Whether you are trying to survive an intensive schedule or just want to seem smarter in front of your friends, you can do a lot of things to both look and be smarter.
In his article “Top 10 Ways to Make Yourself Look (and Be) Smarter” published on lifehacker.com, Whitson Gordon, senior editor of lifehacker blog, provides ten simple tricks for boosting your real (and perceived) brain power:
- Read faster and better
- Speak up
- Don’t fall prey to BS
- Focus on what you know
- Get some exercise
- Talk to yourself
- Learn a second language
- Do things the hard way
- Know what won’t make you smarter
- Just believe you can be smarter
You can read more at: http://goo.gl/6TFL0
Image source: bit.ly/SCph1U
Excellent To-Do List list to self-improvement.
I especially like #9 Know what won’t make you smarter
If we make an inventory of our experiences and examine the list under the microscope I’m sure most people will find that our knowledge base is mostly made up of trivial information. Little snippets of data that we never really notice BUT add them all together and they become the building blocks, the foundations of who we are.
We are enlightened when all the pieces come together, like a jigsaw puzzle. If we can connect the dots then we are on the right road to a higher state of knowledge. Knowledge isn’t just what we learn in school or read in scholarly books, but a pot-pourri of everything we absorb in life…including contaminants. Good or bad, absorb and recycle every little thing you come across, no matter how trivial, one day it will come in handy and suddenly all make sense.
Reblogged this on Diplo Learning Corner.
Thanks for this blog post; I see there is a point to clarify: especially for us young ‘professionals’.
The article is fine and self-humorous (“how to appear ‘at least’ smarter”), except that there’s a risk in wanting to be perceived smarter, and this actually may led in making the ‘smarter-wannabe’ for… what he’s not.
I think this article is good, and up to a limit; and that is dictated by the (self) intellectual responsibility of a person (a.k.a. ‘discernment’). People should not try to appear smarter; people should be themselves instead. Otherwise, one could risk to become someone else, and, emotional intelligence would be then affected. That might also affect one’s humility, the most prized of virtues, according (at least) to my experience: being always open to surprise and accept without revolt the life (/work) challenges often leads to special gifts for the “young and strong” (that’s how Don Sturzo would say 😉 ) in terms of capability to accomplish tasks when things get difficult. To tell the truth this experience is not only my own: I also have seen this dynamics working in other people lives.
So, from my personal experience I can advise my colleagues: beware of following the path of trying to be perceived smarter! Identity is what make us different, and therefore, special. One should always make things in his way – of course in a ‘tidy’ manner – but I cannot stress enough our own personal background should never, never being replaced.
Sorry for the long post. 😛