Habits To Help You Become Smarter

Who doesn’t want to be smarter? Learning is a powerful tool to help us grow. Being smart isn’t a one size fits all term because people are smart in different ways. There are mathematicians, wordsmiths, entrepreneurs, communicators, artists, and more! Acknowledging in what ways we are smart is the first step. The next is to grow in those areas.

Here are 12 habits to help you become smarter:

1. Participate in online learning.

There are endless possibilities to continue learning outside of school. The online world is the best place to find learning resources. Sign up for courses on topics that interest you, or take a chance and learn something completely new! When you are tempted to turn on Netflix to shut off your mind (which is still good to do sometimes), choose to invest in yourself instead and learn new things!

2. Get a mentor.

One of the best ways to learn is to surround yourself with people who have more experience in the areas where you want to grow. A mentorship is a great way to do this because it is an intentional learning relationship. Sit with a mentor and explain what you hope to gain from their expertise and soak in all the knowledge you can.

3. Become curious.

Walking through life asking questions like the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why) will help you become a seeker of knowledge. Instead of just accepting things the way they are, get curious! There’s always more than what you see on the surface. As kids, we are little detectives. We go through life noticing things and practice asking questions to further our understanding. We must carry that curiosity into adulthood so we can increase our intelligence.

4. Stay healthy.

Making time to exercise and eat right equips our bodies for growth. When we don’t take care of ourselves from the inside out, we aren’t able to focus or open our minds to new learning. We need to work on feeling good so we can spend our time developing our minds and keeping them sharp and healthy as well.

5. Have smart friends.

It can be rough on your self-esteem, but hanging out with folks who are more clever than you is one of the fastest ways to learn. "Keep a smart company. Remember your IQ is the average of five closest people you hang out with," Saurabh Shah, an account manager at Symphony Teleca, writes.
"Surround yourself with smarter people," agrees developer Manas J. Saloi. "I try to spend as much time as I can with my tech leads. I have never had a problem accepting that I am an average coder at best and there are many things I am yet to learn… Always be humble and be willing to learn."

6. Read.

There is endless reading material available, but it’s important to choose wisely. Scrolling through your social media newsfeed is much different than immersing yourself in classic literature, poetry or other intellectual reads. Make the time to fill your mind with deep and diverse reading material.

7. Get out the Scrabble board.

Board games and puzzles aren't just fun but also a great way to work out your brain. "Play games (Scrabble, bridge, chess, Go, Battleship, Connect 4, doesn't matter)," suggests Xie (for a ninja-level brain boost, exercise your working memory by trying to play without looking at the board). "Play Scrabble with no help from hints or books,"

8. Travel.

Seeing the world and dipping your toes in new cultures activates your mind, increases your tolerance, changes your perspective, makes you more self-aware, and ultimately makes you smarter! Immersion in travel is key to experience the most learning.

9. Make a 'did' list.
A big part of intelligence is confidence and happiness, so boost both by pausing to list not the things you have yet to do, but rather all the things you've already accomplished. The idea of a "done list" is recommended by famed VC Marc Andreessen as well as Azula Altucher. "Make an I DID list to show all the things you, in fact, accomplished," she suggests.

10. Explain it to others.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough," Albert Einstein said. The Quora posters agree. Make sure you've really learned what you think you have learned and that the information is truly stuck in your memory by trying to teach it to others. "Make sure you can explain it to someone else," Xie says simply.
Student Jon Packles elaborates on this idea: "For everything you learn--big or small--stick with it for at least as long as it takes you to be able to explain it to a friend. It's fairly easy to learn new information. Being able to retain that information and teach others is far more valuable."

11. Do random new things.
Shane Parrish, keeper of the consistently fascinating Farnam Street blog, tells the story of Steve Jobs's youthful calligraphy class in his response on Quora. After dropping out of school, the future Apple founder had a lot of time on his hands and wandered into a calligraphy course. It seemed irrelevant at the time, but the design skills he learned were later baked into the first Macs. The takeaway: You never know what will be useful ahead of time. You just need to try new things and wait to see how they connect with the rest of your experiences later on.
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future," Parrish quotes Jobs as saying. In order to have dots to connect, you need to be willing to try new things--even if they don't seem immediately useful or productive.

12. Learn a new language.
No, you don't need to become quickly fluent or trot off to a foreign country to master the language of your choosing. You can work away steadily from the comfort of your desk and still reap the mental rewards. "Learn a new language. There are a lot of free sites for that. Use Livemocha or Busuu," says Saloi (personally, I'm a big fan of Memrise once you have the basic mechanics of a new language down).

What habit are you going to start today to make you smarter?

Enjoy your day