If you’re smart, you play chess. If you’re especially smart, you join the chess club and compete in tournaments.
What if that’s backwards?
What if by playing chess you become, or appear, smart?
Yesterday, I read The Wealth Ladder by Nick Maggiulli. The author reminded of a story demonstrating that what we consider high intelligence can be trained.
“Lazlo Polgar…believed that any human could be turned into a genius if given intense training from an early age….Polgar told a foreign-language teacher named Klara of his idea and they agreed to marry and have children to test it out. The two had three daughters, all of whom Polgar trained to play chess…All three of their daughters grew into world-class chess players.”
Nick Maggiuli, The Wealth Ladder
You can get smarter.
What It Means to Be Smart
Some can remember strings of thousands of numbers. Others can recite word-for-word hour long presentations without taking notes.
Do they have unnatural memory super powers we don’t possess?
Maybe.
Or, are they more like magicians in Las Vegas with impressive performances supported by logical explanations?
Joshua Foer decided to compete in the USA Memory Championship. At first, he could not naturally memorize thousands of numbers or long speeches like the memory geniuses. He discovered and practiced techniques such as the “memory palace” in which you associate words or numbers with vivid images and place them in a path throughout a place you’re familiar with like your house. To recall hundreds or thousands of items from memory, you mentally, you mentally walk through your house, noting items that appear long your path.
Foer practiced memorization techniques for hours a day. In 2006, he won the USA Memory Championship.
Like chess, memory can be trained. To others who haven’t spent hours practicing chess or memorization techniques, you’ll seem like a natural genius. The truth is you’ve trained your mind like a professional baseball player trains to hit a 100 mph 3-inch ball.
How to Get Smarter
To get smarter in one specific area such as math, memorization, writing, marketing, investing, or a sport, practice a lot. As humans, we can learn almost anything. We learn to ski, surf, fly airplanes, write poetry, and build nuclear power plants. The first step to getting smarter at anything is to choose your pursuit, then practice at that craft every day.
To practice, however, isn’t enough. You must practice in a way that makes you uncomfortable.
Scott Young speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean. To learn a new language, here’s his recommendation:
- Learn the bare minimum of a language (basic vocabulary and phrases)
- Go to a country that speaks the language
- Only speak that language from Day One
How does that compare to most people’s approach? Most people download Duolingo or buy a language learning book. Then, by themselves, they practice a bit each day, feeling like they’re learning. But, as soon as someone speaks that language to them, they freeze — they can’t have a conversation in the language. They haven’t done the uncomfortable, but most necessary, step of feeling like an idiot while fumbling through conversations in a new language with real people.
To get smarter, don’t do what’s comfortable, do what works.
If your practice ever gets comfortable, it means you’ve stopped learning. Change your practice or you’ll make no further progress.
The Final Ingredient
Want to know the easiest, fastest way to upgrade your intelligence immediately without additional work, supplements, or pharmaceuticals?
Focus.
While practicing your craft, focus only on your practice.
- No phone
- No social media
- No computer applications you don’t need
- No people interrupting you
- No distractions at all
If you work in complete focus without distraction for two 45-90 minute blocks per day, you’ll get ahead of 99% of your peers.
Now, see how smart you can get.