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The Key to Becoming More Intelligent

22nd May 2018

key to becoming intelligent

I picture myself at 12 years old.

I’m defending one of my classmates from the crazy History teacher. ‘You’re useless, you’re stupid and you won’t get anywhere in life. You were born stupid and you will always be stupid.’ He says.

I’m looking at this little bearded joke of man insulting my friend. I’m angry, but I don’t want to get into trouble. I raise my hand, and put on a very confused face: ‘Sir, I’m a little confused. Can’t you learn to be intelligent? Isn’t that the point of school?’

There’s an awkward silence, and the teacher kind of mumbles about. He’s insecure and probably feels like an idiot debating with a 12 year old, so he just says ‘Why yes, you’re right, you can all learn to be intelligent.’ Next day he’s attacking some other ‘stupid student’, trying to inflate his own ego.

Not a great teacher no, and not great for students morale. But it was a French public school and teachers were paid very little – all sort of things came through the door.

However, that event as a 12 year old was marked in my memory; yes, you can become intelligent.

But then I kept asking myself: how?

Well, not long ago, I discovered the answer while listening to Barney from The Escape Artist on the ChooseFI podcast. And it suddenly all made sense.

By reading books

Seriously? You say.

Yes, but there’s a bit more to it.

Hear me out first.

Why books?

I started this website after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. Chip Bergh, CEO of Levi Strauss became vegan after reading Eat to Live. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft completely changed her attitude and mindset after reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, reorganized the company’s operations after reading Competing Against Time by George Jr. Stalk.

What I’m saying: books change lives.

And it’s very easy to understand why. As Barney puts it: a person take years and years of wisdom, experience and knowledge and condenses it into one little block of paper for anyone to absorb. When you read a book, you’re gathering all the wisdom from this one person – but it takes you 5 hours instead of an entire lifetime. Pure gold.

Every book you read the more wisdom you gain, the more experiences you read about, the more ideas you get into contact with. This author has decided to spend months, years, decades condensing their knowledge and wisdom into a book, because they believe they have something worth sharing. And you get to read that.

It’s incredible, the power of books.

But how exactly do they make you more intelligent?

It’s hard to define what intelligence really means. Einstein says it’s imagination, Socrates says it’s ‘knowing that you know nothing’, Stephen Hawking says it’s the ability to adapt to change.

No matter what it really means, it’s not difficult to see how books make you more intelligent: reading books written by intelligent people with intelligent ideas will teach you how to think intelligently.

It’s that simple. Learn from others, be their student, and you will go on to think like them, analyse like them and produce like them.

The real question then is, how do I find these intelligent books written by intelligent people? This is where it gets exciting:

 

Which books do I read?

There are millions of books in the world. How do you know which to read? How do you know which has most wisdom? How do you know which one will change your life and which one won’t?

I say books are a bit like networking. You might go to an event, meet an amazing person and start a business together. You might also go, and leave 10x more inspired. And sometimes you leave exhausted from meeting so many people and feel like it’s a waste of time.

But when you meet that person that changes your life and offers you the opportunity of your dreams, you think: ‘Wow, I’m so lucky, look at this amazing opportunity’. Yes, you’re lucky, but you created that luck. You went out there to all these events and looked for the opportunity. You didn’t wait for it to come to you; you went to the awkward networking event, ate some strange looking bagels and forced yourself to talk to strangers. And that effort allowed the opportunity to come.

It’s exactly the same with books. You may finish a book and feel a bit ‘meh’. You may finish a book and feel inspired to improve your life. You may also finish a book, and it changes your entire life. But you may not find that book unless you go through others first. It’s all about creating that opportunity, giving it the chance to find you, to change your life.

So I have to read every single book on the planet to find the right ones?

No! Thanks to the internet we can now recommend, review and talk about the books that have changed our lives.

I’ve done a lot of research, gone through quite a few books and met a lot of people who read. I call them ‘productive books’. They could be fiction or nonfiction, they could be about business, self-improvement or money, they could be 50 years old or published that same year. There is a huge variety, and I understand that it’s not easy to pick and choose. So look at what other people have read and what other people recommend.

Check out my own Resources page where I share my top books. I’ve also added links to other people’s books lists at the bottom.

 

intelligent
the perfect read

How do I read?

So we can all agree that books are an amazing tool for building intelligence and wisdom. But the hard part is getting started.

We all know the biggest excuse for not reading: I don’t have time.

We have other commitments and books don’t sound like a priority. Plus they require concentration and a quiet environment – I get it, too much of a bother sometimes.

Well, as a reader with many commitments as well, I have indeed managed to go through one productive book a month. Here are some snazzy steps to get started:

 

  1. Schedule time to read.

Not ‘I’ll read when I have time’ or ‘I’ll read before going to bed’, not even ‘I’ll read on the bus’. Schedule at least 1 hour a week (I try and do 2) purely for reading.

 

  1. Find the right spot

Books are great because they force you to concentrate and focus. You won’t be able to absorb any of the golden nuggets in the book if you don’t concentrate. That means no phones, no unexpected alarms and noises. Find a library, a coffee shop, a park, a quiet place at home for your reading. For this 1 hour, it’s just you and the author, don’t let anyone distract you from that sacred moment. 

 

  1. Take notes

Do this for productive books. There is so much important info, life-changing ideas and knowledge in those books that you need to take note of what you’re reading – or you’ll forget! Take a simple notepad, and just write down the interesting stuff and stuff you might want to check out later. You’ll assimilate what you’re learning much better, and learn to apply it to real life. I kept applying all the marketing strategies I was learning in The E-Myth to Financially Mint, all along the book.

 

  1. Practice

As with many other things, reading takes practice. It’s hard at first ‘1 hour without my phone?!’ ‘I actually have to focus on one thing for more than 10 minutes?!’. But the more you do it, the better you get at it and the more you enjoy it. In the end, that 1 hour is sacred for you: away from distractions, just you, your thoughts, and the author’s great ideas.

I look forward to every Sunday morning; I leave my phone at home, walk to the library with my book and notepad and spend 2 hours reading. No one can take this time away from me. It’s time dedicated to my personal education, to working on my wisdom and on my intelligence.

 

Not only books

Books are the key to becoming more intelligent.

But we don’t only acquire information by reading words on paper. We also have: movies, podcasts, magazines, blogs, anything that shares knowledge.

Books are for the grand ideas, the knowledge that takes time to process and that requires deep thinking. But diversifying is another great way of comparing different information and learning more effectively.

Sometimes things are better explained in a debate on a podcast, or through a documentary or simply by having a conversation with someone. These other forms of acquiring knowledge allow you to exercise the mind, to think about what you’ve learnt from the books, to compare and contrast.

Some of my favourite podcasts to work on my intelligence:

  • Intelligence squared
  • The School of Greatness
  • ChooseFI
  • Listen Money Matters

Favourite documentaries/movies:

  • The entire ‘Dirty Money’ series
  • Minimalism: A documentary about the important things

 

Some you will like, some you won’t. But remember the networking comparison – keep going, keep trying and you’ll find something life-changing.

And once again, the more you take in all these ideas and knowledge the better you get at learning. You start having opinions of your own with some good arguments and facts to back them up, you start asking more interesting questions and applying what you learn to your daily life. In other words, you become more intelligent.

intelligent
you may even be able to solve this

What struck me the most about reading, listening and watching all this ‘productive’ information was how aware I suddenly became. I noticed how some people use certain words, I started analysing and trying to understand why I feel a certain way in certain situations, I began to push myself even harder to learn more, to understand more, to ask more. Every productive book changes my life in a different way – which I find both astonishing as well as terrifying. Who am I really, if I keep changing?

Well every book is a new discovery of one’s self. Which is why; read a bloody book. And don’t be one of those people who proudly announces ‘I haven’t read a book since high school’. You’re missing out on a LOT.

As you can imagine, I have a very long list of books I want to read. But here are my favourite ones so far:

(check the Books page for a description too)

 

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Deep Work by Cal Newport

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

The Magic of Thinking Big

The E-Myth

Good to Great by Jim Collins

1984 by George Orwell

 

Here are some other good book lists:

Barney’s Life Changing books

College info geek’s Essential Books

 

What are some books that have changed your life? Or podcasts? Or movies?

 

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Financially Mint is on another break! ☕ I will Financially Mint is on another break! ☕

I will be living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the next few months, and then hopefully heading to Australia. 
My plans for the next year:

I'm putting the career testing theory into practice. My next career test is working for an NGO here in Kuala Lumpur. This week will be my first week. I will be working with sex trafficking survivors and I've also been asked to do some financial education presentations to help the staff.

After that the plan is to move to Melbourne, Australia, and do my next career test: consulting. If that doesn't work out I will try another career test which may be more achievable: business development in a startup. Thanks to the amazing career books that I've read, I'm pretty confident I can get an interesting job. We'll see how it rolls. 🏀

How am I funding this? I'm very excited to say that I've managed to grow my part-time freelancing income to a full-time income that can sustain me in South East Asia (I would need to work full-time in Europe). I'm calling myself a 'Freelance FinTech Writer'. Rent is crazy cheap (like 300€/month) and it's literally cheaper to eat out than cook. I'm still able to save 15% of my income. 🎉🎉 The increase in clients and pay has been thanks to all the effort I put into Financially Mint, and to some crazy cold emailing and networking in the past few months. 
After some thought, I concluded that learning mark-up language (HTML + CSS) was a more efficient use of my time than writing blog posts and working on FM... so I am now taking a break to learn some basic coding and decide what to do next.

I will still be podcasting and taking part in the FI community on Twitter and everywhere else... so I'll still be seeing you around 😉

To our success 🎉🎉
Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄 Let's sa Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄

Let's say you've got a list of career paths to test. You've figured out a direction, you know which sector you want to work in and you've got some cool companies in mind.

But then what? How do you get an internship in the company you really want to work for? How do you get a job in that specific NGO? How do you get them to notice you? 🤔

In FM's latest post I share a strategy that I am still testing but seems to work - copied from a book titled 'Designing your Life' by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans:

The strategy: Conducting 'Life Design' Interviews. .
A Life Design Interview is basically meeting the person that has your 'dream career' for coffee. ☕

You find someone who is working at the company you want to work for, in the sector you want to work for or simply has a position you're interested in, and you reach out to them (LinkedIn helps). You ask about their story, their position, how they got to where they are and their advice to people starting out. 
This is what I've been doing for the past month in Edinburgh, and of the 40 people I contacted, I met 8 of them for coffee, my goal to simply learn about their story.

With an added bonus: Trust. ✅

Not only did I learn stuff about working in a startup, or as a content writer or working in an NGO, but I also built a trusted connection. It's those connections that help you find the hidden jobs, the dream careers and the best opportunities.

Check out FM's latest post for a proper run down on Life Design interviews. 💪 (Last week we organised the FI Europe podcast retreat! An amazing 4 days doing speeches, masterminds, debates, boat trips, beach and surfing. Post on this coming soon 🔥)
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #fieurope #lifedesign #interviews
Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads in the future. 🔮

I talk a lot about this on Financially Mint - how taking the time to build career capital and explore career paths will allow you to find a career of best personal fit, which will then make you the money you need.

But it is true that I am personally at the very start of this journey, and so can't offer many examples of this working. 🤷‍♀️ Well today, this changes as I interview the Financial Gladiator, who did exactly that.

He went to university to study business in Poland, and finished his masters in Australia. In the meantime, he was doing internships, making connections, building skills and beefing up his portfolio. 
He says it himself: ' I always looked to add experience and skills to my repertoire rather than dollars' 💸.
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7 internships later in several different countries and industries and a lot of hustling, moving around and learning about what career fitted him best, FG ended up in a job that paid him a six figure salary. This kept on snowballing, and in his early thirties he hit a salary of over $500,000. .
That goes to show how much investing in yourself can return in the future.
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$500,000 annual salary doesn't need to be your goal, but it still goes to show that you'll make the bulk of your money after investing in your own career. 📈

A great interview filled with actionable career advice and FG's complete story, check out FM's latest blog post! (Edinburgh castle 🔥)
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
Most of us don't know what we want to do in our tw Most of us don't know what we want to do in our twenties 🤷‍♀️. And that's absolutely normal.

But that's why we don't want to be committing to one thing - who know what you might want to do in 5 years? 🧐

Instead of committing, why not be exploring, investigating and testing career paths. But how can you do this cleverly without being a typical 'millennial-career-hopper'? By building career capital at the same time.

This means that every career test you do will help you build skills, connections and a more solid portfolio. If you have no idea where to start, here are some examples of jobs/activities that can help you build career capital:

1. Working for a growing organisation with a growing performance: this could be consulting, a startup - anywhere with a good mentor and team 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
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2. Graduate studies - for those who want to work in research, a think tank, etc.
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3. Building a valuable and transferable skill - skills such as writing, programming, designing, data science, etc will always be useful in the future 💻
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4. Creating content - you don't always need a shiny piece of paper or a medal to show that you've done something. Creating your own thing can be just as useful.
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And much more amazing career advice... in FM's latest blog post 🤓
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(I’m running out of pictures to post so here’s one of a beautiful evening in Edinburgh) .
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#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #peoplemanagement #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
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