You’re not stupid. You’re overloaded.
My partner Ted shared an idea with me: when an AI solves a hard proof, we assume it reasons better. A simpler explanation may be that it no longer loses track halfway through.
If that’s true of machines, it’s true of me. Most days I’m not short of intelligence. I’m short of the capacity to hold enough of the problem at once to use the intelligence I have.
Which is good news. Raw intelligence is roughly fixed. The bottleneck around it isn’t.
THREE IDEAS:
I. You can’t add IQ. You can remove the ceiling.
Working memory predicts performance beyond measured IQ, which means a real share of what we call “being smart” is just holding capacity, and holding capacity is purchasable.
Memory here isn’t knowledge. It’s something narrower: when a task runs long, you have to keep track of where you are inside it. That’s the part that fails first.
Try multiplying two three-digit numbers in your head, then on paper. Same brain, same steps, different outcome. The win isn’t tidiness. It’s that the thinking becomes possible at all.
II. Naming is the only upgrade that compounds.
Writing things down frees up space. Naming things makes space.
A beginner sees twelve symbols. An expert sees one thing, and uses the space that frees for the next layer. That’s what expertise is: compression.
So keep turning what you repeat into names. A name is a handle. Handles stack.
Two examples this week. In our AEI (Artificial Emotional Intelligence) work, we name Scripts, a sequence of conversation that keeps coming back, collapsed into one reusable object. And in the game I’m building, the maths is the easy half: AI does the spreadsheet. The hard half is naming the blockers, the boosters, the control verb. Name them right and the level stops being black magic.
III. Get smarter by shortening the loop, not lengthening the notes.
Maths moves fast because it can check itself. Substitute the answer back. Run the code. You know today.
Strategy, judgment and taste don’t work that way. The answer comes back in a quarter. Sometimes never.
And a wrong argument feels exactly like a right one from the inside. That’s the trap. So spend more of your week on work that can prove you wrong fast, ideally this week.
TWO QUOTES:
I.
“Paper does not make you more intelligent. It expands your effective working memory.” — Davide Piffer (the post Ted shared)
II.
“You’re not stupid. You’re out of RAM.” — Ludovic Bodin
ONE ACTION FOR YOU:
What do you keep figuring out from scratch?
Name it once. Bring it to memory. Reuse it forever. That’s how knowledge compounds.
Let’s Play!
Ludovic Bodin
3x Entrepreneur, 2x Unicorn Investor, 1x IPO
Founder of BOBIC Generational Wealth
Author of Atomic Scaling