Energy is the central principle of Johnson’s career. “Intelligence is all about energy,” he once told an interviewer. “You can have the brightest people in the world who simply can’t be arsed. No good to man or beast.”


The most misleading idea I picked up at school was that success is the result of intelligence. It's not: it's the result of doing things. This seems so obvious now, I can't believe nobody drummed it into me at school. So I never did an internship or tried to get myself elected to a prestigious student body. I assumed my good grades would transform themselves into a job. I spent three years working in a bookshop. When we think we see intellect what we're really looking at is energy. The really energetic write pushy e-mails demanding work. They apply for grants, they go to parties, they network. All this stuff is exhausting and a lot of people who do it are ghastly, but it should be more widely taught that life requires this sort of effort.