Five Tips for Becoming Five Times Smarter than Everyone Else

Originally posted in August 2016.

Since Summer is a great time to catch up on your reading lists, we decided to update some of our most popular posts to bring some new insight and ideas. Enjoy!

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Do you want to be five times smarter than everyone else? At Wipebook, we are big proponents of finding new ways to learn, like our love for thinking classrooms. But in order to stay ahead of the game, you should think about practicing these five healthy habits outside of school/work:

1. Read. Constantly.

If you ask the most successful people in the world what makes them so prosperous, they’ll probably be too busy reading to answer you. In fact, Business Insider reports that Warren Buffet not only read 600-1000 pages a day at the beginning of his career but still spends 80% of his working day reading. And he’s not alone. According to The Huffington Post, Bill Gates reads a book a week, Mark Cuban reads 3+ hours a day, and Elon Musk gives credit to books for teaching him how to build rockets.

2. Get to know your internal clock.

Biology is ever so relevant for this one. To maximize your productivity, it’s a good idea to find your “biological prime time,” a term first coined in Sam Carpenter’s book, Work the System. Biological prime time is “the time of day when you have the most energy and are therefore most productive,” and it varies from person to person. Put some time aside to get to know your body—cut out the caffeine, turn off the alarm, and figure out when your body naturally wakes up. Track your energy for the rest of the day to find out at what time you’re the most productive. Your work schedule should center around these hours.

3. Use a Notebook to hand-write your notes

Edouard Gentaz, a professor for developmental physiology at the University of Geneva, states that “handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills—feeling the pen and paper, moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought.” Handwriting notes as opposed to typing them exercises the brain and creates an intimate connection between hand and mind that helps you retain what you learn. US researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer performed a study that proved longhand note-takers had a better grasp on a subject when tested, versus their laptop note-taking counterparts. Do you carry a notebook around with you? Wipebook offers a great selection of reusable/erasable notebooks for you to keep with you all day. Not to mention that they are the most eco-friendly notebooks around.

4. Use the memory tricks you learned in grade school.

Okay, so the last time you probably used these might have been when you were ten, but they worked, didn’t they?

Acronyms: Remember “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”? Or, in other words, Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition and Subtraction? It can be fun and easy making up your own acronyms to remember certain information.

Rhymes: There’s a reason why nursery rhymes are so memorable. Exercise your creativity and create a little song.

Visualization and Association: Many of us are visual learners. Sometimes, it’s easier to retain information by creating images in your head and thinking up often silly or unusual associations to use as mental hooks. Let’s say you’re trying to remember Warren Buffett’s name. Well, maybe he’s trying to open a new, hip restaurant called “War N’ Buffets” where the food is first come, first serve.

Draw it out: Coming back to the notebook concept, sometimes you just need pure visual power. Instead of taking bullet point notes, try drawing the information out in a series of pictures or diagrams. Our dry erase notebooks allow for unlimited diagraming and you never have to worry about running out of paper.

5. Exercise! Both your mind and body need proper attention.

Your brain can’t function at maximum capacity if your energy level is low. Get out there and move! Try to learn something new every day, whether that means finally picking up the violin that’s been collecting dust in your attic, or learning a new card game with your friends. And it doesn’t stop there. You know what they say—a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. The New York Times reports that “exercise induces the creation of many new cells in the hippocampus, which is a part of the brain essential for memory and learning, and also improves the survival of those fragile, newborn neurons.”

If you make an effort to practice and master these daily habits, chances are you’ll be five times smarter than your friends and colleagues. For all of your brainstorming and note-taking needs, Wipebook reusable notebooks are the most accessible and eco-friendly option on the market.