Instruction

There are no easy and universal ways for the development of intelligence. The only way to develop abilities is to load them regularly, and not with the same exercise, but with different exercises aimed at training different areas of the mind. As a bonus, in this case, strong-willed qualities, self-discipline develop, and a strong character is formed.

Among the intellectual abilities, one can single out analytical (the ability to compare fragments of information with each other), logical (the ability to think, reason, draw conclusions), deductive (the ability to find a general idea from an array of information), critical (the ability to reject incorrect conclusions and ideas), predictive (the ability to form a model of future events). In addition, intellectual abilities include the ability to abstract and imaginative thinking, the ability to concentrate and hold attention.

Intellectual and logical games perfectly train mental qualities. These include: chess, checkers, backgammon, preference, poker, developing computer games, logic puzzles. Board games, such as chess, have since ancient times been considered the privilege of the best minds - rulers, military leaders. They develop not only intelligence, but also memory, as well as the ability to concentrate.

Improve mental abilities of classes in various sciences. Any training contributes to the development of memory and the ability to concentrate. Mathematics trains almost all intellectual abilities, organizes and structures thinking. Reading fiction develops horizons, erudition, forms good taste, teaches you how to work with a lot of information, analyze it and find its application.

Keeping a diary helps to train analytical and predictive abilities. Write down significant events of the day, make plans for the future, analyze the forecasts that came true and did not come true.

The development of intelligence is facilitated by drawing, memorizing poetry, photographing, playing musical instruments. They train the intellect and ballroom dancing, aerobics and any exercises that require coordination of movements, maintaining a certain rhythm.

note

One of the misconceptions about human intelligence concerns the existing qualities of the mind. Some believe that if an individual has a very well developed one of the intellectual abilities, for example, the ability to add well in his mind or formulate complex concepts, he does not need to develop his intelligence further - he has already reached a higher level. However, it is not. The mind must develop harmoniously, so in such cases it is necessary to train weaker abilities.

It is impossible to become smarter in an instant. Being smart is a way of life, a constant search and overcoming oneself. This is a rather difficult, but at the same time pleasant path. And you can choose how to start it.

1. Exercise Regularly

This improves blood flow and oxygenates the brain, while good physical condition contributes to good mental health. Choose a program that is comfortable for your age and physical abilities. The main thing here is regularity.

2. Make sure you get enough sleep

Numerous studies have shown that sleep deprivation reduces concentration, short-term and long-term memory, problem solving speed, visual and hearing acuity, and slows reaction times. Especially for maintaining good mental health, the right combination of deep and REM sleep is important. Here again, physical exercises from Lifehacker will help you.

3. Eat a healthy, balanced diet

Your brain needs a certain amount of nutrients to function optimally. Diversify your usual menu to get enough vitamins, amino acids and carbohydrates. You don't have to buy supplements for this! We wrote earlier.

4. If you smoke - stop!

5. Reduce your alcohol intake

Alcohol in small amounts, especially when combined with socializing, may be beneficial for some brain functions. But excessive use can lead to acute and chronic impairment of its activity and cause irreversible cognitive impairment.

6. Learn new things regularly

Learn something new, such as foreign languages, playing musical instruments. Learn something you've always wanted to try! This contributes to the plasticity and flexibility of the brain. Learning math is a great exercise in logic and abstract thinking, and it improves concentration, mental stamina, and is guaranteed to raise your IQ by a few points. Use to learn something new.

7. Maintain friendships with smart and educated people

Make regular meetings with them and discuss a wide range of issues - complex intellectual discussions will give you new ideas and perspectives. You will understand how smart people think and express themselves and what you might need to change about yourself.

If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.

Alexander Zhurba, businessman and venture investor

8. Read at least one serious book a week and diversify your reading.

This will improve your vocabulary and verbal intelligence, as well as increase your knowledge and conversational repertoire. Reading must be!

9. Play challenging PC games

Shooters and racing at best develop reaction speed, but do not give you mental stimulation. Choose a game that involves complex rules, strategy, and requires certain mental skills. These are, for example, puzzle games Braid and Portal.

In multiplayer online games, Eve-online has, perhaps, the highest entry threshold.

10. Let go of limiting beliefs about your own intelligence.

Many truly qualified people tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer from a lack of self-confidence. Often the opinions of parents, overly critical (or even incompetent) teachers matter more than the stubborn facts of your success. Believe in yourself and start living a full life!

Can intelligence be developed? Neuroscientists have long answered this question in the affirmative. Your brain is plastic and able to physically change depending on what you are doing. And even the smartest person has something to strive for. So don't waste your time! We have collected tips and exercises from our books to help you become even smarter.

1. Solve logic puzzles

You will find exciting tasks for training logical thinking in the book of the popular blogger Dmitry Chernyshev "What to do in the evening with your family in the country without the Internet". Here are a few of them:

Answer:

This is a type of credit card. Notches about the borrowed goods were simultaneously made on both sticks. One was kept by the buyer, the other by the seller. This ruled out fraud. When the debt was repaid, the sticks were destroyed.

Answer:

This is Morrison's hideout to protect people during the bombing. Not everyone had cellars in which to hide. For poor households, the device was free. 500,000 of these shelters were built by the end of 1941 and another 100,000 in 1943, when the Germans began using V-1 rockets. The shelter paid off. According to statistics, in 44 houses equipped with such shelters, which were heavily bombed, only three out of 136 residents died. Another 13 people were seriously injured and 16 were lightly injured.

Answer:

Look again at the condition of the problem: there was no task to "continue the sequence." If 1 = 5, then 5 = 1.

2. Train your memory

Until now, you've been trying to guess the number by choosing the average. This is the ideal strategy for a game in which the number was chosen at random. But in our case, the number was not chosen randomly. We have deliberately chosen a number that will be difficult for you to find. The main lesson of game theory is that you need to put yourself in the place of another player. We put ourselves in your place and assumed that you would say the number 50 first, then 25, then 37 and 42.

What will be your final guess? Is it number 49? Congratulations! Yourself, not you. You are trapped again! We thought of the number 48. In fact, all this reasoning about the average number from the interval was aimed precisely at misleading you. We wanted you to choose the number 49.

The point of our game with you is not to show you how cunning we are, but to clearly illustrate what makes any situation a game: you must take into account the goals and strategies of other players.

5. Do math

Lomonosov believed that mathematics puts the mind in order. And indeed it is. One way to develop intelligence is to make friends with the world of numbers, graphs and formulas. If you want to try this method, the book Beauty Squared will help you, where the most complex concepts are described simply and in a fun way. A small excerpt from there:

“In 1611, the astronomer Johannes Kepler decided to find himself a wife. The process did not start well: he rejected the first three candidates. Kepler would have married a fourth if he had not seen a fifth, who seemed "modest, thrifty, and capable of loving adopted children." But the scientist behaved so indecisively that he met with several more women who did not interest him. Then he nevertheless married the fifth candidate.

According to the mathematical theory of "optimal stopping", in order to make a choice, it is necessary to consider and reject 36.8 percent of the possible options. And then stop at the first one, which will be better than all those rejected.

Kepler had 11 dates. But he could meet with four women and then propose to the first of the remaining candidates, whom he liked more than those he had already seen. In other words, he would immediately pick the fifth woman and save himself six bad dates. The theory of “optimal stopping” is also applicable in other areas: medicine, energy, zoology, economics, etc.”

6. Learn to play a musical instrument

Psychologist and author of We Are Music, Victoria Williamson, says the Mozart effect is just a myth. Listening to classical music will not increase your IQ. But if you make music yourself, you will help your brain work better. This is confirmed by the following experiment:

“A number of extensive analyzes of the relationship between music lessons and IQ in children have been conducted by Glenn Schellenberg. In 2004, he randomly assigned 144 six-year-olds from Toronto to four groups: the first had keyboard lessons, the second had singing lessons, the third had acting lessons, and the fourth was a control group with no extra lessons. To be fair, after the study, the children in the control group were offered the same activities as the rest.

The training lasted 36 weeks in a dedicated school. All children were tested for IQ during the summer holidays before these classes began, as well as at the end of the study. Criteria of comparable age and socioeconomic status were used.

After one year, the vast majority of the children performed better on the IQ test, which is logical since they are a year older. However, in the two music groups, the increase in IQ was greater than in the acting and control groups.”

7. Practice Mindfulness Meditation

Meditation not only helps to reduce stress levels, but also helps to develop memory, creativity, reaction, attention and self-control. For more on this method, see Mindfulness. Advice from her:

“Have you noticed that the older you get, the faster time passes? The reason is that with age we acquire habits, certain patterns of behavior and live on the "automatic": the autopilot guides us when we eat breakfast, brush our teeth, go to work, sit on the same chair every time ... As a result, life passes by, and we feel miserable.

Do a simple experiment. Buy chocolate. Break off a small piece of it. Look at it as if you are seeing it for the first time. Pay attention to all the kinks, texture, smell, color. Put this piece in your mouth, but don't swallow it right away, let it melt slowly on your tongue. Try the whole bunch of flavors. Then slowly swallow the chocolate, try to feel how it flows down the esophagus, note the movements of the palate and tongue.

Agree, the sensations are not at all the same as if you just ate a bar without thinking. Try this exercise with other foods, and then with your usual activities: be mindful at work, while walking, getting ready for bed, and so on.

8. Learn to think outside the box

Creativity will help find a solution even in a situation that seems hopeless to most. book author"Rice Storm"I am sure that anyone can train creativity. To get started, try applying the Leonardo da Vinci method:

“Leonardo da Vinci's way of generating ideas was this: he closed his eyes, completely relaxed and dotted a sheet of paper with arbitrary lines and scribbles. Then he opened his eyes and looked for images and nuances, objects and phenomena in the painted. Many of his inventions were born from such sketches.

Here is a plan of action on how you can use the Leonardo da Vinci method in your work:

Write the problem down on a piece of paper and reflect on it for a few minutes.

Relax. Give your intuition the opportunity to create images that reflect the current situation. You don't need to know what the drawing will look like before you draw it.

Give shape to your challenge by delineating its boundaries. They can be of any size and take shape as you wish.

Practice drawing unconsciously. Let the lines and scribbles dictate how you draw and position them.

If the result does not satisfy you, take another sheet of paper and make another drawing, and then another - as many as you need.

Explore your drawing. Write down the first word that comes to mind for each image, squiggle, line, or structure.

Tie all the words together by writing a short note. Now see how the writing relates to your task. Have new ideas emerged?

Be attentive to the questions that arise in your mind. For example: “What is this?”, “Where did it come from?” If you feel the need to find answers to specific questions, then you are on the right path leading to a solution to the problem.

9. Learn foreign languages

According to researchers, it promotes brain development and helps maintain mental clarity even into adulthood. In the polyglot Susanna Zarayskaya's guide, you will find 90 actionable tips on how to learn new foreign languages ​​easily and fun. Here are three recommendations from the book:

• Listen to songs in the language you are learning while you are driving, cleaning your home, cooking, tending flowers, or doing other things. You will be imbued with the rhythms of the language even with passive listening. The main thing is to do it regularly.

• The non-profit organization Planet Read is using Bollywood music videos in its Indian literacy program with subtitles in the same language. The subtitle format is the same as in karaoke, that is, the word that is currently being spoken is highlighted. Easy access to such videos doubles the number of first-graders who have mastered reading. And all due to the fact that viewers naturally synchronize audio and video. The method by which illiteracy is fought in India will allow you to compare what you hear with what you see.

• Who said that drama is incompatible with the table of irregular verbs? Soap operas can be a very fun way to learn a new language. The storylines are simple and the acting is so expressive that even if you don't know all the words, you'll still be in the know by just following the emotions of the characters.

10. Make up stories

This is another way to become more creative and develop flexibility of thinking. Don't know where to start? In the notebook "642 ideas to write about" you will find many tips. Your task is to continue the stories and turn them into complete stories. Here are some assignments from the book:

• You meet a girl who can close her eyes and see the entire universe. Tell me about her.

• Try to fit the whole life of a person in one sentence.

• Take an article from a fresh newspaper. Write down ten words or phrases that caught your eye. Using these words, write a poem that begins: "What if..."

• Your cat dreams of world domination. She figured out how to switch bodies with you.

• Write a story that starts like this: “The odd thing started when Fred bought a house for his miniature pigs…”

• Explain to a gold miner in 1849 how e-mail works.

• An unknown force threw you inside the computer. You need to get out.

• Choose any item on the desk (pen, pencil, eraser, etc.) and write him a note of thanks.

11. Get enough sleep!

The ability to learn depends on the quality of your sleep. A curious fact from the book "The Brain in a Dream":

“Scientists have found that different stages of sleep are meant for different types of learning. For example, non-REM sleep is important for mastering actual memory tasks, such as memorizing dates for a history exam. But dream-rich REM sleep is necessary for mastering what is associated with procedural memory - with how something is done, including with the development of new behavioral strategies.

Psychology professor Carlisle Smith says: “For a month we sawed out blocks from which we built a maze for mice, and then recorded their brain activity around the clock for ten days. Those mice that showed greater intelligence in running through the maze also showed greater brain activity during REM sleep. I myself never doubted that sleep and learning are related, but now enough data has accumulated that others are interested in this issue. ”

12. Don't neglect exercise

Sport has a positive effect on our intellectual abilities. Here is what evolutionary biologist John Medina has to say in his book The Rules of the Brain:

“All sorts of tests have shown that physical activity throughout life contributes to a striking improvement in cognitive processes, in contrast to a sedentary lifestyle. The exercisers outperformed the lazy and couch potato in terms of long-term memory, logic, attention, problem-solving ability, and even so-called fluid intelligence.”

More books on the development of intelligence- .

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A smart person is always pleasant in communication, easily achieves his goals and achieves success. Anyone would like to have (IQ), but the brain cannot develop on its own. This requires a lot of effort and a lot of time. There are many ways to become smarter and increase your level of intelligence.

Education

The development of mental abilities is most effectively achieved through training. With regular training in this way, a person can become smarter and more erudite, so that he will be a more attractive conversationalist for others. There are several options for achieving the goal through training.

Foreign languages

Learning foreign languages ​​provides good brain stimulation and also helps to improve memory. It is enough to learn one additional language to feel positive changes. It is recommended to give preference to common and useful languages:

• English;
• Deutsch;
• Spanish;
• Italian.

It is desirable to conduct training using all modern methods, which will increase the effectiveness of the study.

Exact sciences

Exact sciences can seriously develop the mind. Even the humanities need to study them. The main thing is to start at the right level, gradually increasing the complexity of the topics studied. You can do exact sciences at home on your own, but there are special courses where people are united in groups according to the level of knowledge they have. After several weeks of training, intelligence will increase, the speed of thinking will develop, logic will improve, memory will strengthen.

Curiosity

Showing interest in the whole world around you is one of the best ways to develop the brain. In children and adolescents, this happens on a subconscious level, and adults will have to use willpower in order for curiosity to bear fruit. The easiest way to benefit is by interacting with all the surrounding objects, regularly learning new skills, reading useful articles, encyclopedias, listening to good music or watching movies.

When studying serious materials, it is worth giving preference to trusted sources. Therefore, it is recommended to use textbooks or scientific papers.

Hobbies

The right passion is the key to success. But can they increase intelligence? If you choose useful hobbies, then the brain will gradually develop, making a person smarter. Therefore, it is worth throwing useless hobbies out of your life, replacing them with more suitable ones.

Reading of books

It will be possible to increase your own intelligence at home with the help of literature. People who regularly read books have good erudition, a large vocabulary and a developed brain. This is the best way to avoid development in old age. It is enough to read 30 minutes a day to achieve the result. To increase efficiency, it is recommended to make reading as varied as possible, while the list must include classic novels, as well as books on self-development.

• Magazines (preferably popular science);
• Newspapers.

When reading becomes a habit, becoming a daily activity, it is worth trying various techniques aimed at developing the skill. To do this, you can try to increase the speed of running your eyes through the text, highlight important information, independently answer questions after reading.

Playing a musical instrument

Music is very useful for the brain and the human psyche. If the significance of its influence on the mind when listening is a big question and has not yet been proven, then independent playing musical instruments brings guaranteed benefits. This was proven by Schellenberg in 2004, when he carried out related tests that proved to increase the intelligence of those involved in music. It is recommended to give preference to classical instruments: violin, piano.

writing

Writing new short stories regularly is a good way to develop your brain. When the level of skill is raised to a high level, you can try to write a full book. For training, specific short ideas are great, from which you can develop a story. The main thing is to avoid platitudes.

All hobbies will allow you to achieve special attention from others, as well as make new useful acquaintances.

Exercises

Intentional training, performing special exercises, solving puzzles will improve the quality of remembering information, as well as improve brain activity. As in the previous cases, you need to improve these methods to achieve the goal on a regular basis.

Puzzles, tasks, games

Educational games or tasks contribute to the development of the brain. With regular training, a person will be able to achieve an improvement in many indicators related to mental abilities. Particular influence will be exerted on memory and the speed of brain activity. Suitable for classes:

• Chess, checkers;
• Crosswords, Sudoku;
• Puzzles, riddles.

All of these options are applicable to both children and adults. Among the puzzles there are a huge number of options designed for different age categories, which allows you to choose the most suitable tasks for yourself.

Analysis

It is very important for any person to be alone sometimes. At such moments, you need to be distracted from everything that is happening and immerse yourself in your thoughts. Analyzing past events, thinking about the future, thinking about something important - all this allows you to increase your level of intelligence. Additionally, it is recommended to question everything that happens, considering the reasons for any events.

To achieve the maximum effect, you can download any special application for your mobile. It will train mindfulness, memory and the brain as a whole.

Lifestyle

The most important factor, without which it is impossible to increase intelligence, is a person's lifestyle. If it is wrong, then it will be very difficult to develop the brain, and it will not be possible to acquire a strong mind. Therefore, you should pay attention to your lifestyle, change it if necessary, and only then engage in the development of reason and erudition.

Sleep quality

Lack of sleep or its poor quality has a direct impact on a person's life. Lack of sleep leads to a decrease in brain activity, deterioration of memory and attentiveness. Good sleep is the main condition for achieving goals in life, as well as brain development. What do you need:

• Go to bed before 00:00;
• Get up no later than 08:00;
• Sleep duration - at least 8 hours;
• Small breaks for sleep during the day.

This even applies to weekends. If you break the regimen once a week, then the body will experience unnecessary stress.

Physical activity

When walking in the fresh air and doing active sports, the brain receives a large amount of oxygen, which is necessary for proper blood circulation and the ability to think clearly. A person who goes in for sports is more calm, reasonable, easily copes with difficulties. The following types of physical activity are great:

• Walks;
• Sports or Nordic walking;
• Yoga;

People who go in for sports are much more likely to realize themselves in life and achieve success.

Bad habits

If you have bad habits, then you will not be able to achieve high intelligence. Regular drinking or smoking significantly slows down all processes in the human brain, which becomes critical for the development of the mind. Nicotine with alcohol penetrate into the bloodstream, which is why such a negative effect occurs. It is no less harmful to watch TV programs for hours or play computer games that do not require serious involvement of the intellect. You need to expand your mental abilities only after giving up bad habits.

Communication

The right environment will tell you how to increase intelligence. Therefore, you should try to communicate only with smart and educated people, while trying to become better than them. Good people always pull up, and bad people always pull down. Therefore, the question of communication and environment is very important for a person who wants to achieve the development of the mind. Nearby there should always be people who have a more developed intellect. They will help you get better.

Rest allows the brain to relax and prepare for work, training, new challenges. This has a beneficial effect on brain activity, the ability to improve intelligence and strengthen memory. It is enough to practice meditation for 20 minutes daily to achieve success in the development of the mind. A person will see additional benefits in ordering thoughts, clarifying the mind, and increasing creative skills. The triggering of this effect occurs after a few days of meditation.

The right way of life not only makes it possible to broaden one's horizons and improve the quality of intellect, but also gives a person good health for many years to come.

Nutrition

Proper nutrition provides a person with good health, good mood and a clear mind. How to increase intelligence with it: eat healthy foods, include medical supplements and folk remedies in the diet. This is necessary for the brain to begin to develop if a person already leads a healthy lifestyle, takes care of himself and trains the mind.

diet

Properly formulated diet is extremely important for people striving for brain development. Particular attention should be paid to the following products:

• Walnuts - lecithin has a positive effect on the brain, which increases the speed of intellectual activity and strengthens memory;
• Fish - iodine and omega-3 are responsible for the rate of energy flow to the brain, the regulation of cholesterol levels, and the normalization of vascular function;
• Pumpkin seeds - they affect the speed of processing the information perceived by the brain, as well as memorization;
• Spinach - lutein slows down the aging process, which helps to increase learning.

It is enough to include any of the listed products in the diet to feel their effect in a week. It is important to exclude from the menu all junk food that could have a negative effect on the body.

Medical supplements

Special preparations, which are presented in the form of food supplements, have a serious impact on the quality of brain activity. In search of an answer to the question of how to improve your intelligence, you need to think about acquiring the following tools.

In recent years, we have seen a real boom in self-development and self-education around the world. Constantly accelerating modern life requires a person to be competitive, acquiring new and new knowledge. Evening courses, webinars, master classes will surprise no one. They help to “gather” knowledge that for some reason was missed or simply not available during basic studies at school or university. But what if it is possible to "pump" not only the stock of knowledge, but also the ability to receive and process information - in other words, cognitive abilities?

Have you ever wondered how your life would change if nature endowed you with the best intellectual data? If you were more attentive, could remember more information, would you find solutions to problems faster?

It seemed that intellectual (or cognitive) abilities are something that cannot be corrected; they were laid down in deep childhood and even in the womb. However, this is not true: the latest research shows that you can develop your brain in the same way as you develop your body - throughout your life. As soon as it became clear that the intellect can be developed, the emergence of specific “simulators” for the brain became a matter of time. In the west, the largest projects of this type are Lumosity and BrainHQ, which are used by millions of people around the world. The popularity of cognitive development platforms has once again proved that a modern person strives for self-improvement and improving the quality of life and is interested in the tools for such development.

Having analyzed the experience of foreign colleagues, as well as having studied the domestic market and the characteristics of the audience, young Russian entrepreneurs, participants of the Skolkovo Open University created a platform " Wikium"- the first simulator in Russia for the development of human cognitive abilities at any age (for children and adults).

Wikium is a resource designed to improve brain performance. It allows you to train memory, attention, thinking, calculation accuracy and reaction speed. The system is simple - you register on the site, select a training program in accordance with your own tasks (memory development, reaction speed, search for non-standard solutions) and start playing one of dozens of games. And although you can spend hours on end doing this lesson, for a tangible result, regular classes of 15-20 minutes are enough.

The Wikium project is not just a collection of various puzzles and games for the speed of reaction. This is a structured "smart" system that takes into account the goals and objectives of each user, his successes, progress and other individual characteristics. Thus, you can customize the simulator "for yourself."

The service is based on a serious scientific base: both universal methods for developing cognitive abilities and the latest scientific developments are used here. So, the creators involved employees of the Department of Psychophysiology of Moscow State University and a number of medical institutions to work on Wikium. Based on the analysis of the data obtained during the operation of the service, scientists plan not only to develop the Wikium platform, but also to deepen scientific knowledge in the field of cognitive psychology.

Who can benefit from the development of intellectual abilities?

Obviously everyone. And especially for those who want to improve their creativity and ability to work, improve the quality and speed of working with information, overcome the lack of attention and cope with the decline in mental productivity. It is useful to train the brain for schoolchildren and students who are subjected to serious mental stress, as well as for the elderly, including those who have suffered strokes and traumatic brain injuries.

The market for developing products for the brain in Russia is still in its infancy, but it is already clear that the demand for self-improvement has also been formed among the Russian-speaking audience. The Wikium project is constantly evolving taking into account new scientific and statistical data and, being a pioneer in this field, is rapidly gaining users and fans.

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