Become more intelligent and successful
Buckle up, this is going to be a long ride. Feel free to have your favorite drink 🍹or snack 🍪 whilst digesting this article. Also feel free to write notes. 📔✏️
Here are some habits that you can embody, and add to your life.
Ready? Okay lets jump right into it!
- Pick up a music instrument. 🎸🎹🎻🎶
It will quite literally work out your brain. It makes your cerebrum better. The cerebrum interconnects the left and right hemispheres of your brain.
There are many studies conducted on this. As of today it is not expensive to get started with a instrument. There’s also a extensive amount of free resources available online. Notoriously Albert Einstein played the violin.
The effects of aging will be less severe with time as well.
Start simple and work your way up.
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
“I know that the most joy in my life has come to me from my violin.”
― Albert Einstein.
2. Get moving. 🏃
There’s a good amount of people who have had rigorous workout sessions and who have so been on top of their game.
The chess master, Bobby Fischer. Bobby would train with weights, take long very long walks, and he would swim. Long chess matches required mental fortitude.
Bill Gates runs on the treadmill when he wakes up, he loves playing tennis.
Leonardo Da Vinci was known to be very athletic as well.
Exercise improves cognition and cardiovascular health. The science holds up.
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” — John Muir
3. Eat and drinky healthy. Have Brain foods. 🍴
Healthy oils, dark chocolate, berries, tea, different types of nuts, broccoli. Foods that are rich in minerals and antioxidants are good for you. Avoid hard fats, avoid excess salt and sugar. Eat fruits. Eat salads. If you have plain healthy food, use spices. Say no to the things that aren’t healthy for you.
Alcohol free wine is healthy but if you don’t like that a normal glass with dinner is also good as well.🍷
Happy Heart, Happy Brain.
4. Read books. 📚
It increases your chances of survival. It may make you live longer. It also opens up your mind to new perspectives and totally increases your vocabulary. Read good books and mix it up. You can always make the time.
“Learning never exhausts the mind” — Leonardo Da Vinci
5. Exercise Image Streaming. 🙇
You can do this yourself, or with a friend. Or even in groups of people.
The devil is in the detail. You will have to be versatile and exact as you can.
If it’s not giving you the gains. Remember to do it aloud.
“Proper visualization by the exercise of concentration and willpower enables us to materialize thoughts, not only as dreams or visions in the mental realm but also as experiences in the material realm.” — Paramahansa Yogananda
6. Pay attention to your mood & ability to focus.🌊
If you’re feeling tired after working for a long while, try taking a 26 minute long nap if you can to clear your mind and continue on your work feeling fresh. Otherwise notice the lack of sleep/energy during the day and try getting better sleep by setting up your environment optimally.
Meditate to clear your mind and process thoughts more clearly.
Take time off now once and then. Give room to your laser focus.
If there’s a hard or a large problem. Sleep on them.
Don’t cut away from your sleep.
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” — Alexander Graham Bell
7. Play games. 🎲🎮
Third dimensional games where you have to navigate and plan. Working out things in your mind and getting through hard challenges does increase the amount of grey matter in some parts of your brain strengthening your brain and building better connections, increasing the overall efficiency. Having a good variety of games to play is important. You can also play games with your friends to socialize at the same time improving your mental health at the same time. Table top games, card games like bridge, and dungeons and dragons are great fun as well.
Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock ’n’ roll.
— Shigeru Miyamoto
8. Learn a new skill. 🌐
Acquire a language. It fundamentally changes the structure of your brain for the better. Learn a new sport. Learn a new recipe. Learn how to program things for yourself. Learn to become independent. Learn science, learn new topics. Learn the art of negotiation. Learn and never stop. Keep going.
Become a modern day reneissance man, become a polymath.
The more skills you have the higher your value is.
All skills are perfected through the process of failure. Embrace loss as a necessary part of improvement.— Jerry Lynch
9. Stay open minded, don’t be arrogant. 🚀
Be childlike, keep new possibilities in the back of your mind. Don’t restrict yourself on past conceptions. Accept new information and try it out for yourself. Stay Curious.
Socrates said, the smartest man realizes that he knows nothing.
There’s always more to know than we can perceive by nature.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” — Albert Einstein
10. Work on your flaws. 🐣
If you know that you’re not good at something, don’t overextend yourself.
Take a step back, take a deep breath and relax, then ask for help.
Here is why you should listen to others. Assume that other people know something that you don’t, listen keenly. Because you might learn something new or gain new insight that you’ve never could have thought or found about yourself as easily as someone else giving it to you.
Better to learn now than regret it later, learning something the hard way.
We have two ears, one mouth. Don’t push your superiority to others.
Don’t open your mouth if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Don’t confirm that you’re a fool if you know that you’re when there’s nothing to really gain. But also don’t shy away from teaching people if it’s at your cost.
Don’t write if you don’t know what you’re writing about.
Have a framework for improvement, differentiate what is good and bad.
Set up attainable goals for yourself, make the steps small.
Use everything you can to your advantage.
To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom. — Socrates
11. Take notes, write things down before you forget them. 📎
Memory is fallible. Keep a notebook with you, or keep your phone handy for memos or voice memos. Simplify. Review your notes in a spaced out fashion.
Ask questions about the notes. Use the Cornell Note Taking system.
Practice, practice active recall over and over again. Test yourself.
It’s the only true way to know.
You can also memorize things by shapes, sounds, or colours.
Alternatively use the memory palace technique where you walk in imaginary space, it can be completely fictional or based on something real like your house for example. You can set values, names and place new objects to learn.
Most importantly. Have a system and commit to it.
“You have to make your own condensed notes. You learn from MAKING them. A lot of thinking goes into deciding what to include and exclude. You develop your own system of abbreviations and memory methods for the information.”
— Peter Rogers
12. Plan out your time. 📆
Schedule your time out in chunks of blocks, there are a lot of applications for this. Put it down in a way that you would like to spend your time.
I recommend setting up the most important things that you’ve got to do first. First work, then play.
When you are doing the things you enjoy doing, you’re not wasting your time as much as you were flying, bumping and crashing around without a plan.
“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut” — Albert Einstein
13. Do the Pomodoro technique. ⏰
Set up a physical timer for 25 minutes, work on your chosen task for that duration. If you think of any other things you have a feel to need to do, keep a list of the distractions that come up on a other file/paper. If someone is disturbing you, tell them no, nicely. If that doesn’t work out, go find somewhere else to work.
Afterwards take a five minute break and do anything else, but it shall not be connected to your task in any way.
You can mark that you’ve completed one pomodoro. After finishing without distractions. If you had been distracted/disturbed badly losing the ‘flow’. Mark that pomodoro as incomplete.
After taking four pomodoros, take a longer 20 to 30 minute break.
Remember the power nap I mentioned earlier?
After the longer break continue as initially.
To mix it up you can also do a 45 minute session with a 15 minute long break.
If it’s more natural to you.
You will earn how to count in pomodoros, you will able to plan your time and future tasks better.
Pomodoros can also be done in teams, preferably in small groups of people to tackle harder tasks that might require more creativity. These people can be interchanged every now and then. Switching between groups. So that new perspectives will be more easily provided to everybody’s benefit.
But as said do remember to keep the groups small.
Cancel out the distractions, setup a efficient space out for yourself. Clean.
Noise cancelling booths, headphones and/or audio that helps you focus is only beneficial and helps you to concerete on your task.
“The timetable is protracted, fatigue increases, productivity drops, and the timetable again is protracted.” — Francesco Cirillo
Use a physical timer, at least a vibration to get a feel for it.
But if you can’t use what works for you. But do not count the time in your head.
14. Know your time, learn to prioritize. 📝
There’s the Pareto principle. Otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. It means that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the cause.
That 20% which you have to do to bring you into new heights can be just simple as setting out to do the things that have the greatest return on investment. This goes for your health, for your work and your success.
In life, there are so many things to do.
But learn what is the most beneficial to you in the different areas of life.
Choose do the things that matter, train yourself to realize when what you’re doing is of no benefit. And change your ways.
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
15. Understand the Law of Attraction. 🚗🏡✈️
Jim Carrey, Oprah, Sadhguru and many others who have made it have talked about it. People who are moving forward are doing it.
Like the Image Streaming, you can visualize yourself having whatever you want. Where ever you want to be. Dream it, visualize it as well as you can.
You attract what you think. Our minds are a powerful vehicle.
There are many techniques and resources out for this.
Remember the goals, have ideas in mind visualization can be a very powerful tool.
Gain what you want, imagine your way there if you must and set things into action. Believe in yourself. Manifest the good things into your life.
“To bring anything into your life, imagine that it’s already there.” — Richard Bach
There is great literature and educational material on successful people, and geniuses and psychology of all things. I highly suggest that you check out what you can.
Learn from the greats, get to know mistakes before you commit them.
They’ve already paved out their path. Now it’s up to you to pave yours.
Learn more,
Notables: Thomas Frank on productivity, Jordan Peterson on psychology, Win Wenger on geniuses, Michael J. Gelb on Leonardo, as well as Walter Isaacson, Francesco Cirillo on The Pomodoro Technique. Aaron Clarey on life advice.
Rhonda Byrne (Law Of Attraction and other many other useful methods)
If you want to learn even more, feel free to search and lookup about the things that I’ve laid out here. Read their books if you can.
I’ve laid out the essentials for you here for your convinience.
Thanks to everybody as well who has written or created content about these subjects that I’ve now been able to have shared with you.
It really wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, do not worry. There is time.
Implement freely what I’ve told you, as said.
Start small and grow into something great.
Stay mindful, don’t throw yourself into something without understanding what it means. If you have. Don’t destroy yourself in attaining something that you might not really need. Take breaks. Don’t stress it. It will do you no good.
Additionally you can have a look at systems like the Myer Briggs Type Indicator, Socionics, Visual Typing, Attitudinal Psyche, and the Big Five.
Theory of multiple intelligences. VARK learning styles.
- Visual learners
- Auditory learners
- Read/Write learners
- Kinesthetic learners
With help of tests, people, and material you can get to understand yourself better. There are many communities based around this.
Learn how you learn the best with the help of the learning styles.
Challenge your beliefs and grow.
Notice: Please talk to a medical professional or somebody else who is proficient in such matters if you have any deeper/more serious issues.
Lets do a quick recap.
- Learn a music instrument.🎸🎹🎻🎶
- Get moving.🏃
- Eat and drink healthy. Have brain foods.🍴
- Read Books.📚
- Do Image Streaming.🙇
- Pay attention to your mood & ability to focus.🌊
- Play Games.🎲🎮
- Learn a new skill.🌐
- Stay open minded, don’t be arrogant.🚀
- Work on your flaws.🐣
- Take notes, write things down before you forget them.📎
- Plan out your time.📆
- Do the Pomodoro Technique.⏰
- Know your time, learn to prioritize.📝
- Understand the Law of Attraction.🚗🏡✈️
Stay safe out there, while you are seizing the world and thank you for reading the article, peace! 😘❤️
