Beyond IQ: Scientific Tools for Training Problem Solving, Intuition, Emotional Intelligence, Creativity, and More
Garth Sundem
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 0770435963
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Forget the IQ tests and tweak those parts of intelligence that matter most to real world success.
Sure, having a high IQ is great. But surprisingly, science shows that mental abilities not captured in IQ tests can have the most impact in the real world—attributes like creativity, willpower, emotional intelligence, and intuition.
And yes—you can train those skills. In these pages, journalist Garth Sundem draws on interviews with psychology’s top experts and the latest research to show you how.
Beyond IQ is a new kind of braintraining guide, one packed with useful, engaging exercises scientifically shown to help you make the most of the brain you've got in the arena that matters most—life!"
BEYOND IQ is filled with simple pen-and-paper exercises that will help you:
--teach your mind to hear that "eureka" moment of insight
--improve your problem-solving skills
--use divergent thinking to boost your creativity
--retrain your intuition to become more trustworthy
--avoid the cognitive "blinkering" that too often comes with expertise
--expand your working memory
--practice your performance under pressure
--improve your pattern-recognition skills
--sharpen your emotional intelligence
--strengthen your willpower
And more!
you more creative. So before diving into the Carroll-esque divergent-thinking riddles below, prime your own creativity by considering some creative answers to Carroll’s first, famous riddle—a raven is like a writing desk because: (A) The notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes (Sam Loyd, 1914); (B) Poe wrote on both (Loyd); (C) There is a b in “both” and an n in “neither” (Aldous Huxley, 1928); (D) They both come with inky quills (anonymous); (E) Neither is made of
to quit smoking!” Later he admits, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!” and finally, as a crash starts to seem inevitable, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines!” In any case, the more you’re forced to wrestle your risk/reward balance back to level, the harder it gets to keep doing so. For example, in February 2012, the New York Times told the story of a sixteen-year-old named Felix who was arrested for the murder of Antonio Ramirez in Oakland,
make sense in a second). Virginia Rosen of the National Institute of Mental Health showed that once you struggle to cram a rule into your working memory, it takes considerable willpower to rewrite that rule in later trials. Rosen also shows that people who train this skill experience fewer unwanted intrusions on their thoughts—in other words, this exercise trains the focus and inhibition components of the willpower you bring to life. Here’s a version of her exercise: Shuffle a deck of playing
case the phrase “sexual relations” is ambiguous. Now the whole world knows the comment was, er, fallacious. 3. Guilt by association—this is a type of association fallacy with the formal structure A is a B; A is also a C; therefore B is a C. In this and many related cases, Nazis are bad; Nazis practiced psychiatry; therefore psychiatry is bad. 4. Appeal to nature—what can be more right than nature? And as a corollary, everything unnatural is bad, including GMO foods and man-made vaccines. 5.
Alternatively, you might sit farther away from a frustrating coworker at a meeting. Imagine how you might shape your environment toward your tacit knowledge strengths. Then again, if the mechanics of your life allow, it might be easier to simply select a new environment that’s a better match for your tacit knowledge. If you know how to survive in a jungle and not in the desert, move to the jungle. If you haven’t got the tacit knowledge of family dynamics required to survive Thanksgiving with the