How to increase IQ.

IQ can be easily increased.

“I'm not offended by dumb blond jokes, because I know I'm not dumb, and I know I'm not blond.” - Dolly Parton

“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend.” - Alfred North Whitehead.

“Intelligence is the ability solve problems.” - Robert Kiyosaki.

“Intelligence is the ability to make finer distinctions.” - Robert Kiyosaki's dad (the “poor” dad).

“Intelligence is behaving in a way that helps you achieve your goals.” - Brian Tracy.

“There are multiple different types of intelligence including verbal, mathematical, musical-rhythmic, kinesthetic-athletic, interpersonal, intrapersonal.” - Howard Gardner.

Curiosity is a sign of intelligence.   A good vocabulary is a sign of verbal intelligence.  Ability to make jokes and puns is a sign of verbal intelligence. 

Verbal intelligence is the most important intelligence for school.  Reading for pleasure in one's free time is the fastest way to increase verbal intelligence.

However, social intelligence, also known as emotional intelligence is the most important type for making and keeping friends and for getting promoted.

Persons with high social intelligence and entrepreneurial intelligence are often wealthier than persons with high academic intelligence. 

When I drive around the rich suburbs, there are a lot more business people living there than doctors.

According to Howard Gardner, academic intelligence affects academic achievement (also depends on opportunity and teaching), whereas social intelligence affects how far someone will rise in that field.

A lot of persons who were C student level academic performers in medical school, have A level social and financial intelligence and end up owning their own medical clinics or imaging centers.  Then the A student doctors like me, go work for them.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” was a C student in the high school world, but an A student in the real world of entrepreneurship, finance, sales and social intelligence.

I am the poster child for high academic skills with low social skills and financial skills.  I basically dominated most of my academic challenges from 19 years of age onward, but screwed up most of my financial and social opportunities the first time around.  

I am not the only one.  In fact medical doctors are routinely mocked as “HENRY's” which means High Earners Not Rich Yet because they are so poor at managing their money. (HENRY is a term first found in a June 2003 article in Fortune magazine called “Taxpayer Beware” by Shawn Tully). 

The good news is that all of these things are improvable.  You can improve social and financial intelligence just by being aware of it. You can read about it, talk about it and practice improving it. 

In many ways, life is like the movie, “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray.  You go out into the world and do well on some things, but screw up the others.  

Then you talk about it with a friend, read about it and think about it. The next day, you try to do better. 

It's just part of life. To grow as a person, you have to keep learning new things. 

This means you are going to constantly go thru those phases of being a beginner, making beginner mistakes and improving as you go along.  

If you “play it safe” and do not do new things, then you will soon make yourself obsolete. 

Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve new problems and relates to how fast one can think their way thru a complex situation. 

Crystallized intelligence refers to vocabulary and general accumulated knowledge.

Academic intelligence quotient (IQ) has been described as a Gaussian curve with the mean IQ at 100.  It has been written that the average academic IQ of a 4 year college graduate is 110, a law school graduate 115, a medical school graduate 125 and an Ivy League college graduate 140.

For this system of IQ measurement, one standard deviation is 15 points.  Therefore an IQ of 115 would be one standard deviation above the mean.

The following are some approximate correlations between IQ, percentile and high school standardized tests;

100, 50%

105, 65%

110, 75%

115, 85%

120, 90%

125, 95%

130, 98%

135, 99%

140, 99.5%

145, 99.9%

150, 99.95%

155, 99.99%

Now, I don't know how true or useful this is.

However, the idea of putting a numerical value on IQ makes it quantitative, and this can be help to you for planning an academic skill optimization strategy.

The key point is that these tests should be called “Achievement” or “Assessment” tests and not “Aptitude” tests. It has been proven that studying can lead to dramatic improvement on IQ tests.

Students who study more and have more training score higher.  There are a lot of things a student can do to improve their scores.

Here's another little secret.  The tests are often intentionally designed to have “too many” questions.  This is done to make the tests more difficult on purpose. 

The theory is that a “smarter” person, which means “better prepared” person will be able to solve the problems more quickly such that it's really a test of more than problem solving ability.  It's a test of SPEED at problem solving.

The more a student familiarizes themself with the test format, the faster they will get thru it and the better their score. They become more efficient at it.

“With practice and training, and above all, method, we can increase our attention, our memory, our judgement and become more intelligent.” - Alfred Binet, inventor of the IQ test.

It’s just like the way better coaching can give the advantage to one athlete over another equally talented, but less well trained athlete.

Let's say we start out with an average IQ of 100. 

Well if we eat a healthy diet, our IQ will go up a couple of points.  Let's call it 105.  If you eat better foods, your brain cells will have better raw materials to make neurons.  Healthy neurons conduct action potentials faster so that you can think faster. 

Now if we exercise, it goes up a little more, let's say 110 because of;

• Improved brain glycogen (energy storage),
• More mitochondria (mitochondrial biogenesis for energy production),
• Better blood supply (angiogenesis for improved oxygenation and nutrient delivery),
• BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic growth Factor),
• Neurogenesis (production of new neurons),
• Improved attention.

Now if we optimize our sleep 115 because of improved memory consolidation and attention.

If we study from the best textbook and practice questions book, 120.

If we have a good teacher 125.

If we have a great teacher 130.

If we learn a couple of study skills from this book 135.

If we learn most of the study skills in this book 140.

If we study every day and manage our time well 145.

There it is. The key concept of this book is that just like an athlete can be trained to optimize their performance in many ways, a student can likewise improve their performance in many ways.

It is important to remember that IQ is typically discussed in the context of academic IQ.  Lots of persons with high academic IQ's have low social, emotional and financial IQ's.

This is part of why lots of high IQ persons are not wealthy. 

Another criticism of IQ tests is that like other academic tests there is a single correct answer. For example, 2 + 2 = 4.   On an academic test, all the information is right there.  You just need to use logic to solve it. 

However, in the real world, we routinely have to make decisions based on incomplete information. In this setting, it is a combination of our knowledge, our perception and our judgment that we use to make a decision. 

In the real world, you can have an academically smart person who has poor social perception and they will make some stupid decisions, because their logic was working with a limited data set due to their poor perception.  This is a big part of why academically smart persons do a lot of foolish stuff in the real world. 

From, "Straight A's at Stanford and on to Harvard. How to learn faster and think better."By Peter Rogers MD. Copyright August, 2014