6 simple ways to improve your intelligence and become a better entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur, you need to daily perform at high intellectual levels to solve challenging problems and to be aware of new opportunities.

Most of us often feel that intelligence is natural and one needs to accept one’s level of intellect. But, recent studies state that it is possible to improve your intelligence with some practice and efforts.

Let’s understand what intelligence is in simple words. Intelligence is the process of applying knowledge. Intelligence involves knowledge and the process. So, to work on your intelligence you need to take care of two things: one is enhancing your knowledge and the other is making your mind process efficient.

First, let’s go through the simpler part i.e., ways to enhance knowledge,

Add the most important knowledge point.

Everything you achieve starts from belief. Belief is also a type of knowledge that you possess. Before you even start working on other points, you need to add one most important knowledge point in your system that you can improve your intelligence.

You should have the knowledge that it is possible to improve your intelligence.

Know more things and know more about the things.

If there is no knowledge there would not be much to process and you will lack intelligence. Knowledge is data points for intelligence. Like while performing analytics for your venture you need quality data to gain strong insights, similarly you need vast knowledge to gain higher intelligent thoughts. You need to keep increasing your knowledge on a various range of topics.

It is like having a pool of resources at your bay for your mind to process. So, add some time for quality reading and watching knowledgeable videos in your daily schedule. You need to keep learning and know more things.

The more knowledge you gain, the more data will be there to process and you will come up with more intelligent solutions.

Be open to new knowledge

Most of the great people and legendary entrepreneurs you follow have a broad horizon of thoughts and beliefs. If you have a narrow mind, then you are not likely to accept new and different concepts or ideas which will result in blocking your intelligence.

Your mind needs to be open and receptive to the new and different range of topics.

Now, let’s go through ways to enhance the process of mind. 

Utilising the full potential of the mind

Intelligence is like a machine where you process the input to get the output. Knowledge is input and our thoughts, ideas or solutions are output. The value or quality of that output defines intelligence.

In factories, to get the highest output you always need to run the machine at full capacity. Similarly, to make your mind process perfectly you need to use your mind in its full capacity. Using the mind in full capacity means that your complete mind should be used in your current task.

Usually, while you are into some task you think of multiple things, out of which most of the things will not be even related to the current task you would be doing. All those things take a certain part of your mind and then only a limited part of your mind is left for the current task. You need to become aware of this natural habit so that gradually you can reduce the unwanted parts and become more effective.

Next time, whenever you do a task where intelligence is involved, think of your mind as a circular pie chart where each thought in your mind can be given a percentage share in the mind space depending on its intensity at that moment. Let’s say if you are working on your business plan and you think about having a coffee, you give a 10 percent to coffee as a part of your mind is thinking of coffee. It will make you aware that 10 percent of your mind is not working on the business plan.

Once you are aware that there are certain unwanted things taking some part of your mind space try to ignore or reject those thoughts so that you can maximise the percentage share of the mind space for your current task.

Your mind needs to be fully available so that it observes and processes information quickly and keep the intelligence high.

Practise mind exercises daily

Just like you go to the gym or run to maintain your physical body, you need to do some mind exercises regularly to keep your mind competent and the intelligence level high. You need to keep using your mind at peak levels daily to keep growing your business at a faster pace. Using your mind means you need to keep thinking.

Here are few great mind exercises that you should practise every morning to enhance your intelligence power.

Chain of thought: It is to continuously think of random thoughts in a flow. Take a topic to start and set the timer for five to 10 mins. Then keep building new thoughts out of the previous thought till the timer ends. After the practice of few days, you will realise that the number and quality of your thoughts have increased as the process of your mind is becoming more efficient.

Connecting words: It is how many connecting words you can think out of a single word in just a burst of seconds. If I give you a word now, how many connecting words will you be able to make in five seconds? I am sure it won't be more than five. To have a high intelligence, you need to at least come up with 10 connecting words.

Free writing: You need your mind to be unlocked. One of the best things to do is to practice free writing. Spend 15 minutes in front of a piece of paper or your computer system and just keep writing whatever comes into your mind. There should be no thought left inside and everything that you think should come out in writing.

Puzzles and logical games: Keep solving some challenging puzzles and logical games to maintain the intelligence.

Regular mind exercises will force you to think more which will unlock the scope of your intelligence.

Start cross domain thinking

Most of the great inventions and creations in the world are done by blending two different concepts into one. It’s a technique used by world’s best business design firms like IDEO to bring out path-breaking products or solutions in the world. It opens your mind to new concepts that you would have never even imagined.

If you are stuck with some problem and not able to find an effective solution, then just think about random unrelated products out of your domain and figure out if there is any concept that you can be applied in your domain. Or, if you are looking to develop a first-of-a-kind product then you can mix concepts of different products into one product.

For example, if you own a furniture e-commerce store and plan to have a stand out product to gain instant popularity then one of the ways is to design an exclusive and unique product that has never been imagined before. Like, a home wardrobe designed by merging concepts from bookshelves and shelves of retail stores so that the space usage is more optimised and the end user is easily able to maintain his/her clothes in a more organised way.

To come up with new ideas and concepts, you can take concepts from random unrelated domains and apply it in your respective domain.

Now, as you know you can improve your intelligence and have a list of simple ways to improve it, you should start working on your intelligence rather than doubting it so that you come up with new ideas to grow your business.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)