We’ve all had those “lightbulb” moments of brilliance where a group of thoughts crystallize into a perfect insight or conclusion. Nothing feels better than this kind of mental achievement but, while you might be quick to chalk up this personal victory to how intelligent you are, a new book argues that such “eureka!” moments are due less to intelligence than the mental skills that exist beyond intelligence.
Your IQ is largely determined at birth. All of the schooling in the world will have little effect on improving that number. However, as GeekDad’s Garth Sundem argues in his new book, Beyond IQ — Scientific Tools for Training Problem Solving, Intuition, Emotional Intelligence, Creativity, and More, an IQ is just part of the picture.
If you can leverage your intelligence to improve mental skills in areas like memory, willpower, and creativity, you can easily stretch your mind beyond its limits, live happier, and be more successful. In Beyond IQ, Sundem explores more than a dozen aspects of mental horsepower, how they can augment your natural IQ, and provides more than 60 exercises to help you hone these skills to turbo-boost your intelligence.
All of Sundem’s conclusions are based on extensive interviews and research with the nation’s top psychologists and brain researchers, as well as heavy use of studies found in peer-reviewed journals. It’s serious science but, like Sundem’s other books, it’s anything but dry.
Sundem sets out his case and backs it up with fascinating examples that are fun to read, incredibly illustrative, and are oftentimes flat-out funny. (Not many books examining neurobiology and plasticity ask you to consider how a platypus is like a pencil sharpener or cites scenes from Airplane! as evidence of mental risk vs. reward.) There also plenty of “a-ha” revelations. Then, after convincing you of the science behind the skill, Sundem provides you with exercise after exercise to help you think differently and fine-tune the way you think and use your brain better.
The successful application of the skills covered in Beyond IQ have been proven to be better predictors of success than any IQ test and Sundem’s goal is to help you apply these skills more proficiently. By improving memory, maintaining intelligence, multitasking, applying heuristics, and the ten other mental areas covered in the book, you can stretch your mind, improve your life, and have a lot of fun while you’re doing it. Beyond IQ releases today and is available in paperback or e-book formats.
Disclosure: GeekDad was sent a sample of this book.
Thanks much, Dave! Phew, what a project. These interview-based books are logistical monstrosities.