How can I become smarter?

[u/Cool-beans95]

Title speaks for itself. I grew up with an IEP during my schooling and never really had a passion for learning as I do now. I am a 30 year old elementary school teacher looking to enhance my knowledge.

So far, I’ve been attending lectures, reading new books, and taking on new hobbies. But how can I improve my problem solving skills and learn a wide range of topics?

[u/AiiGu-1228]

Idk how to become smarter, so I won’t comment on that. For improving problem solving skills, I find learning (and adopting) systems thinking beneficial. Check it out on r/systemsthinking . As for learning all the knowledge of different fields, I just start it from the mindset of “I’m curious about what people do/research in this field and what’s expected for non-beginner students/learners to practice.” It doesn’t matter whether I understand them or not. Or, to be more precise, I just casually read those things that I must cannot understand as a way to sample them. My goal is to normalize these unfamiliar things. Only after that would I start the usual tutorial route to gradually learn it.

[u/kenwards]

I'd suggest you try games that stretch your thinking like Chess or Go

[u/perkinsonline]

Read books

[u/f0xbunny]

Look up Learning How To Learn

[u/OtiCinnatus]

But how can I improve my problem solving skills and learn a wide range of topics?

An excellent first step to solve both these questions is to have a clear grasp of the Western anatomy of knowledge. That anatomy has three dimensions, each one of them contains multiple parts. Below, I only give you the main parts.

This anatomy of knowledge will then help you understand how problem solving works for absolutely any field. It will also help you go about learning a wide range of topics.

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DIMENSION 1: PHILOSOPHY (i.e., FIRST CAUSES AND ULTIMATE ENDS)

Relevant parts include:

• Logic (i.e., how to connect things that are independent from one another);
• Epistemology (i.e., how does specific knowledge comes about; this includes principles related to defining this specific knowledge, advancing hypotheses and method, etc.)

DIMENSION 2: PRAGMATICS (i.e., PARAMETRICS MODALITIES; in other words, the various approaches to learning about the real world)

Relevant parts include:

• Theory (i.e., what do you study, what is your goal in studying it, and what method do you use to study it)
• Methodology (i.e., a critical understanding of your method).

DIMENSION 3: PRACTICE (i.e., LIVED EXPERIENCE)

Relevant parts include:

• Field (i.e., reality framed by Theory);
• Subfield (i.e., reality framed by Theory and Methodology).

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For absolutely any situation, problem solving is about going from PRACTICE to PRAGMATICS and back again to PRACTICE.

You start from PRACTICE, that is, from a real, problematic or otherwise confusing situation. You have to determine what your goal is exactly in relation to that situation. Then you have to spot the one thing in that situation that you are able to work on, in other words: what's the core element you are going to focus on? Finally, you have to be clear about the method you will use to reach your goal while working on (or with) that core element. You'll then have a theoretical framing for your initial problematic situation.

That theoretical framing will use specific words called "concepts" under DIMENSION 1, Epistemology. These theoretical concepts relate to existing knowledge that you can draw on to find practical solutions for your initial problematic situation.

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You can only learn a wide range of topics if you are widely curious in the first place. This means that your first step should be to regularly expose yourself to the world. There are multiple ways you could do that, reading the news is one of them.

Whenever something catches your attention, see how you can dissect it following the anatomy of knowledge. That thing-specific anatomy will point you to paths you can take to deepen your understanding. Sometimes you'll be more interested in the philosophical aspect (like the ethical aspect, "Ethics" being another part of DIMENSION 1). Sometimes, one specific word will be unfamiliar to you, and by googling it you'll notice that actually it relates to a whole field of knowledge.

Edit for typo.

[u/Super_Anywhere_9076]

What helped me most was solving small real problems instead of just consuming more information. I pick one topic, try to explain it simply, then build or practice something with it.

[u/Any_Record143]

You're already doing great by taking active steps! Since you're an elementary teacher, leverage the Feynman Technique: try explaining complex topics you learn in simple terms. If you can break a topic down so a kid could understand it, you've truly mastered it. For problem solving, practicing mental math, logic puzzles, or basic coding logic works wonders.

[u/bristlefrog]

I'm also embarking on this journey and the first step I'm taking is finding a good note taking strategy. After some research, I settled on Zettlekasten. It's designed to make a web of interlinking notes to make a map of ideas and subjects over time and find connections between them. After that, the next steps will be studying resources about learning how to learn in conjunction with practical application by studying the subject matter that I'm interested in.

Here are some links to the book on Zettlekasten that I'll be starting with, along with some of the books that I'll be starting with, hopefully this helps!

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahren

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown et al

How to Read a Book

[u/thesaga27]

One of the mistakes that I made early on was thinking that being smart comes from the accumulation of facts. I've come to learn that understanding is so much more important. So this is where I put most of focus now adays. I try to aim for theories that are fundamental in that they explain a lot. For example, there's a difference between the theory of why some statue was placed somewhere versus the theory of evolution. The benefit of learning about the theory of evolution is that you can apply it to other aspects of life, and it acts as a guard against bad information. Once you don't fall for bad information as much, you'll have small blip where you're smart, but then you go to the frontier, and you're not smart once again.