Becoming Smart: The No-Nonsense Guide

You don’t need 12 years of school + 4 years of college + 6 years of graduate school to become smart. Seriously, if it took that long, we’d all still be swinging from trees. Genetics? Meh. Habits are what really matter. So, let’s dive in.

Why Become Smart?

For what? To get money? To impress people? Any answer works. But first, know yourself and figure out what kind of approach you’re willing to take.

How to Become Smart

Most advice on the internet is as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Socrates himself would have accomplished nothing with the internet’s wisdom. Here are some gems:

• Eat fruits
• Drink coffee
• Sleep more
• Take IQ tests
• Listen to classical music

Sounds good, right? But at some point, you actually need to LEARN something.

"So what can I actually do to become smart?"

Read. Just this. But it depends on what kind of reading you do and what skills you want to achieve and improve.

• Fiction books: More likely to improve your vocabulary than teach you a high-income skill.
• Non-fiction books: You’ll understand more about how the world works in certain areas.

How to BE Smart

If we become smart, do we need to correct other people? My answer is yes, but it’s much more important how you do this.

Take this dialogue as an example:

Bob: Crazy how we evolved from chimpanzees, right?
Alice: Well ACTUALLY, evolution is NONLINEAR,
and SEVERAL human-like species inhabited Earth SIMULTANEOUSLY, none of which could even be REMOTELY CONSIDERED as chimpanzees.

Here, Alice just sounds arrogant. So, how can we approach this more politely?

Bob: Crazy how we evolved from chimpanzees, right?
Alice: It is crazy, right? You know, I was reading the other day that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor from 10 million years ago. Since then, we've been evolving separately. I always thought we evolved FROM them, but it turns out we just evolved side by side.

You can be smart and humble (and also sound like you occasionally touch grass).

The key is to teach people what you know without making them feel dumb. That way, people actually learn from you, and you’ll be seen as a smart and respectful person.

Where to Find These Books

You don’t need to read all five books that everyone tells you to read. Just choose a topic you want to understand. For example:

Data Structures: Go on Google and search “data structures book,” then choose the one with the best reviews.

Books usually cost money, and for legal reasons, I always recommend you buy these books. But you might accidentally come across a website named Library Genesis. You might accidentally search for the title of the book, click on the first link, download a file, and open it in a proper book reader. I’m not responsible for that, feds.

How to Use What You Read

So, now you know how to get a book (buying), and you know that this book contains skills and information to use in conversation. Good! But how do you actually learn these skills, you ask? I have this other article about retaining knowledge that will really help you.

But here are 10 fast tips to know before learning from a book:

1. No practice -> Brain forgets
2. 20% knowledge -> 80% results

And that’s it. It’s the 20% of the list.

Some Cool Graphics

This is the learning curve:

As you can see, the first 20% gets you a lot of progress, but YOU NEED to practice. Books only make you smart if you give your brain a reason to remember them.

"But can I practice while reading the book?"

Let’s suppose you’re reading a book about mechanics. You can’t change the battery of your car just because you’re reading, right?

Ideally, you should, but you can still practice by imagining the situation. Watch a video of someone doing what you’re studying, visualize yourself taking the same steps, and, if you can, take notes. This way, you’re telling your brain it’s something you want to remember instead of just memorizing it.

Our school system is built on this principle. The teacher teaches you a lot of stuff you’ll never use, or if you do, it’ll be in 10 years. To get a graduation, the teacher applies a test. If you study and practice, you get good grades; if you don’t, you get bad grades. Or, if you’re South Korean, you go to prison (joke—you only go to prison if you cheat).

But now we have a problem: once you’ve taken the test, there’s no need to remember that information. So how can we remember something? To answer that, check this article.

disclamer: this article is based on this cool video from easy,actually
yt channel