Experts have identified many strategies for cultivating brilliance
Jan 1, 2015 | |
To join the Mega Society, you have to score at the one-in-a-million level on an intelligence test. The group has only 27 members. Even those people, though, rarely claim to be geniuses. So what does it take?
As Dean Keith Simonton explains in “,” IQ is not the only, or even best, measure of genius. Creative output is perhaps a better gauge. Even with an abundance of raw talent, it still takes years of work to achieve greatness.
Practice makes perfect, but it is a mistake to spend all your time working or studying. Albert Einstein, for example, got lots of sleep, played the violin regularly and had other interests besides physics. In “”, Christopher Hertzog and his colleagues show that physical activity is strongly linked to mental acuity and can help slow the cognitive decline that comes naturally with aging. In “,” Nessa Bryce lays out concrete steps for making inspired mental leaps.
Parents and teachers want to unleash brilliance in children as well as themselves. In “,” education experts emphasize the value of giving children opportunities to flex their intellects. In “,” psychology professors describe study techniques that accelerate learning—and reveal that the most popular methods are, in fact, a waste of time.
The good news is that intellectual abilities are not set in stone. That realization may someday lead to brain-training exercises, such as the ones reported by Ingrid Wickelgren in “,” becoming routine in classrooms. Researchers are already teaching some kids that “the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use,” writes Carol S. Dweck in “.” She advocates a “growth mind-set” that focuses on effort and effective strategies rather than innate intelligence.
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