14 Small Things To Do Every Day To Be Much Smarter

Intelligence is flexible and there are a lot of things to give it a daily boost. For smart thinking your mind needs 3 things:

To be trained in thinking processes
To have plenty of information
To focus on a problem or idea
For example, Thomas Edison was able to think of his light bulb because:

He was a trained logical thinker
He knew a lot about electrical engineering
He focused on solving a problem
Here are a bunch of things to do every day to help your mind to think smart.

1. Drink 2 glasses of water within 30 minutes of waking up
Since you’ve been asleep for hours, your body has not gotten water for 6-9 hours. Water is needed for the filtration of waste products and fluid balance. Two big glasses of water offset the fluid deficit you had from sleeping. Studies on kids (study 1, study 2) show that drinking more water increases their ability to complete mental tasks. Make sure your brain is not dehydrated at the beginning of the day already.

2. Read a book summary during breakfast
Reading books is great, but breakfast is far more suitable for something shorter. Instead of reading news articles that have little impact on your life/intelligence, read best selling book summaries. You can find summaries by:
Googling your book title + summary, for example “7 Habits of Highly Effective People summary”
Use a summary subscription like Blinkist or getAbstract
3. Listen to stimulating podcasts/audiobooks during your commute
Even if you spend only 10 minutes on your bike like I do, load your phone up with intellectually stimulating audio. Good sources could be:
TED talks (their app lets you pre-download audio so you don’t eat your mobile data)
Blinkist has some of their summaries in audio form
Audiobooks you purchased
Podcast of your favorite authors

4.Take naps during the day
Napping helps your mind refresh. It’s been shown that napping during learning increases learning speed. Your mind has a rhythm that determines when it gets sleepy and when it needs sleep:
As you can see on average people feel more sleepy than usual between noon and 4 PM. This is a perfect time to have a nap, and will increase your alertness and productivity for the rest of the day. Personally I’ve has good results with post-workday naps too (around 6 PM).

5.Don’t take sugar during the day
In fact, if you can cut it altogether. But if you can’t for whatever reason, just make sure not to have it during times where you need to focus. Sugar highs and the following lows are not good to keep your brain functioning smartly. What does work very well are fatty acids. Try to switch any sweet stuff during lunch for something more substantial like fish or eggs.

6. Do social media / meme websites only a couple of times a day
The brain adapts to the information you throw at it. If you bombard it work non-stimulating and fast switching information your focus will get destroyed. Keep your brain functioning on a higher level by throwing stimulating things at it. If you feel the need to procrastinate, set a timer  and don’t get lost in mindlessly scrolling.

7.Play games instead of watching series or movies
Watching tv is a passive activity. Your brain is consuming information, but not processing or interacting with it. Substitute or supplement this entertainment with gaming. A 2014 study showed that even a simple game like Super Mario has visible impact on brain plasticity (flexibility). Another piece of research covered by Forbes shows the same. Actively engage your brain where you can, instead of letting it slumber passively.

8. Read a book instead of watching tv
Similar to playing games instead of watching tv, reading a book is an active exercise for the brain. Where watching video entertainment is a passive consumption of information, reading a book requires your brain to actively construct mental images of what you are reading.

9.Do some simple exercises during the day
The body and the mind are strongly connected. Physical fitness helps the brain function well. You don’t however have to go to the gym every day to benefit from this (though you can of course). Doing some push-ups throughout the day and walking or skipping up some stairs has a great impact already. Try to do something physical every hour or so, even if it’s just getting up, stretching a little and tensing all your muscles as hard as you can for 5-10 seconds.

10. Spend time with someone smarter than you
Habits are socially contagious. It is a well known fact in science that obesity for example spreads through social networks (link to research). The habits and thinking patterns of those you spend time with rub off on you. Expose yourself to people who are smarter than you in order to benefit from them.

11.Talk to people who disagree with you
Get into (friendly) discussions with people who disagree with you on any topic. Arguing with them allows you to either:
Sharpen your arguments
Be convinced that you are wrong
In both cases you win. In the first you convince the other person by out reasoning them, and I the second false logic you previously had is not eliminated.

12. Go for a walk in nature
Walking through nature has a number of benefits:

There is more oxygen since plants produce it
The human mind calms down when surrounded by plants
Walking helps your blood circulation
Having a walk in a park at lunch time can greatly help you work smartly for the rest of the day

13.Learn a New Language
Several areas of the brain are used as we take in sound, give it meaning, and then respond to it – 4 areas in all. Bilingual people have more gray matter in their language centers. They can focus on more than one task at a time because parts of the brain that relate to reasoning, planning, and memory are more developed. Again, scientists began to study this in children first, looking at those in whose households a foreign language was spoken, but in whose schools only English was spoken. Being forced to take in sounds from two different languages and “sort out” which language was being heard forced these areas of the brain into greater functioning. Now, it is also known that learning a language at any stage in one’s life has the same forceful effect on the brain making it smarter

14.Carry a notepad
Great minds like Leonardo Da Vinci always carries a notepad. They used it to jot down ideas, sketches and questions they had for later review. Having a little book on you and writing down interesting things can greatly help you train your curiosity and logical thinking.