Or just being more able to recognize more regrettable consequences of more avoidable actions…
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I’m not telling you. We’re not hiring just now. 
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I remember reading a book called The Boy with Two Eyes in school and feeling quite struck by it, without really knowing why at the time.
It seems to be out of print now, but I found a Spanish scan online and translated it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/O3VJs4UnZbZBOevA3
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You are trading one unit of measure for another.
Enjoy.
My pet theory is that what we call “intellgence” is a combination of factors.
Here’s a gross oversimplification: wattage usually refers to amperage * volatage.
Amperage is how much electricity flows through a circuit. (Or alternatively, how wide the pipe is)
Volate measures how quickly it moves through (or alternatively, how fast the water flows)
Together they create the number on your lightbulb - the wattage.
Similarly, I suspect “intelligence” is a combination of IQ (how quickly you pick things up) and attention (how long you can focus).
When you have issues with depression or anxiety, the voltage gets dirtied - you can grasp complex concepts, but might need to stop and restart much more frequently.
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You’d think something like that, right? but what I saw recently suggests that’s it is not the case.
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As an artist who is told that he’s intelligent enough, yet suffers from depression, this sounds much like my experience.
My bulbs burn out quickly.
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OK, I’ve had a few years to watch the folks around me. I grew up in a house full of books and magazines, had reasonably good nutrition for the WW2 years, and did not have any disabling childhood diseases. At my first regular job the owner of the company decided that having job applicants take an IQ test would by a good way to identify people with good potential, I remember one gal in particular who tested out around 80; she was hired to do janitorial work. Within a year she was a department head, and later became a small business owner–she wasn’t mentally slow, just didn’t take tests well. Oh, my supposed IQ was 140, but that gal was smarter than I was.
Perhaps a factor with “mental illness” is that smarter folks realize the futility of striving in a world that is ruled not by intellect but by herd instinct. That at best is depressing. If I have to listen to too many rants from right wing Trumpanzies, I just might go stark raving mad and start shooting. (Not really, my value system precludes that.)
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“Second, joining MENSA may be an indicator of some underlying insecurity about your intellect or place in the world, reflecting a predisposition to depression or anxiety, so they may have instead discovered that MENSA membership (not high IQ) is correlated with mental illness.”
That tracks with my reaction to seeing “MENSA MEMBER” licence plate frames. A feeling of sadness for the drivers.
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Incidentally, when Binet first invented the IQ scale, he stressed very strongly that it was only to be used for detecting intellectual disability or educational disadvantage (for remedial education purposes). He thought that it was completely inappropriate as a measure of general intelligence.
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While the methodological critique of the MENSA study is valid, this isn’t the first time that it has been suggested that there is a link between intelligence and mental illness.
It isn’t a question with a definitive answer as yet, though. It’s a complicated subject; the correlations between physical health, mental health, poverty, medical access, social class, etc. complicate things. As does the effect of mental illness on cognitive function; major depression severely impairs performance on IQ tests.
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The bars for ‘medical occs - md or equiv’ makes me deeply suspicious of the entire chart.
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That’s surprisingly insightful. I was reading along, quite ready to disagree (in my head, if not in comment), but damn if you didn’t come out on top.
tl;dr: Ignorance is bliss.
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Within the IQ research community, they speak of “fluid” and “crystallized” intelligence. Most modern IQ tests will include fluid/crystal subscales.
Fluid intelligence is the learning, problem solving side of things; it tends to peak in early adulthood and then gradually decline.
Crystallized intelligence is more knowledge-based; memory, correlation, analogy and retrieval abilities help there. But focus is important in building that crystal in the first place. Crystallized intelligence tends to grow throughout adulthood before declining in senility.
According to the IQ research folks, anyway; it’s a field that provides ample opportunity for vigorous critique.
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I’d noticed exactly this in my travels around the sun. I’ve also noticed that intelligence and wisdom can be mutually exclusive. If you are amazingly intelligent then generally just normal day to day things will be alien and you will be hopeless at them. And then at the other end of the scale you may not be the brightest star in the sky but you will be street smart, be able to cope and organise amazing “day to day” tasks. Writing this whilst drunk may not be the best idea 
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I thought that looked odd as well. I don’t want to defend the particular values in that chart too strongly, just the idea that there is probably much more variation than you would naïvely expect.
Man, there’s some local sextons who are blowing that curve to hell! (But they have day jobs as engineers.)
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I remember part of the IQ test I took (which put me at 125 - not a genius but high enough I’m not just whining because I thinking I’m smarter than I am) had a lot of mental arithmetic.
Lots of stuff like you have 3 dimes 2 pennis 2 quarters and a dime write out how to give the following amount in change, simple arithmetic.
These were things you could probably do through recall if you’d had a lot of math but that’s a measure of recall, not IQ necessarily. You could argue a high IQ person would absorb these things quickly, but there is a baked in assumption of a certain style of K-12 education, one I did not get.
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