How to get smarter as an adult: one daily practice

Think for yourself6 min read

To get smarter as an adult, practise thinking your own thoughts before you take anyone else's, then keep what you learn. Each day, write ten thoughts on one word, then read or ask, then compare. Recall it a few days later, and try one thing in real life.

That is the whole practice. The rest of this page is why it looks like that, and what it will not do.

What does "getting smarter" mean for an adult?

For an adult, getting smarter can mean two plain things: having more thoughts that are your own, and keeping what you learn instead of losing it by the next day. Neither needs a test or a score. Both can be practised daily, on paper, in about fifteen minutes.

I do not mean IQ. I do not mean faster puzzles. I mean the difference between someone who repeats the first thing everyone says and someone who has looked a little longer.

Most of us take in a lot. Feeds, articles, videos, answers from an AI. Very little of it is ours, and very little of it stays. You can read for an hour and not be able to say three things about it the next morning.

So this page is about two moves. Think first. Then keep it.

Can you actually get smarter as an adult?

Here is the honest answer. Nothing here is proven to raise your intelligence, and I know of no daily practice that is. I do not have a study for it, and I will not borrow one.

This is a habit, not a cure. What I can tell you is what the habit looks like, where it came from, and what I saw when people did it.

Where this practice comes from

In 2020 I started my first company. I kept seeing the same thing: people looked at the surface of a problem, and then they decided.

So I made a small game for my team. Every day at tea time, one person got a random topic. The first one was "cow". They had to say ten points about it, out loud. One rule: the audience said whatever came to their minds first, and the person with the topic could not repeat any of it.

Within two minutes the shallow thoughts were gone. Spoken by someone else. The person holding the topic still had to find ten. That was hard.

Over the weeks, the team started to think before they talked. That is what I saw. It is not a study.

Years later I got stuck myself, in stress and a feed, for a year or two. I built something for myself first. The practice below is the same game, for one person, on paper. The first step has its own page: the tenth thought.

How to get smarter: the daily practice, step by step

The practice has six steps. Write ten thoughts on one word before you look anything up. Then read about it, or ask someone. Compare what you found with what you wrote. A few days later, recall it without looking. Then do one small thing with it in real life.

You need a pen, a page and about fifteen minutes. Need a word? Here are 50 thinking prompts.

1. One word. Write it at the top. Pick something small and concrete: cow, bridge, salt, a bus stop. Big topics invite borrowed opinions.
2. Ten thoughts. Ten numbered lines from your own head. Facts, guesses, questions, doubts. No search, no AI, no reading until all ten are down. Around line four or five it gets quiet. Keep going. The lines after that are the ones you came for.
3. Read or ask. Now look it up. Read one good page, ask someone who knows, or ask an AI.
4. Compare. Under your ten, write two lines. What did I already have? What was new? Circle the one line on your page you would not have written yesterday.
5. Recall. Two or three days later, cover the page. Write what you remember about the word. Then uncover it and check.
6. One thing in real life. Do something with the word. Look at a real bridge and find the part you read about. Taste salt next to something without it. Tell someone one thing you found, in your own words.

Steps 5 and 6 are the ones people skip. They are also the ones that tell you whether anything stayed, and whether it was ever more than words.

Can you train your brain to think?

I will not promise to train your brain. I cannot back that. What you can train is a habit: to write your own thoughts before you take in anyone else's, every day, on something small. Habits are within reach. Claims about brains need studies, and I do not have one.

For what brain games do and do not do, read brain training without the games.

What I can show you is what the habit asks for. The first lines on any page are the shared ones: cows give milk, cows eat grass, cows say moo. The practice is to keep going past them. Why does a cow chew sideways? Who decided which animals we milk? None of those are clever. They are just not the first thing anyone says.

How to become clever without trying to look clever

Being clever is often confused with sounding sure. Watch people who think well, and you will see something else. They ask one more question. They say "I don't know yet" and then go and find out. They do something with what they learned.

The practice above is built around exactly that:

• Ten first stops you from adopting the first opinion you hear.
• Compare shows you where your own thinking stopped and where the reading started.
• Recall tells you honestly whether you kept it.
• One thing in real life keeps it from being only words.

If you work with AI all day, there is a shorter form of step 2: ten before you prompt.

How to keep the habit going

• Same time, every day. We did it at tea time. Pick a moment you already have.
• One word a day is enough. Ten minutes done is better than an hour planned.
• Keep every page. At the end of the week, read your circled lines together. That is a record of what you noticed that nobody handed you.
• Do not look it up at line four. That is the exact point where the practice happens.

What this will not do

It will not raise your IQ. It will not fix stress, sleep or focus. It is not a test you can pass.

It is a small daily habit of thinking first and keeping what you find. If you do it, you will have a stack of pages with your own thoughts on them. That is all I promise.

The gym for the habit

Paper works. You do not need anything else.

I built DoomsHuman as a gym for this habit, for myself first. Every topic starts with ten bullets you write, and nothing else in that topic opens until you do. Recall questions come back after 1, 3, 7, 21 and 60 days. Each topic ends in three real-world activities. You can try the cow game on the first screen without an account; what you type there stays in your browser.

Why build it? To prepare humans for Dooms Day. When corporate giants or a super AI take over most of the world, a small group of people will rebel. That group will be smart, sharp and real. Ten thoughts on a cow is one small step in getting ready.

FAQ

How can I become more intelligent?

I cannot promise you that, and nobody has shown me a daily practice that does it. What you can do is think more of your own thoughts and keep more of what you learn. Write ten thoughts on one word before you read about it, compare afterwards, and recall it a few days later.

How do I get smarter every day?

Do one small rep a day. Pick one word, write ten thoughts about it with no search and no AI, then read one good page and compare. Keep the pages. Once a week, read back the lines you circled.

Can you raise your IQ as an adult?

This page makes no IQ claim. I do not have a study I could stand behind, so I will not give you one. The practice here is about something else: getting past the first thoughts everyone shares, and remembering what you learned.

How do I become clever?

Ask one more question than usual, and do something with the answer. In practice: ten thoughts on one thing before you look it up, then read, then compare, then try one thing with it in real life.