I think this is much of what great leaders do intuitively. By removing psychological roadblocks and introducing the right kinds of motivation and "arrogance", even, people can do impossibly hard things. Leadership has always been the art of responsively sculpting individual and group psychologies.

Or Arrogance or Self-Delusion for that matter: "I bragged about something so I’d have to perform... I have found that it paid to say, 'Oh yes, I’ll get the answer for you Tuesday', not having any idea how to do it... like a cornered rat I’m surprised how often I did a good job."

Courage, for example: "One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can’t, almost surely you are not going to."

In which Gwern collects a long list of examples of how intelligence (as in solving very hard problems) is inextricably tied to seemingly unrelated psychological factors such as motivation, agency/empowerment, and perceived (not actual) difficulty.

genesis-embodied-ai.github.io/videos/wukon...