When observing naturally smart people, you notice a common trait. They are exceptionally good at grasping the "trunk" of a matter.
Most events in the world have countless branches and leaves. Faced with a single problem, ten or twenty factors to consider might emerge. Ordinary people try to chase all those branches. They spread themselves thin, gather information, and eventually exhaust themselves without knowing what the main stronghold is. The more serious a person is, the more likely they are to fall into this trap because they try to deal with everything dutifully.
Naturally smart people do the opposite. Even if there are twenty branches, they first ask, "So, what is the trunk of this matter?" Out of twenty, eighteen are branches that can be discarded, and there are only one or two trunks that truly have an effect. They move only after identifying them. That's why they reach deep with few moves.
I feel this isn't a matter of the amount of knowledge. In fact, people with more knowledge can sometimes drown in the richness of the branches. The power to grasp the trunk is not the power to increase information, but the power to discard it. You could even call it the courage to decide "what not to think about."
I clearly felt this difference when I received a consultation. The person said their work wasn't going well and they didn't know why. Listening to them, they had prepared about ten improvement plans and were worried about which one to start with. But after digging a little deeper, all ten plans were branches growing from a single trunk: "lack of coordination with the boss." If there's only one trunk, you only need one move. Rather than crushing ten branches in order, you should water the trunk or just cut it. In abstract terms, that was all there was to it.
Grasping the trunk means, in short, continuing to ask, "What is the single deepest thing in this matter?" What is happening on the surface of an event and the single root cause deep inside are almost always misaligned. I think we call people who can notice that misalignment "naturally smart."
People who chase all the branches are always very busy. People who grasp the trunk usually look like they have free time. This is because they have narrowed down what they do. To an outsider, it might look like they are cutting corners, but in reality, they are efficiently focusing only on the "one most effective thing."
Instead of increasing the amount you think, decrease the objects of your thought.
Natural smarts is the ability to capture the center pin (the trunk).
Here is an article for your reference.
