This is a slightly unusual article because increasing your IQ seems like something that can’t be done, right?
Well, not quite.
There are actually a few things you can do every single day to INCREASE your IQ and become smarter, and more effective.
I’m not just talking about FEELING like you’re more effective and smarter, I’m talking about real measurable change in your IQ.
Your IQ for those who don’t know, stands for your intelligence quota, and it’s a universal way of measuring roughly how smart someone is.
Now we’re going to cover in this article how to increase that IQ by about 20-30 points or more but don’t get carried away with that…
There are far more important things about this than just the random IQ number the test gives you.
These things show you not just how to increase your IQ but how to improve your EQ (emotional intelligence quota) and also how to feel, think and perform better in everything you do.
It’s very similar to the limitless pill post I wrote a while ago but slightly different because in this one we’re focused on just improving your IQ and making your brain work better.
The limitless post was more focused on health, fitness, and the bigger picture.
But this time we’re just going to be looking at how to make your brain work faster and better, and how to increase that IQ of yours. But before we do that, bear this in mind:
It’s just unlocking what’s already there
Most of the things in this article are actually just going to be little tools and things you can use to unlock the IQ that’s already there within you.
You see most of us don’t operate at our full potential because we’re blocked or held back by lots of random things like:
- Not sleeping well enough
- Not eating the right things
- Not breathing properly
- Not exercising enough
- Not giving your body what it needs
- Being too distracted and addicted to dopamine
And so on.
You see if we just stopped doing those things and did things a little bit differently, we’d have much better results.
Our IQ would seem to jump magically from a lower score to a higher score just by doing certain things differently during the day.
So what are those things?
How to naturally increase your IQ score
Let’s break this down into little sections so it’s easier to read. Also, lots of people reading this will probably be skim reading since we don’t like to wait and read things in detail.
That’s actually one of the problems and probably one of the reasons your IQ isn’t where you want it to be because your ATTENTION span isn’t great, but we’ll get to that.
1: Sleep better
The most important thing you can do, and that’s why it’s at the top of this lovely little post is to sleep better.
Sleep magnifies whatever else you’re doing, so if you’re working really hard on something or you’re trying to achieve a goal, sleeping BETTER will make you perform better at that thing.
Sleep is required, and so many people (probably about 80% of people) don’t sleep well or long enough.
This is a big problem, and it leads to things like being reliant on dopamine and other substances from things like coffee in the morning to get to work and feel awake.
Big problems with all of that, but the main thing is that people just aren’t going to sleep at the right time of night.
This means when the sun goes down. But of course, for lots of people, the natural time the sun goes down is way too early for them to go to bed, so they keep themselves up.
They keep themselves up with unnatural things like lights, screens, and phones.
This ‘blue light’ enters the retinas in your eyes and makes your body produce the ‘wake up’ or ‘active’ hormone, serotonin.
We know that the more serotonin you have in your system, the more awake you feel and the harder it is to fall asleep.
On the other hand, when the body experiences darkness (when the sun goes down) the body produces melatonin, one of the most powerful sleep aids known to man.
In fact, we now produce it in pill form because it’s such an effective way of feeling tired and sleeping better.
But our bodies already naturally produce it, WHEN IT’S DARK!
If you keep your house lit up like a Christmas tree until 2 AM, there’s no way your body is going to be able to produce the right amount of melatonin and you’ll find it hard to fall asleep.
And even if you DO fall asleep, because of the random mix of wake-up and go-to-sleep hormones in your body, you won’t sleep as deeply or as well as someone who’s turned off their lights before bed.
So it’s really important.
Start turning off all screens and turning DOWN your lights about two hours before you’re going to go to sleep. This makes a big difference, trust me.
2: Eat better
The best diet for EVERYTHING is a plant based vegan diet, but I’m not going to lecture about that here. If you’re interested in learning more about your diet and health, read the post I did about reasons to go Vegan.
But for now, just think a bit more about what foods you’re eating. We all know deep down what foods make us feel good and what foods make us feel bad.
And I’m not talking about the feeling you have WHILE eating them, because that’s very temporary and deceiving.
I’m talking about how you feel half an hour AFTER eating those foods.
And what about the next day?
Do you have enough energy throughout the day when you eat those sorts of foods?
I’m referring to junk or fast food and things with lots of sugar or salt in it.
These things aren’t good for us and we know it, so consider what you’re eating if you want a quick boost in mental energy.
Now, how this relates to increasing your IQ is that by NOT eating anything until about 2 PM, you give your brain and body a boost.
Try it if you don’t believe me, try and fast for the entire morning and only eat your first meal of the day at about 2 PM.
You’ll feel a profound shift in energy during the morning, and you’ll find it very easy to think clearly and complete complex mental tasks during that time.
I’m not saying fast every single day but it certainly makes sense if you have lots of difficult or mentally demanding work to do in the morning.
I like to start my day by meditating and going through a complex morning routine, and then I’ll get to work for the day on my projects and things I’m writing.
This takes me right up until about 1-2 PM and THEN I’ll eat something and do the less important work of the day after that.
You’ll see for yourself as well, just HOW foggy your brain gets after a meal. This is something we can’t really do much about, because as humans we do need to eat, but we can choose WHEN we eat.
So consider doing your most important work first thing in the morning and not eating until it’s done.
You can also experiment with fasting for an entire day every week.
This gives even more mental clarity benefits but it’s something I’ve only recently been experimenting with so I can’t offer much more than just my subjective experience that it works.
3: Remove distractions and evil dopamine
Dopamine is a hormone your body releases when you do something that feels good.
It’s a very complicated hormone and there is of course much more to it than just that, but the effect it has on your brain is profound.
When you check social media or do something that’s addictive like eat a cheese sandwich, make a coffee, or have a cigarette, you get a hit of dopamine from your body.
This physically wires your brain you want to do that thing more often in the future.
Very dangerous if the habit you’re building is NOT a good one.
So when you focus on something and then get distracted by social media, your brain releases a tiny bit of dopamine.
This dopamine makes your brain think ‘Oh, this is fun let’s do this more often’ and so next time you try and focus, you get another URGE to check social media.
Eventually, you get to the point that most people are at in life now where they’re so addicted to multi-tasking and checking social media and online messages.
They simply can’t focus on ONE thing for more than about half an hour.
This is very bad because your brain takes about an hour to fully get into FLOW STATE (That’s my tutorial on how to enter the flow state easily).
You need to get into a flow state in order to do your best work, and this can be defined as a state where you’re so focused on the task you’re doing that nothing else matters.
You don’t think about distractions because you’re just SO engaged with what you’re doing.
This is where your best work will happen, but you can never get into that state if you’re always distracted by things like social media phones and YouTube.
It’s easy to fix but it takes time.
You just need to start noticing all the times you stop what you’re doing to check your phone.
It can help to put your phone in another room so you can’t even see or hear it. Just having it in the same room as you make your brain consider checking it an option.
And what happens when you get a little bit stuck or frustrated with the work you’re doing? Your brain looks for the easiest FIX or cures for that uncomfortable feeling.
DOPAMINE.
The numbing and addictive effects of dopamine make it the first place your brain goes when stressed or fatigued.
You just want to escape that uncomfortable feeling and the brain looks for what can release dopamine.
In most cases, it’s just a quick scroll through Instagram or a quick cigarette if you’re a smoker.
It’s important to start to interrupt this process and get your brain less and less reliant on dopamine in stressful situations.
Try leaving your phone in another room and checking it LESS throughout the day.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but with time you’ll be amazed at the results in your focus and mental clarity.
4: Use little hacks and boosts
There are a couple of other boosts and hacks you can use to increase your IQ naturally, but they only really work their best when you’ve done everything else in this post up until this point.
Trying these on their own won’t really make much difference if you’re still doing the other stuff wrong. You’ve been warned.
- Take a cold shower: Cold showers are a great way of increasing your energy and giving your brain that boost of focus when you need it, to start your day. They’re hard to take at first, purely because they’re different to what you’ve been doing previously, and they’re uncomfortable. Do them anyway!
- Take a nootropic: A nootropic like Mind Lab Pro is a smart drug that can help your brain unlock its full power. Made popular by the film Limitless, a nootropic is a great way of getting a boost above and beyond what you’ll get by doing the rest of that stuff
- Remember your multivitamin: Taking a basic multivitamin is an important part of increasing your IQ because it gives your brain and body all they need to function at an optimum level. It’s also very strongly recommended to take a multivitamin if you’re taking nootropics as well, to make sure everything in your body is balanced.
- Do what you love: It should go without saying that if you’re working on what you LOVE doing, it won’t really feel like work and you’ll enjoy it that bit more. Not only that but your mindset will be in the right place so you’ll feel like you have more mental energy you give even though it’s the same brain.
- Activated charcoal powder: This is a fairly interesting supplement you can take that just goes that bit extra to detox your body in the morning and set you up for the day. Activated charcoal powder is a really effective way of helping your body detox, and it goes well with fasting and not eating in the morning
5: Be consistent
The last point I want to make here is that none of this will work if you’re not consistent.
What that means is, if you just read this hoping for an instant fix and you jumped straight to the nootropics and instant ‘magic bullets’, you’re not going to get the results you want.
The best results come after a few weeks of being really really focused and consistent doing all of these things at once.
They don’t come from just taking a pill. That being said if you DO all of the things I mentioned here and THEN you take a nootropic, oh boy you’re in for a ride.
The best nootropic I’ve tried so far has been Mind Lab Pro which you can learn more about on their site, or I have a little video explaining a bit more about this powerful nootropic:
But beyond that, just keep trying, keep consistent with what you’re doing, and stop looking for the magic bullet. Personal development and things like increasing your IQ are a process. They won’t happen overnight but they ARE possible.