Intelligent, not sure. I’ve taught myself how to do my job for the past 15 years. My colleagues are university graduates, mostly. And I’ve managed to maneuver myself into a position of leadership. About a year and a half ago I got myself into a big accident that lead to brain damage. My recovery was amazingly good, but… I’ve noticed permanent damage up there.

Take a look at the TED Talk by Amy Cuddy. She also talks about a TBI (traumatic brain injury) and how that affected her. She always identified as being intelligent, and then she had to take a few steps down that intelligence ladder.

A similar deal was my consequence of the accident. I never identified as intelligent, but things just came easy and naturally to me. I could breeze through life at 75% and I’d easily get through everything I wanted. I learnt new skills easily, I handled problems intelligently, I found it easy to talk to many types of people, and I was a king at multi tasking (even as a guy).

Now? It actually takes time and effort to learn things. I never noticed how great my memory was; right now I have to note everything down where previously it would just be in the back of my head and I would never forget important things.

When my GF tells me what she’s doing in 3 days time, I’ll forget unless I note it down and set a reminder. It used to just stick in my brain with no effort. At work, during meetings, I used to remember all the talking points and things I needed to do. Right now, I’ll note things down and have to create stickies for myself to remind me doing things.

I’m not dumb by any means, I think. But I’ve lost intelligence that I never knew I had. I especially didn’t appreciate or even recognize it.

The end result: My maximum ability is probably 80% of what it was before the accident. And back then, I always functioned at 75% because I’m a lazy SOB. So even if I try my hardest and get to my current full 100%, that’s still only 5% better than my old lazy-mode self.

I can only imagine what I’d be able to do if I didn’t have that accident. With just a little bit of effort I could be what is currently my max and tires me out immensely.