What separates the ‘smart‘ from the ‘genius’?

Born with it?

The term ‘genius’ is often defined by IQ measurements, with those scoring 130 or above deemed as having very superior intelligence.

By 1937, however, the term "genius" was no longer used to describe an IQ classification, based on Terman's revised testing model.

At the end of the 19th century, psychologist David Wechsler eliminated the term completely as he is “hesitant about calling a person a genius on the basis of a single intelligence test score”.

Biologically, people with very superior IQ scores usually share a few common traits, especially found in the brain:

• The Cortical Factor. In the ordinary human brain, the cerebral cortex is evenly divided between short and long connections. In the genius mind, the cerebral cortex is dominated by either short or long connections.
• The Thalamus Filters. Thoughts allowed in one’s mental space are determined by dopamine receptors in the mind's thalamus, which filter the crucial from the unimportant. Less of these receptors are present in the minds of geniuses.
• The Gray Matter. Brains of high-IQ-scoring individuals have shown to contain larger-than-ordinary amounts of gray matter, which is made up of dendrites: branch-like extensions of cell bodies that receive new info from axon nerve cells.
• The Open Mind. When it comes to problem solving, the genius is likely to consider all possible means of achieving the desired outcome. Regular people, by contrast, tend to map out strategies through a process of elimination.

Read more on the history of the term ‘Genius’, including the 9 individuals with the highest recorded IQ scores of all time, here.

Waking up the genius in you

A global learning community, Farnam Street, has shared to their tens of thousands of YouTube subscribers, the 9 Mental Models you can use to trigger the genius in you.

Though you may not reach Einstein level of Genius, you will train your blain elasticity and elevate your intelligence with the following models:

1. Second-Order Thinking. Think ahead. Consider not only your actions and their immediate consequences, but also the consequences of those consequences.
2. Occam’s Razor. Instead of trying to disprove very complex scenarios, make decisions based on the explanation that has the fewest moving parts.
3. Hanlon’s Razor. Do not attribute to maliciousness that’s easily explained by incompetence. When someone annoys you, they’re more likely just ignorant.
4. Reciprocity. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you treat someone kindly, they will return it. The opposite is also true.
5. The Map Is Not The Territory. Before making decisions based on assumptions, understand that assumptions are a reduction of the thing, not the thing itself.

Watch the full 12-min video and find the remaining 4 Mental Models here, or check out the Video Summary here.

The genius at work

Contradictory to popular belief, you could be a genius at one thing and average at others. Humans are very multidimensional at that.

But one thing about geniuses that you can also spot even at work, is that they almost always exhibit specific behaviors, such as:

• No fear of failures. They might not hit the bullseye every time they attempt something, but they never let their failures deter them from trying over and over again until they get the desired results.
• Analyze from various standpoints. Mostly their approach towards problem-solving is through deductive reasoning which is often considered a better technique to reach conclusions as compared to inductive reasoning.
• Visualize thoughts for days. They always try to be more spatial and visual with their ideas. Putting thoughts in a diagram not only helps conceptualize it better but also help other people understand it, and come up with solutions themselves.
• Great at establishing connections. Establishing a connection between two completely disparate topics lead to the invention of something great. It’s how one connects the imaginary dots between two different objects which never existed.
• Think in opposites. Physicist Niels Bohr believed that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your thought and your mind moves to a new level. Thinking in opposite ways allows unlocking a whole new dimension.

So, if you’d like to ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ your way to genius status, you can try by mirroring the behaviors above. It will help your brain to function like a genius’s.

Learn more on the ways genius people think differently, in the full article here.

Not everyone is born to be a genius, and not everyone has to become one either.

Being at that level of intelligence comes with its pros and cons, but we can all take the lessons and implement them to enrich our week ahead.

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We’ll see you next Monday!