two years even though when it's not really working and then suddenly it takes off and I think the same determination also applies to research as well because some important research it can feel like things aren't really working for months or years and then suddenly you make like one breakthrough or one Discovery and the people who have gone through life with everything being so easy for them like they will not struggle for it quite as much because they feel like it's outside of their comfort zone They will go back to something which is much easier for them to do I think another big component of this comes down to expectations as well like if you're see a small growing up then everyone will be like oh they're going to be like a great loyer doctor or engineer in the future and everyone assumes or like has these high hopes and like dreams for you that if you wanted to do something out of the ordinary such as starting like an app which allows like people to rent out their houses to strangers in like the form of a hotel of sorts which is essentially what Airbnb came to be people would be like why is this person working on such a crazy idea when they could have been lawyer or doctor engineer or something and people think it's a crazy idea at the time when it's not working but like now Airbnb is working and everyone doesn't think it's a crazy idea that you can stay at Strange's house basically and I think this also applies in the case of research as well many small people go to do research but if you want to be a famous scientist or like a Pioneer and go down in history for like being the pioneer of a field you don't get that by being like the thousandth person to make a discovery in a field that has been established for like hundreds of years you get that by establishing a whole new field themselves so for example like if you're doing research on relativity and you hope to become famous like the famous people who exist in the field of Relativity already exist and there aren't going to be new people added onto that it's much better to start like a new or like pioneer in Tyler Newfield or be one of the early contributors in a new field but that also carries risk and it also like ruins people's expectations because they're like why the hell are they working on this like random field that no one like really knows works or not so yeah ultimately one reason I think that small people don't always end up being more successful like financially or in terms of contributions is because firstly they don't have enough determination to stick through hard problems because they're so used to things coming so easily to them in life that when they're confronted by something that isn't or doesn't come quite as easily to them which is like really hard research or like studying business they're more willing to give up and also because they have these expectations upon them by other people that they're less willing to commit or like do something totally new or totally bizarre and it often takes a things whether that's in the form of business ideas or research to like truly stand out