Brain Building Tips

Building vocabulary:

1. Learn to understand your language.
2. Increase your specific and general vocabulary's scope.
3. Stop using slang and cliches.
4. Upgrade your "personal" vocabulary.

Building a calculating brain:

1. Approach mathematics from a new direction.
2. Develop confidence in your senses.
3. Start thinking in metric.
4. Take typical problems in math and solve them in a nontypical way.
5. Start solving problems your way.

Building a logical mind:

1. Think for yourself.
2. Separate the problem from the symptom.
3. Define and analyze the problem.
4. Take a critical look at statistics.
5. Take no premise for granted.
6. Try other avenues of logical approach.
7. Good enough information.

Building insight and intuition:

1. Start solving problems in an unfamiliar way.
2. Look more closely at "unrelated" and "related" things.
3. Observe what leads to insight.
4. Learn to perceive patterns.
5. Start thinking about what you don't want.
6. Start tuning in to time, the weather, and yourself.
7. Become your own instrument of measure.
8. Take nothing at face value.

Building orientation:

1. Orient yourself in your city,  in your world, and in time.
2. Get a 3-D perspective.
3. Get into unfamiliar situations.
4. Stop relying on maps.
5. Don't be afraid to get lost.
6. Play games of strategy.
7. Take things apart.
8. Build something real with a function.

Building attention span and the senses:

1. Try not to watch TV.
2. Watch the programs that cover topics in depth.
3. Delegate responsibility.
4. Learn how to prepare.
5. Feast your senses as much as possible.

Building communication:

1. Think before you speak.
2. Listen to what you say.
3. Mean what you say.
4. Learn to recognize what others mean despite what they say.
5. Become aware of your listeners.
6. Stop using the word "opinion."
7. Use more denotative words.
8. Learn to admit your errors.
9. Don't defend your point-of-view against every criticism.
10. Listen to others.
11. Don't be argumentative.

Building information:

1. Always remember that there is more information than truth.

2. Consider the source.
3. Get less news.
4. Read more, but read selectively.
5. Use original sources.

Building comprehension:

1. Listen to the unfamiliar without criticism.
2. Use a multisensory approach.
3. Don't think in words.
4. Don't trust your feelings.
5. Understand by explaining.
6. Question for information.
7. Don't "question" people.
8. Ask questions of the right person.

Building perspective:

1. Improve your perspective.
2. Look back in time and learn the overview of history.
3. Put the past and present into perspective.
4. Gain new perspective from the perspective of others.
5. See yourself as strangers do.

The well-built mind:

1. Be aware whenever you "draw" a conclusion.

Source: Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks (2006) by Marilyn vos Savant.