Activities that will make you smarter

You can create your own training routine, improving it with exercises that work for you. These exercises may be highly unconventional. When I was learning, the exercises that worked best for me were memorizing sequences of colored lights and hidden object games – you will not find these games in now official resources. This article is inspired by this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and other resources.

Do brain games sharpen your mind?

We ask you to train very specific games and explain how these games will sharpen very specific skills required for speedreading and memorization. There is a huge variety of available “brain games” for every age and condition, and we do not really know what these games do.

• Brain gyms. Brain gyms are expensive and their creators use some scientific research to create and market these game systems. The premises of such training is simple: if you do various cognitive exercises the blood will flow to your brain and you will become less susceptive to Alzheimer, Parkinson, and other similar diseases. As an added bonus, the particpants score higher in the specific skills trained by the gym games. While this sort of training will probably keep your brain healthier, it is hardly worth the premium price tag.
• Casual gaming. Sudoku, chess, card games, strategy games of various sorts, hidden object games and many other games associated with casual gaming will probably activate large areas of the brain and be as effective as expensive brain gyms in making you smarter. As an added benefit, you will enjoy these games and share the passion with your kids.
• Speedreading and memory training. You can train specific aspects, such as object recognition, memorizing groups of objects and reading very fast. This training will work for the skills you are trying to improve. Notice there is a difference between learning a strategy and training a particular skill: speedreading strategies will serve you for as long as you live, but you need to train constantly to keep the specific skills required for example to memorize 10 decks of cards.
• Placebo effect. Some activities will make you smarter just because you believe they will make you smarter. Try learning “smart” words. If you use them in converstation it will trick you to feel smarter.

While there is a strong incentive to train specifically to be smarter, the things that will actually make you smarter may surprise you.

Things that will make you smarter

• Music improves your working memory. This claim has been scientifically tested on multiple occasions. Musicians remember sequences, and sequences are very important for our memory.
• Curiousity makes you smarter. Curious people find creative ways to research, set up unexpected experiments, learn passionately.
• Doodling and note taking improve our memory. The mechanism has to do with connectivity between different parts of the brain. Some studies show that art also boosts critical thinking skills. If you can write using both left and right hand at the same time, you get bonus points.
• Trivia games. If you play trivia you will be hunting for pieces of knowledge everywhere you can. You will probably read all articles named “What should everybody know about TBD”. In this post I put two articles on “what everybody should know about economics and finance” for your training. Do try to understand and memorize the terms.
• Sports and meditation. Our brain uses a lot of energy. Proper breating and bloodflow will make you smarter.
• Juggling. Keeping track of several objects improves many different skills, including your memory.
• Learning languages. Strangely, different languages activate different areas in our brain. Multilingual people can access more areas in their brain.
• Storytelling. This one is probably easy to understand: to tell a good story we need to activate imagination, emphasize with our heros and the audience, talk in a convincing way, keep eye contact… It is a difficult skill to master and it requires a lot of brainpower.

Smart lifestyle

Our brain is influenced by a myriad of things. Interesting job, fighting stress, healthy diet, regular exercise, good sleep, strategy games, art and music – our activities make us smarter. Smart people choose careers that use their brain effectively. By using the brain every day, smart people get even smarter. Since careers are somewhat limited, smart people have smart hobbies, including storytelling, art and music. Smart people have higher salaries and spend their vacation in exotic countries, which encorages them to learn languages and history.
If you are reading this post there is a good chance you are already living a smart lifestyle. Good for you!