Talking to yourself while you work. Doodling in the margins of every notebook you own. Spending an afternoon rewriting a two-line email. The odd swear word that lands right where a normal person would’ve said “goodness.” A roundup over at Silicon Canals lines up the little quirks people have side-eyed you for since grade school and reframes them as markers of a sharp brain.
Now the reality check. This is opinion dressed in a lab coat. “Psychology says” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and the honest version is that muttering, doodling, and cursing correlate with plenty of things, most of which aren’t genius. Fun to read. Nice ego stroke if you’ve been mocked for any of these. Just don’t put it on your resume.
A listicle telling you your doodling means you’re brilliant is comfort food, not science. The habits are real, some of them do correlate with certain traits in small studies, but “correlates with in a lab” and “you’re a genius” are separated by a canyon.
The useful bit: none of this changes what you should do at work Monday. If muttering helps you think, mutter. If overthinking a two-line email eats your afternoon, that’s not intelligence, that’s a time cost. Read these for the shrug, not the diagnosis.
Sources: siliconcanals.com
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