11 things highly intelligent people get bored with easily, according to psychology

Avatar by Paul Brian | August 2, 2024, 10:52 pm

Highly intelligent people have an especially short fuse when it comes to certain things. 

There are certain situations and behaviors which they don’t tolerate or deal with very well. 

Drawing on the insights and research of psychology, let’s take a look at why this is and what it means. 

Why do extremely smart people respond the way they do and what does it mean? 

Let’s dive in. 

1) Small talk and copy-paste conversations 

Chit chit can get dull for almost anyone, but for the highly intelligent individual it’s a lot like nails on a chalkboard. 

They don’t expect fireworks every time they chat with a friend or colleague, of course. 

But they tend to lose patience fairly quickly with conversations that aren’t really about anything. 

Neuroscientists James Danckert Ph.D., and John Eastwood, Ph.D. point out that “when you can predict almost everything a person will do and say, he or she must be a bore.”

Their mind is absorbed with other things, and talking at length about the weather or about the varying merits of sofa styles for matching living room decor only goes so far in capturing their attention.

2) Predictable films, books and art 

The highly intelligent individual has a short attention span when it comes to the tenth sequel of X-Men Infinity Ultimate or the twentieth remake of Mission Impossible.

That’s not to even mention grown adults getting hyped up about men in capes in front of green screens. 

Predictable and formulaic books, music and art are utterly boring to the highly smart person:

Not only have they absorbed all this content already in the past, they are depressed by the routine drudgery and copy-paste nature of the content. 

They tend to walk out of cinemas and put down books ten pages in if they experience this.

3) Repetitive physical or intellectual tasks 

Exceptionally smart people are especially prone to boredom and frustration at mindless repetition. 

Hitting the same button over and over to operate a machine press…

Plugging numbers into the same spreadsheet formula for days on end…

Replanting shrubs at a nursery over and over for eight hours…

“Research suggests that highly intelligent people get bored easily and spend more time thinking, behavior that comes across as ‘laziness’,” according to TotalHealth UK.

It’s not that they’re lazy, it’s just that their mind operates so robustly that they end up feeling drained by having nobody to talk to, no ideas to explore and no deeper explorations or intellectual stimulation to be found.

This ties into the next point:

4) Hyper-skepticism and hyper-credulity 

Exceptionally intelligent people are bored by those who are overly skeptical and by those who are overly gullible. 

Both are two sides of the same coin in their view:

A tendency to believe or disbelieve whatever comes into their radar is a warning sign of the same kind of binary, simplistic thinking that the intelligent person finds boring

They find it interesting, instead, to interact and converse with those who are sometimes skeptical, sometimes believing and always exploring that space in between to learn more rather than staying comfortable in fixed conclusions. 

5) Shallow relationships and transactionalism 

High IQ individuals tend to be savvy about succeeding in their career and goals, but they often struggle more with the emotions and complexity of a romantic relationship.

They find it hard to find someone “at their level” in many cases.  

“Despite bringing enthusiasm, excitement, and a multi-passionate nature to the table, these qualities are often not reciprocated,” explains psychology writer Imi Lo.

She adds that this mismatch often “leads to frustration, restlessness, and a feeling of loneliness, as well as a painful longing for more intellectually stimulating interactions.”

Part of the reason relationships are hard for highly smart folks is that they are able to quickly see through transactional and shallow relationships

They aren’t able or willing to lie to themselves when it isn’t really love, nor even strong attraction. They’d rather just be alone. 

6) Thought-terminating cliches and lack of critical thinking

The highly intelligent person is allergic to thought-terminating cliches and lack of critical thinking.

Things like “life’s a mystery” or “everything happens for a reason” utterly bore them. Things like “our side is right about everything” are irrelevant to them. Even if true, so what? 

These statements may be true to some extent, but what do they really mean? They are the kinds of things that are said to wrap up and end a conversation before it can really get going. 

They quickly get bored with a lack of critical thinking and yes-man behavior. 

They don’t have patience for those who refuse to examine their own assumptions, biases and beliefs. And they don’t have time for those who just say yes to be popular or to seem smart and “in the know.”

True intelligence can immediately spot a fake. 

And it gets bored rapidly with those who think that their own certitude is beyond question. 

Because even if somebody is objectively correct about a topic or situation, by refusing to examine their own lens they are robbing themselves of a deeper exploration of why they’re right and what it means more widely. 

7) Inefficiency and incompetence 

Because of their rapidity in seeing solutions and looking at things in a unique and powerful way, the highly smart person can’t stand much inefficiency and incompetence. 

If people aren’t working to a solution or doing some brilliant thinking, then what are they doing? 

Because they can see so many solutions and unique approaches peeking around the corner, the highly smart person quickly grows fatigued with those who are chasing their own tails. 

8) Binary analysis and simplistic solutions

When it comes to addressing a situation or challenge (whether at work on in their personal life), the highly intelligent person quickly grows bored of overly binary approaches. 

“A is good, B is bad” is a construct that quickly leaves them disinterested. 

They want to go deeper. The construct may be true or useful. But what does it mean? How should it guide their actions going forward? 

“Their innate intellect makes it so that most problems easy to them and, if they keep meeting with these easy-to-solve situations, they eventually build the belief that life, overall, is not a challenge and not worth investing in,” notes Lukas Lukas Schwekendiek.

“When that happens their spirit dies.”

9) Intellectual posing and status seeking

Highly intelligent people understand that knowledge is power, and because power is a natural goal of many individuals, many people pretend to be much smarter than they are. 

Those who are genuinely brilliant understand this and have seen it many, many times. 

They aren’t impressed by it: in fact they are utterly bored and turned off. 

The main reason is because pretending to be something you’re not or seeking status through being smart is an impediment to actually learning and growing intellectually. 

10) Rote learning and memorisation 

Smart people often pursue an unconventional path in academia. 

They tend to be either way ahead of the pack and blasting ahead at their own speed that nobody can match and teachers look up to in awe; or they tend to fall behind and be rebellious to authority. 

The common denominator is that they don’t do well with rote learning and memorisation for its own sake. 

“Any experience that is predictable and repetitive becomes boring. In general, too much of the same thing and too little stimulation can cause in its victim an absence of desire and a feeling of entrapment,” observes Professor Emeritus Shahram Heshmat, PhD.

They want to know why. They want to question, to interrogate, to explore more deeply. Being told “just because” doesn’t do it for them, and they quickly grow bored and push back (or surge ahead on their own). 

11) Echo chambers and people pleasing 

The highly intelligent individual has no time for those who use their intelligence (or pretensions at intelligence) to seek status and popularity. 

They find echo chambers utterly boring and have no interest in people pleasing and those who pretend to agree or go along with ideas and systems just to fit in.

That’s because no innovation or growth takes place in such scenarios:

And if there’s one thing an intelligent person finds interesting it’s growth, discovery and exploration rather than stagnancy, fixedness and chasing approval and the benefit of surface appearances.