Giftedness/ intelligence comes with the expectation of being exceptional and if you fail to demonstrate exceptionality people assume it’s laziness. Basically, if you’re gifted/highly intelligent and, despite your tremendous potential, have failed to cure cancer or be the next Einstein, than you must be lazy. In a society that places a high value on having a good work ethic, it is popular opinion (and here’s another example of “work ethic is more important than intelligence“) that possessing a solid work ethic is the key distinction between success and failure (success generally defined as: career, income, education – up to you if that’s YOUR definition). So what is the connection between being gifted and lazy?
Are some gifted people lazy? Of course. Just like the rest of the population, some gifted people are short, some need glasses and some are lazy. Not necessarily related to being gifted, they’re just lazy. However, the idea persists: if you’re so exceptionally smart, why haven’t you fulfilled your potential? Does a laziness associated with being gifted, a ‘gifted laziness’, exist?
Are gifted people lazy because things come too easily for them, so they don’t know how too work hard? When I was in a gifted program in high school, we had a game: who could do the least amount of work and get the best mark. And there are some intelligent/gifted people who have a sense of entitlement - I shouldn’t have to work hard because I’m smart. My daughter’s teacher this year had a great approach to dealing with this: he regularly reminded my daughter that ultimately, her education was her own, not her parents’, not her teachers’ and he would ask her: do YOU feel about this work? Is this your best effort? Is this the result YOU were seeking? No question, there is a gap between what goes on in my daughter’s head and what she translates into academic work…she did very well with the message of empowerment and responsibility. We both learned a lot from this teacher .
I think what appears to be laziness is some gifted people struggle with translating what’s in their head to the outside world. I know this is the case for me. Writing this article challenges me because I have multiple tracks of thought in my head at all times and they’re not linear. I get frustrated trying to translate my thoughts in written form coherently. Even if I manage coherence, it is always a distorted, lesser version than what I would wish to convey. My fifth grade teacher thought I was being lazy with my writing assignments because she was surprised at the gap between my verbal ability and my written work. I wasn’t being lazy, simply less able at writing.
I think ‘laziness’ is also related to the gifted characteristic of needing to understand the meaning of a task – for a lot of us, if the meaning is not clear, than we’re not particularly motivated to do it. My daughter truly does not see the rationale for a clean room but she understands that the laundry must hit the basket or she will have no clean clothes. Having clean clothes matters to her so they generally hit the basket. For me, I don’t care very much how dirty the outside of my car is. The inside of my car matters to me but I don’t really see the point about the outside. Could that be perceived as laziness? Probably, but if I ever was provided with, what I thought was a good reason to regularly clean the outside of my car, than no doubt the outside would be clean.
Finally I think sometimes ‘laziness’ isn’t laziness at all but fear. So many gifted people’s self concept is grounded in their belief of their intellectual exceptionality. And I read a theory that gifted people can be intellectually confident and emotionally insecure. So if a gifted person puts themself out there in an area that is untried for them or they fear they may not excel in – what are the implications? About their value a human being? How would failing to meet their or someone else’s expectations undermine their self-understanding? I think some gifted people limit themselves due to their high standards/perfectionism, sometimes to the point of paralysis, but it looks like laziness.
Are gifted people lazy? No doubt some are. Is there a ‘gifted laziness’ – I think so but I’m not so sure that is always laziness per se but how it appears.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Everyone’s lazy. Smart people, dumb people. Doesn’t matter. If you don’t make ‘em work, they won’t. Period. That includes thinking, too. If all you have smart people do is read and regurgitate a bunch of book learning to get an A, that’s all they’ll do and think they know everything. (This is what’ observed in “Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men” of college men: “If I selected good students, I found too often that their leadership had been won by doing very well what their teachers had laid out for them. They had developed a fine capacity for taking orders, but not much initiative.” Today, we call this “Critical Thinking”(TM) with it’s predetermined “root causes” laid out by the professor, etc.) Gifted students (both children and adults) must be made to think– having to accomplish some results gets the brilliance out of their heads and into something productive quite well– or they won’t.
I disagree with the idea if you don’ t make ‘em work, they won’t. That’s really hard to swallow as an absolute when I’ve known a few brilliant people I’ve worked with that happily throw themselves into their work because they love what they do. I’ve also had great work ethic in my field (biotechnology). I loved what I did for work, and I went above and beyond at times to make sure things got done extremely well. I took things upon myself to improve the way things were done because it made things run more efficiently.
I wanted to tell the op that I appreciate the perspective. I have been looking for quite some time on sound advice to give young gifted children given the fact I have at least 2, and maybe 3 young gifted girls.
Oops hit send before I was done.
At any rate, thanks for this blog post.
There´s no such thing as lazyness, specially in gifted people. It´s real name: DEPRESSION.