Do you think we live in an age where there is no need to expand our intellectual horizons?
The internet, of course, makes it easier than ever to access information, to the point that we don’t necessarily need to retain it. And now AI has made short work of doing most things; we don’t need to think much at all. But of course, when it comes to that thing they call gray matter, it’s so important to use it. With great power comes great responsibility, so here’s a few approaches that can help you expand your intellectual horizons.
Challenging Your Cognition
If you don’t use it, you lose it, and for people of a certain age, there is that concern that maybe age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s can be cause for concern. But it’s much like when we hit the gym; if we want to build up our body, we need to exercise it, and the same applies to our brains.
Engaging in activities that challenge different aspects of our cognition can be excellent. Spatial reasoning activities like chess have long been the mainstay of intelligent people. It can be very difficult to learn the rules of something like chess, and this is why you should start small with something like drafts and then slowly build up your comprehension of the game.
Sometimes we can easily feel overwhelmed by something like chess because of the multitude of rules, but like anything, we start small and we acclimatize to that before we expand on it.
Engage with Complex Written Material
If you recall the scene from “Dodgeball” where Ben Stiller’s character is reading the dictionary in hopes to impress a girl, this is not the way to do it! While there are some benefits to be had from exposing ourselves to complex written material, we need to build some form of connection with it; otherwise, it’s going to be completely alien to us.
We should read frequently, but as we’ve already mentioned, we start small. For example, if you want to study something new like a language or an instrument, you begin with the bare basics. In terms of a new language, lots of resources talk about not reading directly from a book but actually being given the core components of a sentence and then piecing them together yourself, which is something the “Say Something In” language courses are excellent at developing. However, when we engage with complex material, we need to ensure we give it our own divided attention. There’s a lot more research about what sleep does to the brain now, especially when you’ve engaged in a particularly difficult learning bout.
There’s an excellent resource by the Huberman Lab on protocols for learning, which we will leave here, but one of the core components of this is to remember to have excellent sleep the night before and the night after a learning bout, as this can help to consolidate things within the brain.
Don’t Be a Fixed Point in Time
If we believe we’re not able to learn things, surprise surprise, this is exactly what happens! We need to pursue our continual education, as research suggests that each additional year of education can, in fact, boost our IQ.
There’s also this ill-conceived theory that your brain is not malleable after a certain age. Because of what’s called neuroplasticity, in other words, the development of new formations in the brain after acquiring new information, it’s actually possible to learn new things and not feel that we’ve done all our education in school.
The Bare Basics of Health
Much like when you need sufficient protein to build muscle and strength, there are very similar things that can apply with regards to your brain health. We’ve already mentioned getting sufficient sleep because it can impair cognitive performance, but also maintain an active lifestyle with regular exercise. This improves blood flow and oxygenation to the brain.
Also, consider mindfulness meditation, which can improve your focus, attention, and your emotional regulation. The latter is particularly important if you feel you’re not able to learn or retain information.
Additionally, seek out conversations with people because this mental stimulation can challenge your perspectives. You may have that friend who is particularly argumentative, and you come away feeling completely frazzled or that you weren’t able to put across your best self; the goal is to actually embrace something like debate but not to the point where you feel it is way too much. Be open, curious, and expose yourself to new ideas because all of these things will foster that mental growth.
Rather than pretending to like classical music and jazz, improving your intelligence beyond reading the dictionary encompasses so many different things. It’s vital that if you are a man who potentially subscribes to stereotypical notions of intelligence or thinks that the nerds in school were the lesser species, you’d better buck up your ideas because you will get left behind!
