Read.
Surround yourself with upbeat individuals. They don't have to be as bright as you are. They could be positive, hardworking, and self-disciplined. You've successfully surrounded yourself with decent individuals if you surround yourself with people who have their own point of view and way of thinking.
Write. Every day, try to write. It assists you in maintaining a sense of perspective. As a result of what I believe, I am. What if I said, "I write, therefore I am?" It's an exciting twist to investigate.
Don't quit social media. I left social media for a few months, and while it had its positives, it also came with a few drawbacks. In today's world, it's essential to stay connected. It's enough to make sure one doesn't spend too much time on social media. But why quit if you can use it for good?
Learn to tell stories.
Talk to as many people as you're willing to do. Be open, stay open, stay learning.
Think! Don't live your life on autopilot.
Stay on your own path. Ask yourself where you want to be in a few years and try to work towards that instead of following the crowd.
Learn to be happy no matter the outcome.
Learn to face your fears instead of avoiding them. It's challenging and complex, but it is indeed what keeps you moving forward!
1. Be more thoughtful about your online time.
Every online break doesn't have to be about checking social networks and fulfilling your daily ration of cute animal pics. The Web is also full of great learning resources, such as online courses, intriguing TED talks, and vocabulary-building tools. Replace a few minutes of skateboarding dogs with something more mentally nourishing, suggest several responders.
2. Write down what you learn.
It doesn't have to be pretty or long, but taking a few minutes each day to reflect in writing about what you learned is sure to boost your brainpower. "Write 400 words a day on things that you learned," suggests yoga teacher Claudia Azula Altucher. Mike Xie, a research associate at Bayside Biosciences, agrees: "Write about what you've learned."
3. 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 and Azula Altucher. "Make an I DID list to show all the things you, in fact, accomplished," she suggests.
4. 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," concurs Azula Altucher.
5. Have intelligent 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. Salon. "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 a,t best, and there are many things I am yet to learn… Always be humble and be willing to learn."
6. Read a lot.
OK, this is not a shocker, but the most common response was that reading definitely seems essential. Opinions vary on the best brain-boosting reading material, with suggestions ranging from developing a daily newspaper habit to picking up a variety of fiction and nonfiction. Still, everyone seems to agree that quantity is necessary. Read a lot.
7. 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 Pickles 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."
8. Do random new things.
Shane Parrish, the 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 helpful 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 backwards backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future," Parrish quotes Jobs as saying. To have dots to connect, you need to be willing to try new things--even if they don't seem immediately useful or productive.
9. 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 Salon (personally, I'm a big fan of Memrise once you have the basic mechanics of a new language down).
10. Take some downtime.
It's no surprise that dedicated meditator Azula Altucher recommends giving yourself space for your brain to process what it's learned--"sit in silence daily," she writes--but she's not the only responder who stresses the need to take some downtime from mental stimulation. Spend some time just thinking, suggests retired cop Rick Bruno. He pauses the internal chatter while exercising. "I think about things while I run (almost every day)," he reports.
11. Make sure you sleep 8 hours every day
Sleep is critical to your overall health and well-being. Most of us don't get enough sleep. A lack of sleep can cloud your judgment. How will you become more intelligent if you can't think clearly?
Getting enough sleep is one of the most under-appreciated ways to become more intelligent. Take care of your body. Sleep enables our bodies to repair, makes us more productive and helps us feel excited about the day.
Without enough sleep, our brain can't function properly. While sleep needs vary from person to person, most adults need about 8 hours of sleep per night. Rest is one of the most valuable things to reset our mindset daily. Sleep allows your body to recharge its batteries. Make it a priority.
12. Exercise for 30 minutes every day
A majority of adults don't exercise the recommended amount of 30 minutes a day. Exercise helps you boost your mood. It improves your positive outlook on life. It improves your overall health and well-being. Exercise stimulates the growth of new brain cells and improves your brain health.
To become more intelligent, you need to make sure your brain operates optimally. Exercise helps you think better and enables you to remember things. Exercise stimulates the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to your body. When your heart and lungs improve, you have more energy. To become more intelligent, you must have more power to learn. Exercise can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. Exercise and sleep go hand in hand.
13. Become self-aware and get rid of your bad habits
Self-awareness is a powerful tool to understand if you have good or bad habits. We don't think about everything we do during the day because our patterns have been formed over our lifetime. Habits are hard to change because we are on autopilot. We don't realize what we are doing because we have done it repeatedly.
When we become more self-aware, we better understand ourselves and our daily habits. You become at peace with who we are. Self-awareness also helps you keep your emotions in check and impact your daily habits and thoughts. What bad habits do you need to change?