Dave Asprey - Game Changers

A conversation about fluid intelligence wouldn’t be complete without talking with Dan Hurley, an award-winning science journalist who has developed a niche writing about the science of increasing intelligence. Dan is someone who has fundamentally changed the way we think about learning and intelligence. He says that when people talk about being smart, they’re often referring to the knowledge and information they already possess. But they fail to look at where they got that knowledge and information in the first place. If a group of people were to sit in a class for the exact same amount of time and then study the information presented there for the exact same amount of time, they wouldn’t all end up getting the same grades on a test. That’s because they don’t all learn as well—they have varying levels of fluid intelligence.

Your IQ is different from your fluid intelligence. Most IQ tests assess all sorts of factors, including crystallized knowledge, which speaks more to a person’s experience than their abilities. As such, most intelligence studies don’t bother with IQ tests. Scientists have known about fluid intelligence for a long time, but until recently, psychologists who study intelligence all agreed that you could not increase your fluid intelligence. They had been trying for a hundred years; they had done study after study after study. Then, in 2008, a group of scientists decided to focus on boosting working memory, a part of short-term memory.

Working memory is critical to fluid intelligence, and those scientists wanted to see if improving someone’s working memory would also boost their fluid intelligence. They asked people to practice a simple two-minute test called the Dual N-Back to improve their working memory. After five weeks of practicing for half an hour a day, the people’s fluid intelligence increased on average by 40 percent. 2That was an incredible finding.

There’s one downside, though. The Dual N-Back test is so irritating that it makes you want to throw your computer across the room. Think of it as CrossFit for your brain—you just have to keep pushing. When you take the test, you see something like a tic-tac-toe board on a screen. One square lights up, then another, then another. You are first asked to press a button every time a square that lit up two times ago lights up again. That’s a two-back. Then, if you master that skill, which is pretty easy, you move on to a three-back. Throughout the test you are also listening to a voice reciting letters in a specific order that you also have to remember. So you have to remember which squares lit up three times ago and which letter you heard. It forces you to narrow your focus and really concentrate.

Though the test isn’t much fun, it definitely produces results. Since that groundbreaking study in 2008, dozens of other studies have confirmed that performing working memory tasks increases not only your working memory but also all kinds of other intelligence-based skills, from reading comprehension to math ability. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; the field of intelligence research is really catching fire, and I’m excited to see what the future will hold.

I used a clunky open-source n-back training app when I started the Bulletproof blog in 2011, and when I had my IQ tested afterward, it had increased by 12 points. When I wrote about that result on my blog and shared the software I had used, it was surprising how many people insisted that my results were impossible. It’s the standard science troll argument: “That can’t be, therefore it isn’t.” All I can say is that the training worked for me then, and there is a lot more science supporting its efficacy now.

According to Dan, even though IQ tests don’t measure fluid intelligence, IQ scores commonly increase when people improve their fluid memory. Despite my results, I found that the training was so exhausting and discouraging that many people wouldn’t complete it. In the early days of Bulletproof, I flew around the world teaching hedge fund managers how to hack their brains. Even among this highly motivated crowd, very few people completed the n-back training because it makes you feel like a failure over and over before you see results.

If you’re interested in trying it, my suggestion is to first use the other tools in this book to help strengthen your brain and your willpower. The n-back is a lot less triggering when your brain is running at full power, and if you’re exercising your willpower muscle on a regular basis, you’re a lot more likely to stick with it. Then I recommend doing the training for about a month. Your brain won’t like it at first—you will get bored and frustrated and probably have strange dreams. As you get better, you may find that you have more verbal fluency (Dual N-Back radically improved my live presentation skills to the point that I regularly speak in front of millions of people with confidence and ease), better listening ability, better reading recall, and more. When you’ve completed it, you won’t know how you functioned with only half of the working memory you just gained. It’s that strong, like a RAM upgrade for your brain.

The best part about n-back training is that the effects seem to be permanent. After completing twenty sessions I did no training at all for a full eight months to see if I’d forget the skills I’d learned and have to start over. Astoundingly, the results were the exact opposite of what I had expected. After the break, I did better than ever, as if my brain had further optimized itself during those eight months off.

Action Items

Try one of Jim Kwik’s courses (https://kwiklearning.com) or another speed-reading course so you can literally learn faster.

Teach a summary of this book to a friend, colleagues, your spouse, or your kids, so you’ll remember it all!

Improve your fluid intelligence by doing Dual N-Back training. I recommend the Dual N-Back app by Mikko Tyrskeranta on the iTunes and Android stores.

Hints:Do it for at least twenty days, but forty is best.Do it at least five days a week, when you’re not tired.You may get stuck for a couple of weeks, but do it anyway.Do not subvocalize (mutter to yourself) when you’re training so that you’re only activating the right side of your brain.Push yourself to failure every time—move up a level even if you’re only at 70 to 80 percent at an existing level. The software I recommend does this for you automatically.Tell a friend or coach you’re going to do Dual N-Back so they can make fun of you when you tell them how annoying it is. It’s like going to the gym every day for a month—accountability helps.

Recommended Listening

Jim Kwik, “Speed Reading, Memory & Superlearning,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 189

Jim Kwik, “Boost Brain Power, Upgrade Your Memory,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 267

Dan Hurley, “The Science of Smart,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 104

Recommended Reading

Dan Hurley, Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power

Law 6: Remember Images, Not Words

Your brain evolved in a world of sense, sound, and images, not a world of words. Train yourself to build images from what you read and hear so you can make full use of your brain’s deeply rooted onboard visual hardware. Remembering in words will slow you down and waste energy you can put to better use.

Mattias Ribbing has a title you’ve probably never heard of: he is the leading brain trainer in Sweden and a three-time Swedish memory champion who is ranked number seventy-five in the world. Mattias has actually been awarded the title Grand Master of Memory by the World Memory Sports Council, which only 154 people have ever achieved. Mattias started hacking his memory in 2008. Before that, he says, he had an average memory; he could remember only ten or so digits at a time, while now he can memorize up to a thousand.