10 Small Things You Can Do Every Day to Get Smarter

You might be under the impression that intelligence is a fixedquantity set when you are young and unchanging thereafter. Butresearch shows that you』re wrong. How we approach situations andthe things we do to feed our brains can significantly improve ourmental horsepower.

That could mean going back to school or filling your bookshelves(or e-reader) with thick tomes on deep subjects, but gettingsmarter doesn』t necessarily mean a huge commitment of time andenergy, according to a recent thread on question-and-answer siteQuora.

When a questioner keen on self-improvement asked the community,「What would you do to be a little smarter every single day?」 lotsof readers–including dedicated meditators, techies, andentrepreneurs–weighed in with useful suggestions. Which of these 10ideas can you fit into your daily routine?

1. Be smarter about your online time.

Every online break doesn』t have to be about checking socialnetworks and fulfilling your daily ration of cute animal pics. TheWeb is also full of great learning resources, such as onlinecourses, intriguing TED talks, and vocabulary-building tools.Replace a few minutes of skateboarding dogs with something morementally nourishing, suggest several responders.

2. Write down what you learn.

It doesn』t have to be pretty or long, but taking a few minuteseach day to reflect in writingabout what you learned is sure toboost your brainpower. 「Write 400 words a day on things that youlearned,」 suggests yoga teacher Claudia Azula Altucher. Mike Xie, aresearch associate at Bayside Biosciences, agrees: 「Write aboutwhat you』ve learned.」

3. Make a 『did』 list.

A big part of intelligence is confidence and happiness, so boostboth by pausing to list not the things you have yet to do, butrather all the things you』ve already accomplished. The idea of a「done list」 is recommended by famed VC Marc Andreessen as well asAzula Altucher. 「Make an I DID list to show all the things you, infact, accomplished,」 she suggests.

4. Get out the Scrabble board.

Board games and puzzles aren』t just fun but also a great way towork out your brain. 「Play games (Scrabble, bridge, chess, Go,Battleship, Connect 4, doesn』t matter),」 suggests Xie (for aninja-level brain boost, exercise your working memory by trying toplay without looking at the board). 「Play Scrabble with no helpfrom hints or books,」 concurs Azula Altucher.

5. Have smart friends.

It can be rough on your self-esteem, but hanging out with folkswho are more clever than you is one of the fastest ways to learn.「Keep a smart company. Remember your IQ is the average of fiveclosest people you hang out with,」 Saurabh Shah, an account managerat Symphony Teleca, writes.

「Surround yourself with smarter people,」 agrees developer ManasJ. Saloi. 「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 atbest and there are many things I am yet to learn…Always be humbleand be willing to learn.」

6. Read a lot.

OK, this is not a shocker, but it was the most common response:Reading definitely seems essential. Opinions vary on what』s thebest brain-boosting reading material, with suggestions ranging fromdeveloping a daily newspaper habit to picking up a variety offiction and nonfiction, but everyone seems to agree that quantityis important. Read a lot.

7. Explain it to others.

「If you can』t explain it simply, you don』t understand it wellenough,」 Albert Einstein said. The Quora posters agree. Make sureyou』ve really learned what you think you have learned and that theinformation is truly stuck in your memory by trying to teach it toothers. 「Make sure you can explain it to someone else,」 Xie sayssimply.

Student Jon Packles elaborates on this idea: 「For everything youlearn–big or small–stick with it for at least as long as it takesyou to be able to explain it to a friend. It』s fairly easy to learnnew information. Being able to retain that information and teachothers is far more valuable.」

8. Do random new things.

Shane Parrish, keeper of the consistently fascinating FarnamStreet blog, tells the story of Steve Jobs』 youthful calligraphyclass in his response on Quora. After dropping out of school, thefuture Apple founder had a lot of time on his hands and wanderedinto a calligraphy course. It seemed irrelevant at the time, butthe design skills he learned were later baked into the first Macs.The takeaway: You never know what will be useful ahead of time. Youjust need to try new things and wait to see how they connect withthe rest of your experiences later on.

「You can』t connect the dots looking forward; you can onlyconnect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dotswill somehow connect in your future,」 Parrish quotes Jobs assaying. In order to have dots to connect, you need to be willing totry new things–even if they don』t seem immediately useful orproductive.