Writing and intelligence
The aim of this article is to explain how and why writing can increase your intelligence. Writing does not increase your intelligence because it adds more information to the existing brain structure, but rather it is brings more of your subconscious online. Therefore, actually makes your smarter, just not more informed.
My writing goal
One of my blogging goals has been to increase the quality and also the length of my posts. I have a goal to make each post at least 1,000 words in length. When I first started to blog I wrote 250 word posts and that was an effort. Now I have raised the bar to over 1,000. I did this for a simple reason. I noticed that when I forced myself to write more, the quality of my writing increased.
- I made room for metaphors that would aid people’s understanding.
- I would support my claims with data.
- I also would have to research my subject in more depth in order to write.
- However, the biggest result of this lofty goal is I am becoming more creative. It forced me to reach in and pull out more. I think this falls under the category of you are smarter than you think.
How your brain works
Can you imagine if had perfect hearing and you could hear the whole world speaking (lets assume at the same decibel level). It would be the mass confusion for your brain. What happens is early in your brain’s development you learn to filter out the noise from the signal, to keep you focused. But what if information in the noise contained important things?
This is what is going on between your subconscious and conscious brains. Your subconscious has a gazillion ideas swirling and processing even more external stimuli. It is working on problems you are not consciously thinking of so at any point during the day you say ‘aha I remember where my keys are’. Your subconscious is the ocean.
Your conscious brain on the other hand are tightly controls locks and gates. It filters only what it needs. Can you imagine if you unlocked a few more of those gates? This is writing.
Socrates meets Einstein
The Socratic method is a teacher prodding the student to draw more and more out, that knowledge which Socrates believed was already within. Einstein road on a light beam in his imagination years before he wrote his theory of relativity. If you could combine those two methods, that is draw out latent ideas out of your imagination and subconscious to an external audience, this would be something that writing does.
You get more of what you reinforce. Once you start to train your brain to think like this ideas in general will flow more easily. When I first started to write 250 words would take forever. Now the words just flow out. I also think I have become more creative and perceptive. I notice more than before. I basically have awaken some latent parts of my intelligence by writing.
Ideas similar to this are discussed by Dr. Win Wenger if you every want to explore this idea in further depth. He showed through a process called image streaming you can increase your IQ. He believes the ability to increase your intelligence is something you can do fairly easily and he backs it up with one study.
Whenever I see writing of the past I see intelligence
Why writing to increase your intelligence
Writing is something that is very personal. Only you can tell a story, like you. No two writers are a like and everyone has something to say. I believe writing is a lot of hard work. Not something that flows out or is only for the gifted. But it is one of the most pleasurable things you can work at. Why? Writing is something that is, at risk of sounding cliché , is a spiritual journey. With the Internet there are a lot of avenues to blog and write on.
What if you do not write well?
Some of my posts I read over and over, and can not believe I wrote such masterpieces. Other posts no matter how much effort I put into them, still come out weak. I think after a few years of writing the percentage of good posts increases. However, one thing for sure. If you write, even at a basic level someone will like it. Just try and you will be surprised. Two things that will make your writing more interesting:
- A word of advice, use ‘I’ a lot as this is about you. People do not want to read abstract high level things. They want to read personal and dirty. Who would not rather listen to their hairdresser and some hot news she has then read some academic work on something equally as irrelevant. I am not saying write about gossip. I am saying write personal.
- Metaphors are bar bells for your brain. Use them and they add humor and imagery to your writing like a fresh coat Victorian blue paint on a grey countryside barn.
- Writing that evokes emotion, either, getting the reader to say, ‘yes I can relate to that’ or something slightly provocative will get people’s attention. If you try to write to impress, no one will be.
Are you sure writing will increase my intelligence?
There was a study of cloistered Nuns. These were women who had basically the save environment most of their lives. The ones that were into writing, had a much lower level of degenerative cognitive disease when they were older. They looked at childhood writing samples and compared them. Perhaps the ones who loved to write already were functioning at a higher cognitive level and had a greater reservoir of neurons. Or perhaps the writing is what helped them stay mentally alert.
Try it and find out. I have had serious problems with my brain, as I had bleeding in the brain many years ago. The more I write the better I feel. Maybe my brain is recovering naturally but maybe it is that I am training it to. I am stretching it though the act of research and writing.
I think at the very least my creativity and verbal intelligence as increase. For abstract reasoning I play chess.
My writing assignment for you:
If you have had any experiences with writing please let me know what you think about the relationship between writing and intelligence. If you would like to start to write but do not know how, let me know. Just lease a comment in both cases.
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