Some of these are so general as to be useless:

* Giving up too easily or not giving up to easily

* Too little confidence or too much confidence

* Spreading oneself too thin or thick

* Taking too much blame or not taking too much blame

The problem being that there's no way to know (for example) if you're being too confident or not confident enough.

Just because they are general they are not useless.

Where the article fails I think is that it takes intelligence to know whether you are giving up too early or not giving up too early. Also, an intelligent person would know or realise at some point whether they are spreading themselves too thin or thick, and do something about it. That is afteral what intelligence is for. Others however might not.Thus the people the article is speaking of seem to be perhaps not that intelligence. Thus "intelligent people" should be taken off the title as it applies more to all people.

You could as easily call this Why People Fail. None of the points are limited or directly related to intelligent people.

I think the assumption is that these are possible reasons for failure after you discarded "not intelligent enough", which indeed could be a pretty valid reason.

The article refers to the remaining branches, thus the title.

So you could remove the first item and retitle it Why Motivated People Fail? Or the 17th and Why Patient People Fail. Hmm.. I could sell this idea to Mahalo ;-)

I agree: with this title, the author neatly sidesteps the problem of having to define 'intelligence' and ending up in an endless debate about whether his reasons indeed pertain to 'intelligence'.

'Not intelligent enough' can probably be dissected into another 20 points, each portraying a characteristic that is a necessary, but not a sufficient, part of 'intelligence'.

You are both right :)

But intelligent people are not used to failing.

Adding the word 'intelligent' to the title makes me want to read the article more and apply it to myself. Without that word, I would be thinking "yeah, I know all this, that's why OTHER people fail"; but with it it's much more applicable to me.

How is it much more applicable to you just because the title contains some word. I do not think an intelligent person would think oh yeah this guy is saying that this is about intelligent people, so even if the content clearly seems not to apply really, he must be right, I mean, he is on the internet!

I quickly read through the list. Not sure if this is in there but I call it "Insight by progress". What I mean by it that you start on something and than halfway through you realize you should have done it differently and rather than sticking with it you start over, again and again...

The main reason imho is that they don't understand people, they think everyone is as smart as they are, and this results in trying to create a perfect product which is impossible, and hence, they lose motivation to complete it.

What smart people need to realize is that the rest of the people are not that smart. Proof? They buy virtual goods.

Never assume people will not use your product, this is too big of an assumption. Let them decide because they don't think like you.

One more: Over analyzing. :)

That largely fits under "unable to see the forest for the trees"

I think it was intended as a jab at the author :)

I'm doing an exercise where I go through each of these and attempt to discover whether I have this flaw.

Of course, I'm probably susceptible to the ego / dunning-kruger effect, where I will think I'm less prone to certain flaws than I really am. I'm looking for ways to mitigate this effect. Any ideas?

My first attempt is to try to name someone I respect who has this flaw. The idea is the sucker theory, from poker -- if you can't see the sucker at the table, it's you. If I can't find someone with a particular flaw, I may have that flaw.

The most obvious reason:

They are not stupid enough to think they will succeed.

The same reason anyone fails: lack of conscientionness. This is the #1 attribute that is needed for success at anything. Most of the list falls into this category.