Intellectual giftedness does not necessarily mean high grades, high IQ, or knowledge of facts that no one else has heard of. At times, an exceptionally genius person may seem very ordinary from the outside.
It may however sometimes manifest itself in the questions you ask, how quickly you link unrelated ideas, how absorbed you get in some subjects, or why you feel painfully bored with routine tasks. These traits can help gauge someone’s intellectual giftedness, but none of them is a definitive sign of intellectual giftedness in isolation.
So, how many of these sound strangely familiar?
You Understand New Ideas Remarkably Quickly
It takes a lot less repetition than others to get a complicated idea to click.
You always ask “why?”
You don’t want to take information on faith from someone, you want to know how and why it works.
You see patterns that others don’t see
Your mind automatically links things together, relationships and inconsistencies that may not seem related to anyone else. You have a strong inherent ability of pattern recognition.
You Get Bored By Repetition Very Easily
After you’ve solved a problem once, it can be very hard to do it again. You somehow manage to succeed at every task you put your mind to and once you have proven yourself you rarely try that again.
You Can Become Completely Absorbed In One Subject
If you give you something really interesting, you might lose track of time because you’re just curious and you’re going deeper and deeper.
You Think About Problems From Multiple Angles
You don’t just take the answer for granted. You think, “Is there another answer? Is there another way to do it?”. And you start your own research on the topic.
You Remember What Actually Interests You
Your memory can be selective: what you don’t want to remember goes away very fast, while what you really want to remember can remain with you for years.
You Have An Unusually Wide Range Of Interests
You may switch from psychology to history, technology to philosophy, or watches to astronomy, as learning new things is always rewarding. In a nutshell, you have polymathic tendencies
You Enjoy Difficult Questions
Some people might steer clear of difficult issues, but you might end up getting more interested in the very things that don’t have an easy solution. You actually enjoy being intellectually challenged.
You think outside the box.
You always have creative solutions to even the most complicated problems.
You might have a solution that is different from what others think of, since you are looking at the problem from a different perspective.
You are very observant.
You see small things that others don’t see, inconsistencies, changes in people’s behavior, etc. One of the traits often attributed to gifted learners is keen observation.
You Think About Your Own Thinking
You don’t just analyse a problem, sometimes you have to go back and ask yourself how you got to your conclusion. You are not rigid.
You have very high expectations for yourself.
You might be more critical of yourself than anyone else, since you can see where your work could have been improved.
You Don’t Always Feel Like You Fit In
Sometimes, a strong interest in unusual interests, independent thinking or complex conversations makes it feel less intellectually stimulating to engage in ordinary social interactions.
Final Thoughts
Curiosity, observation or learning speed does not equate to being intellectually gifted. There is no single checklist that can identify giftedness and research warns against assuming that gifted individuals have a single psychological profile.
The overall pattern is what is important.
If you are a fast learner, you are interested in complexity, make connections that others don’t, get absorbed in subjects that interest you, and approach problems in original ways, you may have some of the characteristics of high intelligence quotient. And maybe the most telling indicator isn’t how much you already know.
It’s the desire to learn what you don’t know.
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