How To Get Smarter

Am I the only one who's noticed that all

those apps, supplements, and magic

elixirs for getting smarter don't

actually work? In this video, I'm going

to give you eight habits that do work.

Eight dead simple science endorsed

techniques that will sharpen your mind

the moment you finish this video. Each

one is rooted in peer-reviewed research

and ends with a specific action you can

try today. So, let's get started.

Strategy number one, teach it to learn

it. The Fineman technique. Richard

Fineman was one of the greatest

physicists of the 20th century. He was

responsible for breakthrough after

breakthrough in some of the most

complicated science in the world. For

his efforts, he won the Nobel Prize in

physics. More important for our purposes

though, he was an incredible explainer

and you can learn from him. Fineman kept

a plain notebook labeled notebook of

things I don't know. His rule was

simple. If he couldn't explain something

to someone else in simple language, he

didn't really understand it. Modern

research backs him up. In one study,

students who taught a lesson scored

significantly higher on comprehension

tests than students who merely studied

that lesson. Teaching others forces you

to process the information more

thoroughly, which strengthens learning

and leads to deeper understanding. So,

here's our first action step. Pick one

concept you learned this week. Whether

it's the causes of the Pelpeneisian War

or how to change the oil on your Subaru,

then find a friend and take 5 minutes to

teach them. Do they get it? If not, try

again. Hone, hone, hone until they

understand because that means you

understand, too. Too shy to teach a

friend? Explain it to your dog, your

mirror, or record a voice memo.

Seriously, it works. Number two, quiz

yourself because retrieval beats review.

When we study for a test or prepare for

a meeting or presentation, most of us

devote lots and lots of time to reading

and rereading our notes. It feels like

progress, right? But just because a

topic seems familiar doesn't mean you

understand it. Because there's a better

way. When researchers began studying

this phenomenon 17 years ago, they

discovered that students who tested

themselves retained roughly 50% more

material a week later than peers who

just reread the material. And multiple

studies since confirmed this finding.

Quizzing yourself works because

retrieval yanks information out of

memory, strengthening the neural pathway

the same way that lifting weights

strengthens muscles. When your brain

works a little harder, it works a little

better and the learning sticks. So, the

action step this week, take one article

you've read, something a little long, a

little complicated, upload it to your

favorite AI system, claude, chat, GPT,

whatever. Then ask it to read the

article and quiz you. Here's a prompt

that I use. This is a long article I

recently read, and I want you to test my

understanding of it. Please read the

article, then ask me five to 10

open-ended questions about its key ideas

and concepts. After I answer each

question, evaluate my response and

explain what I got right or wrong.

Continue with the questions until it's

clear I've mastered the material. You're

teaching others. You're testing

yourself. Now, let's get moving. Number

three, take a walk because movement

sparks creativity. Becoming smarter

isn't only about understanding and

remembering other people's ideas. It's

also about creating fresh ideas of your

own. And here, getting up from your desk

and taking a walk can make a world of

difference. For instance, Stanford

researchers showed that people who took

a 5 to 16 minute walk boosted creative

output by up to 60% versus sitting.

Walkers generated more ideas and better

ideas than sitters. Because with

walking, blood flow increases, dopamine

rises, and the brain's default mode

network connects previously distant

thoughts. I've been a walker all my

life, but until I started looking at the

research, I wasn't sure why. Now I know.

As one writer said, "Walking is really

thinking at three miles per hour." So

now I swear by it. And so can you with

this set of action steps. The next time

you're stuck on a problem, leave your

desk or your workplace and go for a

20-minute walk. You'll probably figure

it out. And even if you don't, you'll

get 20 minutes of modest exercise. Or if

you feel stuck in a rut, try this twist,

which I use all the time. Go for a walk,

but on the walk, pick a color and

consciously look for things on your walk

that are that color. Forget about

everything else. Just look for orange or

purple or blue. You'll see your

surroundings and your world with fresh

eyes, which will invigorate your brain.

Number four, change the font because

difficulties are desirable. Here's a

weird one, but I use it a lot. Both when

I'm trying to understand a topic and

when I'm trying to write something

important. I change the font to make

your notes and words harder, not easier,

to read. In a 2010 study, researchers at

Princeton gave students material in a

funky, slightly illeible font. Think

like comic sands itallic or something

hideous like that. Students who wrestled

with the ugly type retained about 14%

more than those reading pristine aerial.

A little disfluency in the text led to

greater fluency over the concepts. The

mild friction forced deeper processing.

What psychologists call a desirable

difficulty. Now here's your action step.

Next time you're reviewing your notes

for a meeting, convert the text to an

unusual font and notice the extra mental

grip you get. or do what I do when I'm

editing my own writing. I take a font I

usually use, I'm team Garammon, folks,

and swap it for something hideous like

Impact or Lucinda Blackletter. I

guarantee you'll find ways to fix the

writing that you missed before. We're

halfway home. Let's go to number five.

You've heard this one before, but that

doesn't mean it's wrong. So, please, in

the name of all that is holy, stop

multitasking and devote yourself to

monotasking. You've heard that

multitasking is bad, but the numbers are

brutal and the findings widespread. For

instance, in one Stanford MRI study,

heavy media multitaskers had diminished

activity in the part of the brain called

the anterior singulate cortex. What did

that mean? It meant they couldn't focus

and their working memory fell through

the floor. Switching tasks is like

slapping attacks on your brain, costing

up to 40% of productive time. So, here's

a tiny action. Put your phone in a

different room. Silence your

notifications. Close every tab. Try one

25minute focus sprint. Work on one thing

and only one thing. When the timer

dings, take a 5-minute break. Then do it

again. This might sound familiar. It's a

version of the Pomodoro technique which

has helped me write my books. Don't

believe me? In one book in the

acknowledgements, one of the people I

thank was Franchesco Cerillo, the

Pomodoro's inventor. Number six, build

another brain by keeping a commonplace

book. Generations of thinkers, Leonardo

da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Virginia Wolf

have kept what's called a commonplace

book, a notebook, a diary, a single

vault where they compiled great

quotations, interesting facts,

surprising definitions, anything that

sparks their brain. They do it to lock

in big ideas and powerful language and

to make connections they might not have

seen otherwise. Modern science shows why

the habit works. For instance, some

research has found that with notetaking,

the pen is mightier than the keyboard.

In one study, students who wrote notes

by hand outperformed laptop typists on

exam questions a week later. But the

benefits stretch way beyond handwriting

itself, collecting and revisiting

scattered material in one place turns

isolated facts into an interconnected

web of insights. I've been doing this

for years. Here's my commonplace book

for the 5 years between 2019 and 2023.

Each day, I wrote down one compelling

quotation or startling fact or

surprising definition or even a funny

joke. That was a useful exercise in and

of itself. But here, as with many

things, consistency pays off. 365 days

times 5 years, that's more than 1,800

entries. An amazing compending of of

ideas and information. And now I'm

partway through my second five-year line

a day book. So here's your action step.

Find a notebook. Then keep a commonplace

book for 30 days. Each day capture one

quotation, insight, or question and

scribble it in your notebook. Then each

Sunday, read through the last seven days

of entries and see what connections you

discover. At the end of the 30 days,

look at all you've captured. You won't

want to stop. Let's go to our seventh

tip for boosting your brain and getting

a little smarter. It's going to sound a

little odd, so stick with me.

Chew gum. Seriously, mastication leads

to concentration. I know this from both

the research and my own lived experience

and habit. First, the research. One

study from Cardiff University gave half

the participants a stick of gum and half

nothing at all. Then they asked both

groups to memorize a bunch of words. The

gum chewers beat the non- chewers by

10%. Another study from St. Lawrence

University showed the same thing. When

they randomly assigned one group to chew

gum and the other group to do nothing,

the gum chewers outperformed the non-

chewers on a whole battery of cognitive

tests. What's going on? There's

something about chewing that bumps up

heart rate, increases blood flow to the

frontal temporal regions of the brain,

and boosts vigilance. That's why before

every speech or presentation, I think

through what I'm going to say while

chewing gum. So, try this action step.

To get a quick mental boost prior to a

big test or an important meeting, grab a

stick of sugar-free gum. In the 10

minutes before the encounter, chew the

gum and think through your plan. Then,

right before the tester meeting, toss

the gum away. Your brain will thank you.

We've done seven. Let's go to the eighth

and final sciencebacked way to get a

little smarter. Admit you could be

wrong. Practice intellectual humility.

Ever meet someone so sure they're right

that they never learn anything new?

Don't be that person. Be the opposite of

that person. Seek out opposing views.

Relish the surprise of discovering

you're mistaken. Be a scout who explores

ideas, not a soldier who defends them.

And whenever you believe something

deeply, ask yourself, where might I be

wrong? Recognizing what you don't know

is a hallmark of both intelligence and

wisdom. In one 2025 study, university

students who scored the highest on

intellectual humility, who are most

likely to admit what they didn't know,

crushed other students on critical

reasoning puzzles, spotting fallacies,

and finding the right answers to

problems. Another study found that the

best predictor of whether people learned

and persisted on difficult material was

intellectual humility. So here's your

small action. Keep a mistake log once a

week. Jot down one belief, prediction,

or decision you later discovered was off

base and note what new information

changed your view. Reviewing that short

list trains your brain to ask, "What if

I'm missing something?" A question that

quietly makes you smarter every time you

pose it and helps you make fewer

mistakes in the future. Those are the

eight lessons. Teach it, test it, walk

it out, ugly font it, monotask it,

commonplace it, chew on it, and I don't

know it. So, here's your 7-day

challenge. Pick one technique right now.

Not later, not tomorrow, but before you

close this video, write it in the

comments and then try it for exactly one

week. After one week, come back and

reply to your comment with the results.

I read every single comment and reply to

the best ones. Because here's what I've

learned after years of studying this

stuff. The people who actually get

smarter aren't the ones who know the

most techniques. They're the ones who

consistently use just a few really,

really well. And if this video helped

you, here's how you can help me. Hit

that like button, subscribe if you

haven't already, and share this with

someone who's looking to level up their

thinking.