6 Reasons Why Life is Harder for Smart People (2024)

It’s easy to think that smart people have it easier in life than the average joe. Intelligent people have a tendency to do well in early life and being told that they would grow up to accomplish great things and achieve anything they ever want in life.

That’s not always or even usually the case. There are specific challenges and hurdles in life that only smart people can relate to or understand.

Here are some of them:

1. Smart people are more likely to be loners.

Smart people are by definition intellectually curious about the world around them. They tend to spend an inordinate amount of time reading books, watching videos, doing research, and working on projects on a variety of topics that interests them, and many of those interests are somewhat esoteric when compared to the interests of the average person.

Smart people aren’t strongly motivated by social acceptance and conformity like non-smart people are. Because of their interests and views on bigger ideas than the average person cares to think about, they don’t seek out social validation because frankly, they don’t need it. This means that they don’t spend as much time socializing because it’s just not as important to them.

When they do seek out social activities, they tend to gravitate to like-minded people that share their interests, who are by definition harder to find in greater society. The things that smart people are into tend to garner eye rolls or otherwise bore the hell out of non-smart people, which makes socialization that much harder.

To put it bluntly, smart people do not fit in with the crowd. Everyone else sees them as weirdos who are into things that most people don’t care about, have weird hobbies that most people don’t have, etc.

All of these factors combine to create an environment where smart people have a hard time making friends and consequently find it easier to be alone since most people don’t understand them anyway.

2. Smart people tend to suck at dating

This is especially true for smart women but it applies to both sexes.

Smart people tend to have a more methodical way of approaching life. They tend to like straightforward, direct communication and feel disdain for the social games they see (and are encouraged) to play.

Smart people prefer to be honest and objective — even when the result is an awkward or uncomfortable social situation. Especially when younger, smart people are sometimes taken aback when they discover that most people follow conventional dating rules that don’t make rational sense, like not accepting a last minute date or feigning disinterest in order to manipulate someone’s perception of what they’re be like or give the impression that they are mysterious and interesting to give the other person the thrill of the chase.

Moreover (and this is particularly true for women) success at dating often flies in the face of what success at other areas of life look like:

If there’s a job that you’re interested in, the way you show your interest in getting it is to apply for it.

If there’s a particular place in the world you’ve always fantasized about visiting and you actually want to physically go there, the way to do it is to buy a ticket, pack your bags, show up at the airport and get on a plane and go.

But when it comes to dating, the way to land the partner you want is to — wait for it — play hard to get?

Huh?

This makes no sense to a smart person who otherwise wants to just go for it, not knowing that just going for what (or who) they want doesn’t necessarily work, particularly when they’re dealing with other humans who have their own interests or what they want that may not necessarily line up with theirs.

This all combines to make dating a minefield to a highly intelligent person.

3. Smart people are under greater pressure to succeed than average people

When someone has a high degree of intelligence, they think about, see, and contemplate things that other people don’t notice or care about. Smart people often have lofty goals for their lives and pay close attention to the direction that their lives are heading, and usually feel that it should be going differently than the way it is, that they should be further ahead and doing better than their peers. This is particularly true in the areas of career, money, and relationships.

Smart people also tend to be averse to failure, having a tendency to see failure as a sign of weakness or that something is wrong with them. The pressure is high to perform. And if life is not unfolding the way they want, smart people get super self-critical and the pressure to “get it right” gets even higher.

4. Smart people are more likely to suffer from imposter syndrome

If you’re not familiar with the term, imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which people doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent, often internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

Because smart people tend to spend much of their lives in their heads, deep into their ideas and are often insatiably curious, they know how much they don’t know. Every time they read or learn something new, they realize how much more about the world there is to understand. Because of this, smart people have a greater tendency to undervalue themselves and think they don’t know enough already.

The general population, on the other hand, go about their lives doing the same things every day and don’t spend a whole lot of time on introspection or self-improvement. Because average people think they already know everything, they don’t realize how little they know and so they don’t doubt their abilities in the areas they’re already familiar with.

Smart people, on the other hand, are smart enough to know how much they don’t know.

Ironically, this also means that it’s usually the brightest people who have the tendency to doubt their own abilities, while not-so-smart people appear more confident. This phenomenon is also otherwise known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.

5. Smart people tend to believe that being smarter and working harder than others is the automatic path to success

Smart people tended to do well in school when they were younger and were probably told how much potential they had and how likely they were to become successful later in life.

We were all fed the story of “go to school, work hard, get good grades, and get a safe, secure job” as if that was the automatic formula to success, but real life isn’t like that.

This comes back to haunt some people later in life. These same people who didn’t learn the value of teamwork, working with others, and other “soft” skills such as leadership and empathy later rely on their work ethic alone as a crutch. These people have a tendency to think that because of their intelligence, or where they went to school, or their credentials that success should pan out automatically.

In the real world, success is not solely the result of hard work. Success is a combination of positioning, strategic thinking, hard work, and creating value for others. Hard work and smarts are just ingredients, they don’t make up the whole thing.

6. Smart people tend to intimidate non-smart people

Going back to point #1 above, smart people are interested in having deep and meaningful conversations about ideas and could care less about talking about stupid sh*t like celebrity gossip, trash tv, gossip, and the quirks of daily life.

Because of the contrast in interests, smart people have a greater tendency to be perceived as stand-offish and consequently intimidating.

This is especially true of smart women who because of their intelligence and accomplishments, come off as intimidating and run the risk of unwittingly scaring off most men, especially in the early stages of dating.