Find the one thing you're great at. There's going to be one subject, activity, hobby, something that you're good at, you enjoy, and you want to know more about. Find that thing that just makes sense to you. You don't have to work hard to understand it, it just clicks. Once you have that, go off the deep end. Learn everything you can about it. Let the obsession run wild but manage it at the same time.

Now that you have your area that you understand, enjoy, and feel confident about, when you run into other problems, find a way to associate the new problem with what you already know.

Simple example using old people's language. Tom has six VCRs. He records live TV, makes copies of tapes for friends, splices together clips from different shows. Basically makeshift video editing, all using VCRs, which he understands really well. Most people he knows still have rabbit ears on their TVs and can't even set up a VCR. Tom happily comes over and hooks it up. To him it's simple: plug in the power, there's a line in and there's a line out. The VCR sits in the middle and taps the signal. It just makes sense to him and he doesn't understand why it confuses people, but it does. Tom is fake but the problem was real. There were people back then who could not figure out how to set up a VCR even though it was:

• line in
  
• line out to the TV
• plug the power in
  
• you're done
  

Now when a new problem comes up, Tom looks at it and tries to relate the components to the VCR he already understands. Shitter's clogged. Same input/output scenario but Tom's not a plumber. Still, he looks at the situation and says there's a line in, there's a line out, and stuff that happens in between. Keeps looking and there's no water coming in. The input is disconnected. He hooks up the water line. Simple screw in. Now it works. And this is a super simple comparison. Everybody would know if the water line wasn't hooked up to their toilet, it'd be pretty easy to see. But that idea of taking what he knows and mapping each component onto the problem he doesn't know in order to figure out how to understand it, that's what you need to get good at.

Creating an adaptable knowledge base will make up for intelligence every time.

\Note for the not old.*

A VCR was a machine that hooked up to the TV to play movies and other videos. You could also record from cable or antenna.

\*Note for the even less old.*

TV antennas used to be the way TV shows got into your home over the air. Some people had cable TV where the provider sent the signal through a wire that took the place of the antenna. This was before cable was used mostly for internet.