If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’ve likely surrounded yourself with people “worse” than you in some way. How can you grow in such an environment? You want to surround yourself with people smarter than you so that you can learn from them and grow. So if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you should go find a new room with smarter people. Unless you’re the smartest person on earth of course ;)
Do you spend all of your time in one room? Sorry, but I think you might be missing the spirit of the phrase above. Maybe one needs to have heard it "in context" the way I originally heard it to get the intended spirit of it? Dunno.
The idea isn't about surrounding yourself with people who are worse than you, just so you can say you are "the smartest person in the room". The idea is to focus on something and become so good at thing that you are -usually- the "smartest person in the room" on that particular topic. Which means this whole idea is only relevant to contexts that your thing is relevant. And to reiterate, this is more of an aspiration than something that's literally achievable. In reality, with a vanishingly small number of exceptions, there will always be at least one person who knows more than you about thing. And that's OK. The point is about focus and the importance of putting in the work vis-a-vis your thing.
If you’re starting out your career as a surgeon, you really better hope you’re not the best surgeon in the room. People will die. Obviously there comes a point when you can’t grow any more and then it’s ok to be the smartest, but that’s hopefully after a long career filled with growth.
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If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’ve likely surrounded yourself with people “worse” than you in some way. How can you grow in such an environment? You want to surround yourself with people smarter than you so that you can learn from them and grow. So if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you should go find a new room with smarter people. Unless you’re the smartest person on earth of course ;)
Do you spend all of your time in one room? Sorry, but I think you might be missing the spirit of the phrase above. Maybe one needs to have heard it "in context" the way I originally heard it to get the intended spirit of it? Dunno.
The idea isn't about surrounding yourself with people who are worse than you, just so you can say you are "the smartest person in the room". The idea is to focus on something and become so good at thing that you are -usually- the "smartest person in the room" on that particular topic. Which means this whole idea is only relevant to contexts that your thing is relevant. And to reiterate, this is more of an aspiration than something that's literally achievable. In reality, with a vanishingly small number of exceptions, there will always be at least one person who knows more than you about thing. And that's OK. The point is about focus and the importance of putting in the work vis-a-vis your thing.
Usually you are in a room with different expertise and culture. How can you definitely say if you are the smartest or not?
What happens with classroom professors or surgeons in surgery rooms? Should they leave the room as well?
If you’re starting out your career as a surgeon, you really better hope you’re not the best surgeon in the room. People will die. Obviously there comes a point when you can’t grow any more and then it’s ok to be the smartest, but that’s hopefully after a long career filled with growth.
Because those people are probably much much better than you in other ways and maybe you want to improve yourself in those ways.
It's not as black/white as you're making it out to be. Reality is far more nuanced.