3 Crucial Actions Which Will Make You Smarter Each Day

Has this happened to you?

You’re traveling to work. Suddenly, a wave of dissatisfaction hits you. You feel unhappy with how life is. Something has to change. You dream up an audacious goal. It makes you feel good.

Next, you start planning steps to achieve this audacious goal. You find many ideas on the internet. They appear solid. But they also appear like a lot of work.

Thank you, but no thank you.

When the day began, you aimed for the stars. By the end of it, you’ll settle for the roof. By the end of the week, you’re okay with the way life is. Sure you’re miserable, but so is everyone else. Misery loves company. There’s nothing you can do. Well, you can feel like a brave victim of nature’s evil schemes.

I know how it feels. (Didn’t I tell you misery loves company?)

I’ve encountered this feeling far too often for my liking. I’d browse the web and feel a surge of unhappiness. I’d plan to write more, get serious with music, connect with interesting people, and so on. I’d draw elaborate plans in my notebook and feel proud. But by the end of the day, the motivation was… well… gone.

By the end of the week, the dissatisfaction was gone too. And I was right where I started.

Let me share a secret with you.

I encounter this feeling even today. So one day, I sat down and did what I do best: I thought.

I wondered why I did nothing to improve my quality of life. It led to the discovery of some amazing insights which I want to share with you.

Why Motivation Goes Missing

Motivation pushes you from a state of helpless suffering, to a state of resolving to take action. But beyond that, it does little to keep you going. Especially when you plan to take life-changing action.

Here’s why…

Imagine you’re piloting a 200-ton Boeing 747 which has suddenly thrust. Just 5,000 feet below you are the threatening Alps. The alarms and sensors are going crazy. The autopilot is barking instructions you can’t understand. You’re wrestling to keep the plane in the air.

When you depend only on motivation, you keep telling yourself, “I’m motivated! I’m motivated! I’m…” CRASH!

This Boeing is your mind. You are the pilot. The controls and sensors are the amygdala, the part of your brain which controls the fight-or-flight response. The terrifying Alps are the factory settings of your mind — the state of inaction.

When you aim for the stars, the amygdala sets off alarms and restricts access to the neocortex, the thinking part of the brain. Or worse, the amygdala shuts it off. As a result, your mind refuses to take any action, and motivation goes AWOL.

What you need isn’t motivation.

Then what is it?

Before fire trucks and pressure hoses existed, people would douse fires by forming a human chain. They would pass a bucket of water from one person to the next until the person closest to the flame threw it onto the fire.

It was vital to keep the chain unbroken. If chain broke, the water would spill and not reach the fire.

To trick your amygdala into not activating, you need a chain. This chain has a more popular name — habits.

Your mind doesn’t feel dissatisfied because of (lack of) money or relationships. Those just distract it from the real issue.

The real issue is the lack of a challenge. Your mind wants to feel stimulated, to be pushed. When you multitask, or when you do what others want, you strangle this desire. On the other hand, when you shoot for the stars, your mind feels overwhelmed and shuts down.

In both cases, you turn to external factors for stimulation: like consumption, money and relationships.

What you need is a path in between – the path of consistent improvement. The path which makes you one percent smarter each day.

To get on this path, follow three crucial habits with diligence. They are:

Habit 1: Focused Work

In today’s ADHD-affected culture, your ability to produce at a high level — in terms of quality and speed — sets you apart. To create at a high level, you must be able to master hard things fast. That ability, in turn, depends on your intensity of focus.

Build your ability to focus for extended periods of time. Lock yourself up in a room to finish your task. Block off social media sites and turn off the internet. Put your phone on silent and keep it in another room.

“But Vishal,” you ask, “what if I have to use my smartphone as part of my work? Can I keep it in the same room?”

No, no and no!

Any work you do on your smartphone — emails, social media, instant messaging, phone calls (if you were born before the ‘90s) — is not focused work. It’s a distraction which pulls you away from what you must do. Bringing yourself back to task at hand after this is like wrestling an 800-pound gorilla. Is it surprising that we miss most of our deadlines today?

Related: 7 Researched-Based Hacks Which Will Make You Meet Your Deadlines

I’ll be honest. Focusing will be tough in the beginning. You’ll find your insides at war between the need to do what’s important and the desire for instant gratification. But you must fight this war instead of fleeing the battlefield.

When you do, your quality of work will be the absolute best you’re capable of at that moment. Alongside, you’ll keep improving. To thrive in today’s world, focus is a must.

Habit 2: Reading

The internet provides you with plenty of options to read high quality content. Take time to read online and stay ahead of the curve.

But reading a book is even better. Here are some benefits:

1. It reduces stress. A 2009 study by Sussex University Researchers showed that reading can reduce stress by up to 68 percent.
2. It helps you sleep better. Reading a book just before bed relaxes you more than punishing your eyes in front of a screen, which is proven to hurt your sleep.
3. It increases your intelligence. Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes intelligence as “not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.” And recent scientific studies confirm that reading and intelligence have a relationship so close it’s symbiotic. Thus, reading makes you a sharper ‘connect-the-dots’ kind of person.
4. It increases empathy. Research proves that reading literary fiction (not pop fiction) supports and teaches us values about social behavior including the importance of understanding those who are different from us.

For 2018, I intend on rereading books which have impacted me deeply. Once I extract more wisdom from them, I’ll read the books which the authors referenced in their literature. I hope to understand a topic in depth, which I want to prioritize over breadth.

Read anything you want as long as it makes you think. Quora writer Hannah Yang’s dad taught her that books are a worthwhile investment in the person you want to become. Nobody can oppose that lesson.

Habit 3: Reflection

What excites you? What did you do during the day? What could you improve on? Why?

All day, your mind races over tasks which help you pay the bills. Or it harbors negative thoughts about yourself and others.

But when you reflect, you ask yourself deeper questions. This makes your mind clearer about what matters. The resulting clarity about what matters provides clarity about what doesn’t.

When you reflect on what you did during the day, you go deeper within yourself. You identify patterns and develop sharper self awareness. You figure out what will benefit you in the long run, and what is harming you.

You can learn a lot from the ideas you put into your mind from the external world, but you can arguably learn even more by breaking down and better making sense of the things that are already roaming around in your head. — Zat Rana

Before going to bed at night, spend ten minutes reflecting on your actions on that day. Maintain your thoughts in a journal to refine and streamline them.

Summing Up

Growing one percent smarter each day doesn’t sound like much. But imagine your improvement at the end of the year. No, it’s not 365 per cent. Applying the compound effect law, it’s a whopping 3,678 per cent!

Commit to the process of consistent self improvement instead of a specific goal. Keep you goals fluid, adjusting them to match your current level. Push yourself each day to move to the next level.

There’s no princess waiting to be rescued, or villain to be killed in life. There’s just the next level. There’s no ‘game over’ either (unless you’re dead).

Take control of your plane. Fly it with the finesse which makes the autopilot toe in line with your decisions. Making good decisions over and over again is the hallmark of a smart person. And it’s an ability which artificial intelligence cannot defeat you on.