I'm guilty of a sort of fixation on IQ (not actual scores or measurements of it). I have an unhealthy interest in food, drugs and exercises (physical and mental) that are purported to give some incremental improvement. I see this in quite a few folks here as well.

To actually accomplish something, more important than these incremental IQ differences are: effective high-level planning and strategy, practice, time actually spent trying, finding the right collaborators, etc.

I started playing around with some IQ-test-like games lately and was initially a little let down with how low my performance (percentile, not absolute) was on some tasks at first. I now believe that these tasks are quite specifically-trainable (after a few tries, I may improve suddenly, but after that I can, but choose not to, steadily increase my performance with work), and that the population actually includes quite a few well-practiced high-achievers. At least, I prefer to console myself with such thoughts.

But, seeing myself scored as not-so-smart in some ways, I started to wonder what difference it makes to earn a gold star that says you compute faster than others, if you don't actually do anything with it. Most people probably grow out of such rewards at a younger age than I did.