The Intelligence Guide Part 2      

By Project Success    

Being smart is all about following fruitful habits which slowly but systematically improve our intelligence and abilities. This is true for every field of expertism. However, the cognitive learning makes it much easier. The special element of cognitive intelligence is the way it develops. In comparison to other fields, it can be improved directly and indirectly. Directly means, finding activities which will concentrate on the cognitive side. Indirectly means learning anything else; learning by itself will also increase our mental capacity. Thus, we suggest building everything around the cognitive side. By first applying the cognitive supporting habit, we can easily add activities supporting the other fields of intelligence.

As being said, there are two components to success: beliefs and habits. Assuming you have been with us so far, you already possess the first component. Regarding the second, we are now going to offer daily and weekend schedules which are certainly going to make you smarter in time. Your job is to add these activities to your schedule and stick to it. Consistency is the key.

So, in order to improve the cognitive capacity, we would suggest a schedule which includes the following activities:

  1. Reading
  2. Gaming
  3. Learning

Reading

As the rule states, reading is the key to a successful life. Not only does reading improves our current knowledge and abilities, but reading also improves mental endurance, the speed of data analysis and our imagination. By constantly reading, we train our eyes and mind to perceive and digest new information. In addition, we increase our tolerance and concentration capacities; You have probably already once experienced it, after a long period of constipation, once we try reading a new book will we experience tiredness and a will to sleep. In this case our low endurance plays a major role. Now, saying all of that, I would not recommend simply reading any available material, but specific; self-improvement, successful stories and professional books written by successful people. Such books are much more than entertainment, they demand us to think, imagine and learn. These activities will surely improve us and make us more successful. Our first task is recognizing a successful person in the field of our choice, for that we should read the biography of a professional in a specific field. For example, in the field of finance, I would suggest Robert Kiyosaki and his books. Who offers interesting and original ideas in the world of economics. In the field of fitness I would suggest Georg Hackenschmidt, the father of body building and wrestling in the 1880’s, and so on. Now it is important to note, that no book and no person is perfect, and certainly there is no objective truths. Anything in our world depends on our subjective point of view. And thus, we should consider books as half-truths whereupon we should implement only a small portion of the information in our life. I would suggest starting small and imporving gradually. First train yourself to read one or two pages a day of a typical book before your eyes start to close. In time your capacity and tolerance will improve. I set the ultimate goal of 10 pages a day (on average some days a little bit more or less). This number in one side is not too much effort and thus allows on one hand for self-reflection of the new information, and on the other hand a fast reasonable progress: 10 pages a day, equals 280 pages a month. For a typical book of 200 pages, it should generate a rate faster than 1 book a month. Of course, the number 10 can be adjusted based on the size of the pages. Only this habit alone, will improve yourself greatly. You should expect in time to think faster, deeper, digest information faster and eventually reach better decisions in your life.

Gaming

In addition to reading, gaming is a powerful trait. Games are the best way to learn new abilities. By practicing games, we have the chance to test new theories and combinations which caught our attention and see whether these theoretical truths are really applicable to our modern life (like testing a new fitness training plan). In addition, games have the advantage of repetition; a good game should be played many times. Every set, we have the chance to experience new combinations and scenarios and thus improve our knowledge and experience. Apart from that, games are fun, we become smarter, we train our mind to think faster, and at the end, we either get the joy of winning or learn something new, with the hope of winning the next time (or at least getting closer to it). And as you will notice, at the end of the day, games represent the things we want to achieve in life. Every day,set or an attempt is another round where we attempt to reach the desired result, whether it is a good job, exciting invention, money generating system, relationship, or even health. Notice that games are best played against or with human participants. Although computers can always calculate mathematically the best decisions, in the real world we deal with real people with desire, demand and dreams. And this is great, as the world is based on abundance.

I would suggest concentrating on table games like chess and backgammon, both of these games are played against other humans, they train the cognitive mind and the logical mind; not everything that is mathematical correct makes sense. And this is exactly the difference between humans and machines. we care about the reasoning of the move and not the mathematical result. For us, math is only the tool to achieve a greater result. A typical routine will be to play a game every one or two days online, or against a friend. Other possible alternative is to play a marathon of multiple games one time a week against other players face to face in a given chess club (or other table game of your choice). Although winning is always a desired result, please remember that your ultimate goal is not just win chess games, but you want to improve your mind. And thus, with every position, every game and every decision tree which you encounter, you become faster, smarter and more efficient.

General Learning

Learning new abilities is our last suggestion for self-improvement. The idea here is to add the daily ability to study or learn a new ability which is not required in our professional life. Possible activities include a new language, music instrument, programming, social abilities and financial training. We should assign every week a day for concentrated learning and a small period of time daily for practice. As an example, please have a look at our foreign languages learning guide.

Fundamental Learning

Fundamental learning includes learning habits which have a usage in our life. These are all traits which improve one field in our lives. The goal of the fundamental learning is to improve the other fields of intelligence. For example, activities in the financial field like reading books, hearing webinars or attending a specialized course will improve our financial intelligence. Social meetings and pick up courses (for men) are great to improve our social intelligence. In a similar fashion, we can improve all the other fields of intelligence. The right system for fundamental learning is knowledge sharing (books, meetings, courses), and application. For example, for social intelligence, we first need to master the theory, after that we apply it in our daily life. In the case of social intelligence, we can apply it by meeting people with an inviting body language, improving our internal game (thoughts) and improving our vocabulary. For presentation, we can train ourselves to deliver the knowledge with passion. The following list includes the fundamental abilities which have the potential to improve our life significantly:

  1. Financial knowledge
  2. Health: Sports, nutrition.
  3. Mental: Controlling the mental state during unstable events
  4. Social events: Communication skills
  5. Presentation: Presenting information to other individuals
  6. Decisions making: The correct method to reach decisions

Putting it all together

To summarize, we always start with the cognitive development: We read books daily, play thinking games and learn general new abilities in our free time. The next step is learning abilities in order to improve the other fields of intelligence. All of these actions will insert an entry in our daily and weekly schedules. Finally, the last step would be consistency; we keep our schedule intact and protect it by all cost. Please notice that learning never ends! Even once we reach a level where the new abilities really provide us a contribution, we must always continue learning as the world is changing and our mind must always be challenged.