How to Become Smarter

Please do not read this ebook straight through from start to finish. It’s a good idea to first read the
summaries
of chapters and all
key points
. To skip through book sections, you can use the left and right positions of the 5-way button of your Kindle (this feature does not work in the free sample from Amazon.com, unfortunately). After that, you can read chapters that you find interesting and you don’t have to read the whole book from cover to cover. There are a lot of links in this text (to endnotes, literary references, and cross-references) and you can ignore all links if you find them distracting.

This Kindle edition is a revised version of the paperback edition of the book. The second edition was a result of extensive editing. It was much easier to read than the first Kindle edition that was available prior to January 15, 2012. The third edition contains updated scientific evidence and some revisions. This edition contains any necessary cross-references and literary references as clickable links. Thus, looking up a source behind a statement is a matter of a couple of clicks.

Many claims in this book are based on the author’s personal experience (a healthy subject). About half of the proposed methods are supported by scientific studies. The advice offered is not meant to replace the recommendations and advice of a physician. Nursing mothers, pregnant women, and people who are taking medication or have a chronic medical condition should consult their physician or a qualified health care professional before trying any of the lifestyle changes described in this book.

1. Increase your score on general aptitude or intelligence tests.
   
2. Understand and learn complex reading material that is uninteresting to you (but necessary for your job or school).
   
3. Concentrate on job- or school-related reading and writing tasks for hours at a time.
   
4. Reduce procrastination and overcome writer’s block.
   
5. Improve academic performance if you are a student or job performance if you are a knowledge worker.
   
6. Experience euphoria without drugs and come up with new ideas, when necessary.
   
7. Cope with extended periods of solitude, such as those related to academic studies or big writing projects.
   
8. Prevent yourself from making rash, impulsive decisions.
   
9. Prevent fits of anger and reduce feelings of hostility.
   
10. Sharpen your wit, become more talkative, and entertain people.
    
11. Depending on circumstances, use different regimens that improve one or another mental function.
    
12. Get along with people and reduce the amount of arguments and conflicts.
    

Before we begin, just a reminder: you don’t need to read this book straight through from start to finish. It is best to first read the
summaries
of chapters and all
key points
. To skip through book sections, you can use the left and right positions of the 5-way button of your Kindle (this feature does not work in the free sample from Amazon.com, unfortunately). After that, you can read chapters that caught your interest and you don’t have to read the whole book.

It is prudent at the outset to define a few basic concepts, some of which might be familiar. Different sources, however, may offer different definitions, and defining these concepts now will avoid ambiguity later. Many definitions used throughout this book are from a recent review article by John Mayer and colleagues [
23
]. A mental ability is “a person’s capacity to perform a psychological task, such as solving a problem, so as to meet a specified criterion such as correctness, novelty, or speed” [
23
]. This book discusses such mental abilities as attention control, impulse control, and information processing speed, among others. Usually researchers measure many different mental abilities collectively in order to determine a person’s intelligence. Therefore, we can define intelligence as “a set of mental abilities that permit the recognition, learning, memory for, and capacity to reason about a particular form of information, such as verbal information.” John Mayer and colleagues define intelligence as “a mental ability or a set of mental abilities…” In this book, however, the word “intelligence” always means a set of mental abilities.

For most lay readers the word “intelligence” is associated with the intelligence quotient (IQ), widely used as a measure of mental abilities for clinical, and sometimes, occupational purposes. The type of intelligence measured by IQ is called “academic intelligence” in psychological literature in order to distinguish it from other types of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence and social intelligence. Measurements of academic intelligence include assessment of the ability to process and manipulate verbal information (words) in one’s mind and the ability to process numerical information and carry out calculations. Academic intelligence also includes the ability to comprehend information about spatial organization and geometrical structure of objects. Scientists use the scores obtained by measuring the relevant mental abilities on intelligence tests to calculate a single value,
g
, or general intelligence. This measure of academic intelligence is not constant for any given person. It can change throughout a person’s lifespan. On average, general intelligence increases with age until the late 30s and then declines slowly. Due to the well-established age-related changes in general intelligence (
g
), calculation of the final IQ score includes adjusting
g
for the person’s age.

Most IQ tests produce a numerical value around 100, which is the average intelligence quotient of the human population. Values of IQ exceeding 100 mean higher than average intelligence. For example, only about 0.1% of the population has an IQ over 149. Conversely, IQ scores below 100 mean lower than average intelligence and a score lower than 70 suggests mental retardation. To sum up, IQ is the age-adjusted general intelligence factor (
g
) calculated by measuring various mental abilities related to the processing of verbal, numerical, and geometrical information. All of this is within the realm of academic intelligence, often called “intelligence.”

Research about intelligence is not without controversy. For example, there are opposing views on the validity of using a single factor (general intelligence,
g
) to measure a collection of different mental abilities. The research on differences in intelligence among different groups of population is another controversial area and is outside the scope of this book. Measurements of IQ can vary for the same person because of fatigue, general state of health, and repeat testing. Repeated taking of IQ tests can contribute to learning certain test-taking skills, resulting in an IQ score several points higher than the first-time IQ score [
499
]. These examples point to potential difficulties in interpreting IQ scores.

As to the practical usefulness of IQ testing, studies have identified correlations of IQ scores with academic performance and with job performance in a variety of occupations. A high score can predict better job performance [
955
,
956
]. There is also some correlation of IQ with social status and income level, but this correlation is in the weak-to-moderate range. Equally or perhaps more important in attaining social status and high income are personality traits, social status of parents, and luck. Moderately high IQ scores correlate (moderately) with a higher social status and income. Yet statistical studies show that huge IQ scores provide little further benefit for social status and income (there is no correlation) [
24
,
25
]. Self-employment does not correlate with intelligence either [
519
].

Research in the last several decades has identified types of intelligence other than academic. These deal with mental abilities different from those measured by academic intelligence (IQ) tests. Emotional intelligence deals with mental abilities related to identification and processing of emotions in the self and other people. Social intelligence measures abilities related to intelligent behavior in social situations. Studies show that academic intelligence exhibits little if any correlation with emotional intelligence. These two concepts deal with independent and unrelated sets of mental abilities. We will discuss emotional and social intelligence in Chapters Four and Six.

Two other dimensions of intelligence are important here. “Crystallized intelligence” deals with acquired knowledge and skills. “Fluid intelligence” relates to how well the human brain works, regardless of knowledge and skills. “Crystallized intelligence” measures such abilities as vocabulary, general knowledge, and the like, while “fluid intelligence” assesses the ability to understand and solve novel problems. The formal definition of fluid intelligence is “on-the-spot reasoning and novel problem-solving ability” [
26
]. For example, suppose two people have roughly the same amount of knowledge, but one of them can better understand complex problems. The latter person will attain a higher score on an intelligence test. In simple terms, fluid intelligence assesses how well the brain works; that is, it assesses the biological properties of the brain. It does not measure information processing speed and short-term memory, although all three measurements indicate how well the brain works and studies show that all three correlate [
27
]. Some parts of IQ tests mostly assess crystallized intelligence, such as questions intended to measure vocabulary or general knowledge. Other parts of IQ tests mostly assess fluid intelligence, such as questions that require complex calculations. Still other test items may measure both fluid and crystallized intelligence to the same extent. It is possible to assess fluid and crystallized dimensions of intelligence separately, in addition to the final IQ score.