--- title: How to Get Smarter Every Day description: Here are 10 simple tricks to try every day to help you get smarter. canonical: https://time.com/4238625/get-smarter-every-day-tips/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-26T18:49:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:44:40.621Z og:title: 10 Small Things You Can Do Every Day to Get Smarter og:description: Intelligence is a work in progress og:url: https://time.com/4238625/get-smarter-every-day-tips/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3880a24db7756cc7/69887f510b72e323d06e851d/become-smarter-every-day-tips-reading-books.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: become-smarter-every-day-tips-reading-books og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Small Things You Can Do Every Day to Get Smarter twitter:description: Intelligence is a work in progress twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3880a24db7756cc7/69887f510b72e323d06e851d/become-smarter-every-day-tips-reading-books.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 10 Small Things You Can Do Every Day to Get Smarter (26 Feb 2016) > Sponsored content. 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It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=acde4ae3-01d2-4ae2-827a-6ef19f0aa2ed&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success [Watch (HLS stream): The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HSYDj99Q.m3u8) (17:44)  _Published 2015-02-17. The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success_ by [Jessica Stillman / Inc.](https://time.com/author/inc/) ## Jessica Stillman / Inc. Feb 26, 2016 6:49 PM UTC  Getty Images by [Jessica Stillman / Inc.](https://time.com/author/inc/) ## Jessica Stillman / Inc. Feb 26, 2016 6:49 PM UTC _This post is in partnership with Inc., which offers useful advice, resources and insights to_ _entrepreneurs and business owners_. _The article below was originally published at_ [_Inc.com_](http://www.inc.com/ss/jeff-haden/20-awesome-things-say-radically-improve-your-life)_._ You might be under the impression that intelligence is a fixed quantity set when you are young and unchanging thereafter. But research shows that you’re wrong. [How we approach situations](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-one-belief-that-can-make-you-more-successful.html) and the things we do to feed our brains can significantly [improve our mental horsepower](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/8-ways-to-be-smarter.html). That could mean going back to school or filling your bookshelves (or e-reader) with thick tomes on deep subjects, but getting smarter doesn’t necessarily mean a huge commitment of time and energy, according to a recent thread on question-and-answer site Quora. When a questioner keen on self-improvement asked the community, “[What would you do to be a little smarter every single day?](http://www.quora.com/What-would-you-do-to-be-a-little-smarter-every-single-day)” lots of readers–including dedicated meditators, techies, and entrepreneurs–weighed in with useful suggestions. Which of these 10 ideas can you fit into your daily routine? **_More from Inc.:_** [_The 8 Best Industries for Starting a Business_](http://www.inc.com/magazine/201404/darren-dahl/the-best-industries-for-starting-a-business.html?cid=readmore) **1\. Be smarter about your online time.** Every [online break](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/13-ways-to-productively-waste-time.html) doesn’t have to be about checking social networks and fulfilling your daily ration of cute animal pics. The Web is also full of great learning resources, such as online courses, [intriguing TED talks](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/make-stress-your-friend.html), and vocabulary-building tools. Replace a few minutes of skateboarding dogs with something more mentally nourishing, suggest several responders. **2\. Write down what you learn.** It doesn’t have to be pretty or long, but taking a few minutes each day to [reflect in writing](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-you-should-keep-a-work-journal.html)about what you learned is sure to boost your brainpower. “Write 400 words a day on things that you learned,” suggests yoga teacher Claudia Azula Altucher. Mike Xie, a research associate at Bayside Biosciences, agrees: “Write about what you’ve learned.” **_More from Inc.:_** [_If This Guy Made $1M Wearing T-shirts and Selling his Name, What’s Holding You Back?_](http://www.inc.com/dave-kerpen/if-this-guy-made-1m-wearing-t-shirts-and-selling-his-name-whats-holding-.html?cid=readmore) **3\. Make a ‘did’ list.** A big part of intelligence is confidence and [happiness](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/happiness-makes-your-brain-work-better.html), so boost both by pausing to list not the things you have yet to do, but rather all the things you’ve already accomplished. The idea of [a “done list” is recommended by famed VC Marc Andreessen](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/trade-your-to-do-list-for-a-done-list.html) as well as Azula Altucher. “Make an I DID list to show all the things you, in fact, accomplished,” she suggests. **4\. Get out the Scrabble board.** Board games and puzzles aren’t just fun but also a great way to work out your brain. “Play games (Scrabble, bridge, chess, Go, Battleship, Connect 4, doesn’t matter),” suggests Xie (for a ninja-level brain boost, exercise your working memory by trying to play without looking at the board). “Play Scrabble with no help from hints or books,” concurs Azula Altucher. **_More from Inc.:_** [_The Top 5 Reasons Small Businesses Fail_](http://www.inc.com/travis-thorpe/the-top-5-reasons-small-businesses-fail.html?cid=readmore) **5\. Have smart friends.** It can be [rough on your self-esteem](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/7-tips-for-working-with-people-who-are-smarter-than-you.html), but [hanging out with folks who are more clever than you](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/one-surprising-sign-youre-cut-out-to-be-an-entrepreneur.html) is one of the fastest ways to learn. “Keep a smart company. Remember your IQ is the average of five closest people you hang out with,” Saurabh Shah, an account manager at Symphony Teleca, writes. “Surround yourself with smarter people,” agrees developer Manas J. Saloi. “I try to spend as much time as I can with my tech leads. I have never had a problem accepting that I am an average coder at best and there are many things I am yet to learn…Always be humble and be willing to learn.” **_More from Inc.:_** [_5 Often Quoted Tips for Powerful Presentations_](http://www.inc.com/john-treace/5-often-quoted-tips-for-powerful-presentations.html?cid=readmore) **6\. Read a lot.** OK, this is not a shocker, but it was the most common response: Reading definitely seems essential. Opinions vary on what’s the best brain-boosting reading material, with suggestions ranging from developing a daily newspaper habit to picking up a variety of [fiction](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/an-unexpected-tool-of-great-leaders-art.html) and nonfiction, but everyone seems to agree that quantity is important. Read a lot. **7\. Explain it to others.** “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” Albert Einstein said. The Quora posters agree. Make sure you’ve really learned what you think you have learned and that the information is truly stuck in your memory by trying to teach it to others. “Make sure you can explain it to someone else,” Xie says simply. Student Jon Packles elaborates on this idea: “For everything you learn–big or small–stick with it for at least as long as it takes you to be able to explain it to a friend. It’s fairly easy to learn new information. Being able to retain that information and teach others is far more valuable.” **_More from Inc.:_** [_7 Things Well-Liked People Always Do_](http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/7-things-well-liked-people-always-do.html?cid=readmore) **8\. Do random new things.** Shane Parrish, keeper of the consistently fascinating [Farnam Street blog](http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/), tells the story of Steve Jobs’ youthful calligraphy class in his response on Quora. After dropping out of school, the future Apple founder had a lot of time on his hands and wandered into a calligraphy course. It seemed irrelevant at the time, but the design skills he learned were later baked into the first Macs. The takeaway: You never know what will be useful ahead of time. You just need to try new things and wait to see how they connect with the rest of your experiences later on. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future,” Parrish quotes Jobs as saying. In order to have dots to connect, you need to be willing to try new things–[even if they don’t seem immediately useful or productive](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/are-you-too-productive.html). ### See the 10 Healthiest Cities to Live in America  Honolulu, Hawaii Best Place for Lifelong Health The heavenly climate helps, but the key to well-being here also includes enviable health care and a rich cultural tradition of looking out for one another. Colin Anderson—Blend Images/Corbis  San Francisco Bay Area, Calif. Best Place for Eating Right. The "farm to table" movement began here. The region's bounty of produce and year-round growing season make eating healthy—and local—a natural. Getty Images  Burlington, Vt. Best Place for Raising Healthy Kids This New England city offers great schools, excellent pediatric care, loads of culture and limitless options for healthy outdoor fun all year long. Matt Hogan/www.mphoganphoto.com  Silicon Valley, Calif. Best Place for Workplace Wellness With treadmill desks, meetings on bikes, time off for creativity, and gobs of organic food, tech titans are reinventing how to stay healthy on the job. Jim Wilson—The New York Times/Redux  Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. Best Place for Aging Well Yes, it can be cold. But with a plethora of stimulating activities and a robust web of support, the Twin Cities prove that growing old doesn't mean slowing down. Getty Images  Denver and Boulder, Colo. Best Place for Keeping Fit The urge to get outside and get moving is contagious in these Rocky Mountain cities, where physical challenge is built into the landscape. Celin Serbo—Aurora Photos/Corbis  Plano, Texas Best Place for Staying Safe Once a rural outpost, this booming, diverse city has kept its small-town vibe, thanks in part to a police force and community that knows how to work together. Misty Keasler—Redux for TIME  Portland, Ore. Best Place for a Healthy Environment Small, walkable neighborhoods, 300 miles of bike paths, and urban policies that foster active living and sustainability make for one clean, green city. Getty Images  Boston, Mass. Best Place for Health Care This history-rich city is home to some of the nation's most advanced medical institutions and policies that help ensure that quality care is available to all. K.C. Cohen—Courtesy of Boston Children's Hospital  Provo and Orem, Utah Best Place for Spiritual Well-Being A stunning Rocky Mountain backdrop and a tight-knit population that lives its faith contribute not only to this region's serenity but also to lower rates of disease. Getty Images **9\. Learn a new language.** No, you don’t need to become quickly fluent or trot off to a foreign country to master the language of your choosing. You can work away steadily from the comfort of your desk and still reap the mental rewards. “Learn a new language. There are a lot of free sites for that. Use [Livemocha](http://livemocha.com/) or [Busuu](http://www.busuu.com/enc/),” says Saloi (personally, I’m a big fan of [Memrise ](http://www.memrise.com/)once you have the basic mechanics of a new language down). **_More from Inc.:_** [_This Is Why Great CEOs Are Lazy_](http://time.com/3754370/why-great-ceos-lazy/?iid=time%5Freadnext) **10\. Take some downtime.** It’s no surprise that dedicated meditator Azula Altucher recommends giving yourself [space for your brain to process what it’s learned—](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/practice-makes-perfect-but-something-else-works-too.html)“sit in silence daily,” she writes–but she’s not the only responder who stresses [the need to take some downtime from mental stimulation](http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-chronic-busyness-is-bad-for-the-brain.html). Spend some time just thinking, suggests retired cop Rick Bruno. He pauses the interior chatter while exercising. “I think about things while I run (almost every day),” he reports. _Do you have any suggestions to add to the list?_ ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] The Nantucket Project. Every year, The Nantucket Project invites leaders from business, sports, academia, government and the arts to give The Talk of Their Lives. Before the weekend ends, our audience singles out one talk from the dozens they're heard as the highest impact. I'm a total junkie for story. I read and write and live by them and every couple of years, I write some down and then I go city to city and read from my books. And over all these years trafficking in story, I've noticed a little problem which is the standard pieces of good story, at least judging by what we teach and also by what we reward most handsomely, can get in the way of reaching of what I consider to be the Mount Everest of human emotions which is to say the very hardest place to get to. But also where the views are sort of life- changing, choose acceptance. And by accept, I mean, when we acknowledge the nature of the beast, and the beast's nature. So, another way to get at it is to look at the antonyms for accept, which are reject, spurn, deny. Another way to get at it is to talk about Temple Grandin, the famous gifted artistic woman who knew early on as did everyone whoever met her that her mind work differently and rather than deny or reject that or try to fix it, she said this is how my mind works and I'm going to work with what I have got. And, as you probably know, she totally revolutionized the way we treat cattle in this country. So I posted, to get sort of real world on this, I posted on my Facebook page what have you had to accept over your lifetime and what happened after you accepted it. And then about ten minutes I got a master's degree in higher order processing. My friends have had to accept multiple sclerosis, brain damage, stage IV ovarian cancer, four types of addiction, losing a father to murder, a mother to suicide. Everything to a fire, a son who has Rett syndrome, a daughter with diabetes, a son who wants to become a daughter. And all manner of ****. [ LAUGH ] Boss, stepfather, ex. Here's a short list of things that we are all invited to accept, over a lifetime. Our childhoods, which include the flaws of our mothers and fathers. And the cruelties of the neighborhood kid, and the prom date. And the coach we thought had our back. Our children and their mysterious insecurities and tattoos and scars and lost potential. And choice in mates. Our spouses and the many thing they do different from us. Ourselves. The deadly sins, all seven of them. The weather, inconvenient or ruthless. And the irreversible trajectory of all human bodies. So clearly acceptance, arduous though it is, is going to be required of us. Thankfully acceptance gives back. In every single response on Facebook the person said that once they actually crossed over. They set loose an internal freedom what they've never known and that created a possibility for a qualitatively different kind of happiness and productivity. I got going on this whole acceptance thing about four or five years ago when I started working on this book, Glitter and Glue, which I thought was going to be about being a nanny but it turned out to be about my mother. Who like to say your father's the glitter but I'm the glue. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] My mother and I have virtually nothing in common. I am a dance on the table until midnight extrovert. effusive, affectionate, second- guessing, self- doubting woman who like nothing better than a long hug and a good cry. And my mother, do you watch Downtown Abbey? [ LAUGH ] My mother's Maggie Smith. She is an old school opinionated woman who like nothing better than what she calls a party for one. [ INAUDIBLE ] [ LAUGH ] Which sounds a lot more interesting than it is, I assure you. [ LAUGH ] It's when you pour a nice glad of chardonnay over ice. And you take off your bra, and you grab your library book, and go somewhere no one can find. Now, I have a lot of stories about my mom, and I've been telling them my whole life. Like, for instance, she's a chronic regifter. And by regifting, she takes it to a whole new level. Which is to say, if you were to give her anything, like the bag of goodies I got upon arrival, she would open them very gingerly. And then she would write in pencil on the bottom what it was. And then she would take it home and put it in her closet, her gift closet. And then right before Christmas, she sets up what she calls the store. [ LAUGH ] Which is in the upstairs bedroom that's empty. She lays out all the things she's been given over the course of the year. The lotions and the candles and the strange scarves. And, then puts a little price tag on them and she sells them to her children. [ LAUGH ]. [ LAUGH ] So that we can give them to our aunts and uncles and godparents who we've forgotten to buy a gift for. [ LAUGH ] And I asked her if she minded me telling you that and she said, Betty Moran told me re- gifting is green. [ LAUGH ]. But strangely, in the process of thinking her through it takes years to write a book. There's so many rewrites and conversations. I finally stopped trying to change her. To make her more liberal or spendy or outgoing or even to just to get her switch from Folger's coffee crystals to brewed coffee. [ LAUGH ] I understood for the first time that her way of being in the world is the right way for her. And sometimes, when I'm accepting her, it spills over into my ability to embrace the reality of my own children. And even occassionally, my husband. Though not when he packs the dishwasher because in that case, he does it wrong. [ LAUGH ] Life Mount Everest, acceptance is a really hard place to stay. The air is thin. And I find that I keep falling back into the fight for things to conform to how they should and should not be. And I think those expectations are established. by the conscious and subconscious and sometimes totally unconscious pull to narrative. It's glorious arcs and it's promising, reassuring internal logics that, like it or not, life refuses to replicate. So if you think about it, we learn in elementary school and then again in middle school and again in high school, to look for the five part dramatic structure that's underneath all the stories we're consuming. Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, best of all, denouement, which is a French word that means untie. But my daughter's teacher defined it as the catharsis following, a return to normality. Doesn't that sound fabulous? [ LAUGH ] Then we graduate into the world and we consume and, and produce all kinds of content, literary and cinematic and lyrical. And the world says, you want a winning story. Give me a character I can root for, take him on a journey, and give me a resolution. This goes way back, of course, to Homer and Shakespeare, where certain appetites were created, or maybe just reinforced. For instance, the heroes we love to love are the reluctant nominees like Odysseus. The villains we love to hate are the unseemly power grabbers like Lady Macbeth, which is fine for fiction. The problem is when we start wanting and even expecting real regular people to behave like the archetypal characters we know from our favorite stories. So for a tiny example of narratives influence, in politics the reluctant hero thing goes, if you really want me to run, I will. Nobody ever says I've wanted to be president since I was in kindergarten. In my world, the world of writing, it goes, I didn't hunt down an agent or corner the editor at the party. I was discovered. [ LAUGH ] We lean towards stories of destiny. An organic rise confers authenticity. And that is established or reinforced, or some unholy cycle of the two ,. By story and that might be making it harder to set partners and candidates and colleagues who are staying in this tiny case, a complex mix of ambition and good luck. Speaking of spurning complect, complexity, I was watching cable news in the airport and there were stories about Hillary Clinton and their doctor who performed Joan Rivers' last procedure. And, of course, Roger Goodell. Depending on what channel you watch, they're idiots or prodigies, schemers or innocents. Nobody, it seems, can resist the pull to narrative and that's making for a whole lot of anger and intolerance this isn't much different of course, than the leaders of startups who continually edit their narrative until it seems like one predestined step after another. It's all totally understandable. But these sorts of legendary rises can be fatally dangerous to fledgling inventors and entrepreneurs, who were planning to get to the Holy Land by surface streets instead of rocket ships. Speaking of fatally discouraging, every high school kid I know has bought into this powerful myth. Hero works hard. Hero goes to Yale. Hero has great life, which leaves the community college kids and the kids who worked very hard but got rejected anyway agonizing over the unthinkable fate that awaits them. And God help the heroes who went to Yale and are not having a great life. Most dangerously, though, spontaneous narrative structuring happens, and it happens all the time, between friends. Journalists talk about this thing. It's a tension between truth- telling and something they refer broadly, refer to broadly as civic uplift. Which is sort of shaping the story to give the public what the public needs, especially during times of crisis. I think we might all be participating in casual civic uplifting. It's hyper apparent now, as we all become micro medio, media outlets on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Presenting thin- sliced versions of our lives, mastering the art of the interpersonal headline. It's harmless, or maybe this is why teen depression and anxiety are at record levels. Because their lives are publicly and quantitatively less populated and eventful than @ jennygogo's. And Ryan and his 764 Instagram friends who follow him everywhere. Where long form nuanced interaction is concerned. We're so out of practice, we almost don't know how. I was recently in a room of adults. And a kid was behind us on the floor, making this crazy collage that made no sense. And while some of us are sorta awkwardly struggling to get a conversation going with her, her basketball playing brother came home and everyone spun around and said, did you win? What was the score? The team lost it turns out, because the refs were blind. And voila, we had a villain. Here was a plot we all knew how to discuss. All the while, the already kid noodled on the floor behind us with her amorphous project that nobody knew how to talk about. Speaking of things people don't know how to talk about, I had cancer in my 30s, and it was kind of stunning how many conversations that year included. Was it in your family? You're so brave and what a wake up call. I totally appreciate that it is unbearable for bad things to just happen unbidden. I feel the same way all the time. But the truth is, that after every one of those conversations I felt a little heavy hearted. Like I couldn't give them the civic uplift they were asking for. I don't have the genetic predisposition which would have been a nice first chapter of my story. There's not one heroic thing about me, and though it would have been nice to claim that cancer reprioritized my life, I didn't need a wake up call. I already knew that I was lucky. We do this for a lot of reasons besides the biggie which is our kind of old as time caveman craving for order and reason. One reason is to establish consistency. So we want to feel integrated across the stages and compartments of our lives. I call it the interview effect or the first date effect, which is when you're. Job as Class Secretary in tenth grade led to your Organizational Development Degree at Stanford which led to consulting for the Fortune 500 which led to the creation of your firm. And then you know, look at the pain that's caused by perceived inconsistencies, like gay christians or libertarian artists or philanthropic dopers. Another reason we do it is to suspend reality. I mean who really wants to face an impending financial reckoning? Or deal with a souring marriage? Who wants to say their candidate blew it? Or that some problems cannot be straightened out just by cleaning house? And sometimes we artificially flavor as a means to invention, so we articulate this vision using all the heartening beats of narrative. And it's an essential step in creating something new. We tell our investors and our job candidates and our early adopters the story of how our essential whatever. Emerged organically from a latent need only we could see. But the simplified narratives that we're creating and projecting and consuming, tempt us into forgetting that family, more than the milestone birthdays, is a dicey damn business. And marriage has hardly a thing to do with anniversary dinners. Products often fail and policies usually come up short one way or another. All the Photoshopping, literally and metaphorically, is leaving us feeling ripped off when our heroes have colossal blind spots. When our most important relationships go in circles. And when catharsis, followed by a return to normalcy, is nowhere to be found. I do know a few people who seem to live with a kind of radical honesty, who rarely negate or reject that which makes them uncomfortable. One is my cousin Kathy who lost her 19 year old, the great, but not perfect Aaron Zentgraf in a car accident. She told me once that for many years she asked herself why did this happen and she finally figured it out. It happened because it can. Cars can flip, glass can break, metal can pierce. Seeing that clearly, accepting the unadulterated reality, set her free. So here's a few things that we can do. Check in daily with complex content. Long- form journalist, journalism. I still love The New Yorker but I'm also reading everyday on medium. com. Literary fiction. HBO. Have you seen The Leftovers? [ APPLAUSE ] Yeah! My one person. But that's really com, that is really complex storytelling. To be on guard for the cognitive moment. When people become characters, when a series of events becomes a plot, when endings become tidy. I know that I'm tacking on a [ UNKNOWN ] when I hear myself invoke destiny with lines like, I could have told you from day one, and absolutisms like always, only, everyone. Catharsis is created, not found. Which means, all resolutions, and this is such great news, is of our making. And maybe our best defense against narrative creep, and the unnecessary, and sometimes, even crippling dissatisfaction it can generate. Is to keep at least one confidant on all matters. A real friend, with whom we trade the unadorned truth of our lives. Non- conforming, inconsistent, notably deficient in many areas. That's the shared reality we're being asked to accept and that's the mountain I hope to summit before it's all over. Maybe I'll see you there. 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