Smart people’s minds tend to move faster and in a messier way than they let on, but they hide a lot of the details from regular people.
So, about that pause
Smart people aren’t going to tell you that they solved the problem already. Everyone else’s trying to figure out the answer, but they’re already at the ending, and they’re keeping it to themselves.
They don’t exactly enjoy being the first one to get there because it makes them stand out, and it can also make other people feel weird. So they say nothing. They’ll ask the right questions to get everyone else to the conclusion, without letting them know they’re already there.
The tiny hitch
Smart people notice a lot more than they’re letting on. They see a number that doesn’t fit, and they recognize the date is wrong, but they won’t say anything about it. Unless it’s going to harm someone, that is.
They’ll leave the mistake alone and keep quiet about it because they know nobody likes a know-it-all. Plus, they don’t want to be the person who keeps correcting every little thing. That’s never a good look.
Not quite in the room
Their body’s there. However, their mind has already left the table, and it’s usually because the conversation’s boring or about something completely superficial. They hate that. But smart people know better than to tell people that they’re bored, so they’ll keep it quiet.
They make the right listening sounds and show their reaction at the right moment, but inside, they’re tired of the conversation. They prefer to talk about things that are slightly more intellectually stimulating.
A quiet yes
The group might agree with something while the smart person doesn’t, yet they’re not going to share their disagreement out loud. They’re clever enough to recognize that the cost of sharing it is too high.
They also know that, sometimes, their opinion isn’t important, and there doesn’t always need to be a debate about things. They’ll keep their thoughts to themselves for the good of the group. Pretty selfless, really.
The normal setting
It takes work for smart people to sound casual, and it usually involves leaving out the extra example or swapping the challenging word for a simpler one. They don’t tell anyone about it, though. They know that seeming too intense can make the situation awkward.
It’s way easier to smooth it out by staying silent and keeping things relaxed. The effort they put into sounding so calm or relaxed stays under wraps.
A beat behind
There are times when smart people are beside the group, instead of being ahead of it, and it’s all because of their intelligence. They answer the literal question because they heard it, instead of the emotional one everyone else did. But they’re not going to let anyone know that.
No, they don’t want people to know how out of step they feel around everyone else and how much they feel isolated. That’d be too difficult. They keep it to themselves and let everyone else think they’re part of the group.
The background tab
You won’t find a smart person’s mind ever fully turned off. That just doesn’t happen. Even when it looks like they might be fine, they’re probably running through a million different things that nobody else even recognized.
Part of their minds stays constantly turned on, no matter how they might look from the outside, yet they keep that fact a secret. Because, really, if they told anyone, how exactly would that sound? Probably not good.
The blank look
They understand. In fact, they understand perfectly well, but the difference is that they don’t want to show it to other people. They prefer to keep it a secret so that the other person has the space to finish, and they don’t feel like they’re being corrected.
It’s kind of kind, actually. Playing things a little slower stops the entire conversation from becoming too stiff or needlessly dry.
Too neat to trust
Certainty has something about it that makes smart people restless. They’re not uncomfortable because of someone’s confidence, but when things have a single, neat answer that pushes every other one away.
Smart people would prefer to deal with a messy question than a simple one. It sounds backwards, yes, and that’s part of the reason why smart people won’t bring it up, because they don’t want to appear strange.
The shorter version
The way they explain problems is weird, too, although not for the reasons you might expect. They’ve usually discarded half the messy details when they share things with other people by skipping dead ends and grouping details together.Â
Other people hear the simple version of a problem. They don’t know how complicated it really was because smart people chose to keep that a secret, since they recognize it wouldn’t be worth bringing up.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
