So you wanna upgrade the old noggin, increase your thought power, turbo charge your CPU? Then go out and do things. Do things you've never done before. Do things you've never even imagined. Stuff that will shock and amaze your friends because it's so novel and unexpected from you. This, my friend, is how you get smarter.
See, the way the mind works is it always searches for patterns. When you encounter an unfamiliar situation, in trying to cope and come up with a solution, the mind looks back at all the previous experiences stored up in memory, looking for something analogous. The more experiences you've got piled up, the closer a match you'll find. The remembered data doesn't have to be an exact match or even anywhere close. I'm always noticing that I improve in one area when I do something totally unrelated. Rockclimbing adds insight into abstract algebra, the Mandarin language adds insight into weightlifting, and so on. The pattern-finding and extrapolation all occurs subconsciously, so it's impossible to pinpoint just why exactly learning to salsa dance gives you fresh new ideas about computer programming. All you know is that it does.
Even when you want a very specific, pinpoint intelligence in one narrow field, it can help to go do other things for awhile. One thing that's common to every area of study is the learning plateau. You grow and grow in your knowledge up to a certain point and then it seems as if you can't progress further beyond that point, or that further work provides very diminishing results. With plateaus, if you pass them at all, you pass them in a sudden "breakthrough" and then you start growing rapidly, never looking back. But getting that breakthrough is tough. More often than not, you'll find a breakthrough when you take an extended break from that discipline and do something else for awhile.
If you're into video games, consider the model of experience points. In many games, your character gains EXP which leads to levelling up. When you level up, your performance increases all across the board. This can create some amusing side effects: say your character levels up entirely from EXP she gains from leading merchant caravans and selling carpets. The levelup increases her offense and defense, making her better at fighting dragons. But wait, hauling rugs has nothing to do with slaying wyrms... does it?? Actually, the experience point model is closer to the truth than it appears on the surface. For more on this angle, read my article, Levels and Experience Points in Real Life.
A good way to gauge whether something is "new enough" is to ask whether it would shock or startle people who know you well. For example, before I turned 22, I was totally clueless about girls, I was a total eunuch. People might expect me to study certain things (I do have a reputation as an autodidact), but when I decided to study seduction and joined the seduction community, that came as a complete curveball to anyone who was observing me. And, sure enough, the experience has made me a lot more intelligent than I was going into it.
Here are some ideas of interesting things you can do to add lots of raw referential material for your mind to use:
Teach Yourself A Foreign Language. When I was in high school, I hated language. It took a dramatic attitude shift, namely when I joined the Air Force and saw just how useful college was, to make me approach language learning with an open mind. Once I did, I was hooked. Point is, it was a total 180 for me. I went from hating high school Spanish, to being a wannabe polyglot, teaching myself languages just for fun, basically a language nerd. And it's a journey which has massively increased my intelligence.
Start A Blog. When I first started Glowing Face Man, I had no idea how much I'd learn just from writing here. Speaking of unrelated fields enhancing each other, at the time I started the blog, I wanted to learn how to be a better conversationalist. Well it turns out, writing articles is an absolutely stellar way to turbocharge your conversation skills. When you have hundreds of published articles, you'll never run out of things to talk about. But it's not like you're memorizing "canned material" (something some people in the seduction community actually try doing). Since you wrote it, you don't have to memorize anything, it's just there in the background and you can bring it up totally naturally and effortlessly.
Travel. If I had to choose a single one-month period of my life with the maximum learning taking place in just 30 days, it'd be no contest. It was the month I spent in Japan. Not that there's anything special about Japan in particular. I would've learned just as much if I'd spent that month in Europe, Africa, or on the moon. The great thing about travelling to an exotic land is that every day, you're surrounded by totally unfamiliar foreign experiences, all of which just skyrockets your intellect.
Weight Lifting. This continues the pattern of being something noone would've ever predicted until I announced it. I was a scrawny-ass dude before I got into weight lifting. We're talking nearly 6 feet tall and weight around 120 lbs. I looked so out of place in the OSU gym. The first time I went, I had trouble picking up the naked barbell with no plates on it (weight: 45 lbs). Now I've made so much progress. I reckon in about another month or two I'll be able to reach a 135 benchpress. That's not very impressive among gym jocks, but to me it's a big deal. Anyway, I would definitely say weight training has launched my brainpower out of the ballpark.
Your brain wants to find patterns and apply them to whatever dilemmas you're facing right now. Feed your mind with tons and tons of references it can draw analogies from.
FURTHER READING
This article is closely related to my earlier article, Reality Expansion. When you do things and read about stuff you've never even thought of before, not only are you becoming more sagely, your very reality is expanding. It's literally like discovering a sixth sense you were missing all your life, as previously hidden things suddenly blossom into view where before was naught.
One way to get lots of new experiences very quickly is to do some sort of boot camp. For me, when I did Air Force Boot Camp, it really gave me a lot better leverage to handle unexpected situations and scenarios. Bootcamp is painful but it's one hell of a way to pack in a lot of new stuff into your life. Click that link to read about my experience in AF basic training.
Something doesn't have to be all exotic and extreme to be new to you. For example, I just recently hosted my first party. That doesn't sound like much if you're someone who's hosted lots of parties. To a lot of people, it's just something you do on the weekend. For me, though, it was definitely a learning experience.
See, the way the mind works is it always searches for patterns. When you encounter an unfamiliar situation, in trying to cope and come up with a solution, the mind looks back at all the previous experiences stored up in memory, looking for something analogous. The more experiences you've got piled up, the closer a match you'll find. The remembered data doesn't have to be an exact match or even anywhere close. I'm always noticing that I improve in one area when I do something totally unrelated. Rockclimbing adds insight into abstract algebra, the Mandarin language adds insight into weightlifting, and so on. The pattern-finding and extrapolation all occurs subconsciously, so it's impossible to pinpoint just why exactly learning to salsa dance gives you fresh new ideas about computer programming. All you know is that it does.
Even when you want a very specific, pinpoint intelligence in one narrow field, it can help to go do other things for awhile. One thing that's common to every area of study is the learning plateau. You grow and grow in your knowledge up to a certain point and then it seems as if you can't progress further beyond that point, or that further work provides very diminishing results. With plateaus, if you pass them at all, you pass them in a sudden "breakthrough" and then you start growing rapidly, never looking back. But getting that breakthrough is tough. More often than not, you'll find a breakthrough when you take an extended break from that discipline and do something else for awhile.
If you're into video games, consider the model of experience points. In many games, your character gains EXP which leads to levelling up. When you level up, your performance increases all across the board. This can create some amusing side effects: say your character levels up entirely from EXP she gains from leading merchant caravans and selling carpets. The levelup increases her offense and defense, making her better at fighting dragons. But wait, hauling rugs has nothing to do with slaying wyrms... does it?? Actually, the experience point model is closer to the truth than it appears on the surface. For more on this angle, read my article, Levels and Experience Points in Real Life.
A good way to gauge whether something is "new enough" is to ask whether it would shock or startle people who know you well. For example, before I turned 22, I was totally clueless about girls, I was a total eunuch. People might expect me to study certain things (I do have a reputation as an autodidact), but when I decided to study seduction and joined the seduction community, that came as a complete curveball to anyone who was observing me. And, sure enough, the experience has made me a lot more intelligent than I was going into it.
Here are some ideas of interesting things you can do to add lots of raw referential material for your mind to use:
Teach Yourself A Foreign Language. When I was in high school, I hated language. It took a dramatic attitude shift, namely when I joined the Air Force and saw just how useful college was, to make me approach language learning with an open mind. Once I did, I was hooked. Point is, it was a total 180 for me. I went from hating high school Spanish, to being a wannabe polyglot, teaching myself languages just for fun, basically a language nerd. And it's a journey which has massively increased my intelligence.
Start A Blog. When I first started Glowing Face Man, I had no idea how much I'd learn just from writing here. Speaking of unrelated fields enhancing each other, at the time I started the blog, I wanted to learn how to be a better conversationalist. Well it turns out, writing articles is an absolutely stellar way to turbocharge your conversation skills. When you have hundreds of published articles, you'll never run out of things to talk about. But it's not like you're memorizing "canned material" (something some people in the seduction community actually try doing). Since you wrote it, you don't have to memorize anything, it's just there in the background and you can bring it up totally naturally and effortlessly.
Travel. If I had to choose a single one-month period of my life with the maximum learning taking place in just 30 days, it'd be no contest. It was the month I spent in Japan. Not that there's anything special about Japan in particular. I would've learned just as much if I'd spent that month in Europe, Africa, or on the moon. The great thing about travelling to an exotic land is that every day, you're surrounded by totally unfamiliar foreign experiences, all of which just skyrockets your intellect.
Weight Lifting. This continues the pattern of being something noone would've ever predicted until I announced it. I was a scrawny-ass dude before I got into weight lifting. We're talking nearly 6 feet tall and weight around 120 lbs. I looked so out of place in the OSU gym. The first time I went, I had trouble picking up the naked barbell with no plates on it (weight: 45 lbs). Now I've made so much progress. I reckon in about another month or two I'll be able to reach a 135 benchpress. That's not very impressive among gym jocks, but to me it's a big deal. Anyway, I would definitely say weight training has launched my brainpower out of the ballpark.
Your brain wants to find patterns and apply them to whatever dilemmas you're facing right now. Feed your mind with tons and tons of references it can draw analogies from.
FURTHER READING
This article is closely related to my earlier article, Reality Expansion. When you do things and read about stuff you've never even thought of before, not only are you becoming more sagely, your very reality is expanding. It's literally like discovering a sixth sense you were missing all your life, as previously hidden things suddenly blossom into view where before was naught.
One way to get lots of new experiences very quickly is to do some sort of boot camp. For me, when I did Air Force Boot Camp, it really gave me a lot better leverage to handle unexpected situations and scenarios. Bootcamp is painful but it's one hell of a way to pack in a lot of new stuff into your life. Click that link to read about my experience in AF basic training.
Something doesn't have to be all exotic and extreme to be new to you. For example, I just recently hosted my first party. That doesn't sound like much if you're someone who's hosted lots of parties. To a lot of people, it's just something you do on the weekend. For me, though, it was definitely a learning experience.
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