The answer to this question depends upon your definition of success. Consequently, I’ll rephrase the question to, “Why do some people of high IQ not achieve their goals?
The biggest reason that people fail to achieve their goals is insufficient commitment. Whether the goal is to lose weight and become physically fit, to become a great musician or a wealthy entrepreneur, the greatest impediment to achieving this goal is what psychologists call “natural human inertia.” This is the tendency to resist change and continue in doing what we’ve always done. Those of high IQ are just as vulnerable to this tendency as anyone else.
In an article titled, The Smartest Man in America article, author Mike Sager discussed his interviews with four extremely gifted individuals, all of whom had accumulated little to no wealth. One of these was Chris Langan, the man featured in the television game show “1 vs. 100” whom Sager had deemed, “the smartest man in America.” Though Chris earns a modest income on his ranch in northern Missouri, and occasionally regrets that his intellectual gifts haven’t been put to full use, he acknowledges that he’s never been interested in accumulating wealth. Langan explained in an ABCNEWS feature posted on December 9, 1999:
There’s no logical connection between being smart and having money. Now, being smart helps if you want to have money. But if you aren’t necessarily focused on getting money in the first place, there’s no reason smarts should make the money roll in.
Sager’s Esquire Magazine article also described three other people of exceptionally high IQ who were also of modest means. All of them had experienced difficulty fitting into normal society. Like the Hi-Q people such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, they faced in their early years, bullies, resentment, and the ostracism that comes from being different.
One of these was Ronald K. Hoeflin, described by Sager as a “mild man with graying hair, who is 55 years old, legally blind, and living alone with three cats.” Reflecting on his social awkwardness, Hoeflin recalled an incident in the sixth grade when a girl in his class invited everyone to her birthday party. On his arrival, he was devastated when the birthday girl exclaimed, “I didn’t expect you to come.” Throughout his life, Ron struggled with acceptance, admitting:
The truth is that people with average intelligence are all a bit resentful. Throughout their entire schooling, they’ve had to compete with these people who seem to find it easy to get straight A’s, and they’re working hard just to get B’s and C’s. …It’s like you’re born out of sync with the world and you just have to adjust.
Ron has an IQ of 165, a level reached by only about one out of every 136,000 people. He is credited with the creation of two of the world’s most difficult IQ tests–the Mega and Titan. Though he has two bachelor’s degrees, two master’s degrees and a Ph.D, in philosophy, Ron lives on an annual income of about $7000, paying a monthly rent of about $106 in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. When asked whether his impecuniosity was a problem, he responded:
It’s a trade-off. Money on one hand, leisure and independence on the other. I’m not really enough of a people person to become wealthy, so I figure, what the heck, you know? I’m used to my condition. I have food and shelter and clothing. You don’t have to be a genius to know that those are the most important things of all.
Another of these Hi-Q people of modest means is Gina LoSasso, described by Sager as a “short, garrulous woman with a heavy Brooklyn accent, purple eye shadow and an IQ of 168,” who at 43 years of age was a twice-divorced mother of two. During her school years, Gina felt self-conscious and her fear that she would be regarded as a nerd, prompted her to misbehave, often skipping school to run with the fast crowd. By age 14, she was in a residential drug-treatment program. Gina is a self-described obsessive-compulsive, who admits to an obsession with puzzles and games, including Scrabble and chess–an addiction that brought Gina to the top of the chess world. In 1986, she was chosen as a member of the U.S. Chess Olympic Team that competed in Dubai.
Throughout her early life, Gina had fled from what she regarded as mundane and tedious. Consequently, she flunked out of three different colleges and ran the gamut of unskilled jobs from selling copy machines to serving popcorn in movie theaters. However, once Gina focused on a goal, she could harness her OCD to a productive end. In a period of 5 years, she was able to earn three degrees, the final one a Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology from Wayne State University. Shortly after, she moved to Connecticut where she pursued postdoctoral studies at Norwalk Hospital.
Throughout her entire life, Gina chased the dopamine high that comes from solving a puzzle, winning a chess game, or partying with friends. Accumulating wealth never seemed to appear on her radar screen. As she said to Mike Sager:
Look at all the fun I’ve had. I’ve partied a lot. I’ve dined with heads of state and heroine addicts…I’m very philosophical about my whole experience growing up in an inner city and struggling and being different, because I’m here now, and I’m at a really good point.
A high IQ can be a great asset in achieving your goals, but it requires an intensity of purpose that powers you through the challenges and setbacks that inevitably stand between where your are and where you want to be. This was the message in Aesop’s Fable: The Hare and the Tortoise.
