Question

summary please


We often talk about how smart some people are. But what does that even mean? And
have you ever wondered if there’s a way of making yourself smarter? If so, read on for
some thoughts on what intelligence is, and for some simple ways of making your brain
work a little bit harder. There is a popular belief that most people only use around 10%
of their brains, although this is not actually the case. And anyway, intelligence is not
measured by how much of a person’s brain they are using, but what they are using it for.
So, what does ‘being smart’ mean? If you think it means being able to do a specific task
better than you could before, then there’s very little doubt that doing something like
number puzzles will indeed help. There is also a lot of research which demonstrates the
benefits of treating your brain like any other part of your body – this means doing
plenty of exercise and having a healthy diet. For example, studies on mice have shown
that it wasn’t mentally stimulating activities which lead to the biggest improvements – it
was actually running. Rather surprisingly, another recent study showed that making
changes to your clothing might help: wearing a white lab coat, which is typically
associated with intelligent professionals such as scientists and doctors, boosted people’s
performance on certain tests. If you simply want to give other people the impression
that you are smarter than you actually are, then speaking confidently tends to have that
effect, as does smiling while you are talking. Psychologists will give you all sorts of other
suggestions, one of which is wearing glasses. Another recent experiment even showed
that people who use a middle initial are thought to be smarter: ‘David F Clark’ was rated
as more intelligent than ‘David Clark’, while ‘David F P R Clark’ did even better. Many
researchers believe that getting smarter doesn’t just mean improving your brainpower.
Once you’re good at number puzzles, of course you can do them faster, but does that
help you in any other way? What matters more is what is known as ‘fluid intelligence’ –
the general ability to manipulate information, solve problems and come up with new
ideas. And an effective way to achieve this, according to scientists, is to do something
that you’re not good at, something that you find uncomfortably difficult. Another
question that researchers have focused on is whether technology can make us smarter,
or if it has the opposite effect instead. The answer is that it depends. What everyone
agrees on, however, is that if you use it to expose yourself to complex new material, it
will certainly help to develop your brainpower. Instead of going quickly from one topic
to another on the internet, pick one subject and go into it in depth. What are you waiting
for? Try out these tips and see how much smarter you can appear, or even become!

Answer 1

Answer:

Why is it that some people seem to be able to read a book once and remember every detail of it for life, while others struggle to recall even the title a few days after putting down a book?

The answer is simple but not easy.

It’s not what they read. It’s how they read. Good reading habits not only help you read more but help you read better.

“I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson