Transcription
Most people think they're educating themselves. They read books, watch videos, take notes, maybe even build elaborate systems to organize what they consume. But, here's the problem. Almost everything most people call self-education is training only one type of intelligence.
Over my more than 13 years of experience as a peer-reviewed researcher, educator, and entrepreneur, I've come to understand the four types of intelligence that you actually need to think and execute like a real-world genius. [music] And in this video, I'm going to draw upon decades of cognitive science to show you how to develop each type, [music] starting with the first type, analytical intelligence.
In a previous video, I discussed the book Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized by the renowned psychologist Robert Sternberg. And in that video, I outlined how his work in this book can train you to develop all four types of intelligence he has laid out there. However, in this video, I'm going to take this a step further. I'm going to actually teach you the specific techniques and training methods Sternberg and others have developed for building all four types of intelligence, methods that have been validated within mainstream psychometric pedagogy.
Let's understand what analytical intelligence on Sternberg's model really is. According to his triarchic theory of successful intelligence, it is the ability to analyze, evaluate, compare, infer, judge, and reason. In other words, you can think of this as a sort of marriage between the skills measured on IQ tests and the skills measured on critical thinking assessments. You see, one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that consuming information is the same as analyzing it, but it's just not. Reading a book is not analysis. Watching a lecture is not analysis. Highlighting passages is not even analysis. At best, those are mere inputs. True analysis begins when you actively start breaking ideas apart and relating them to each other in novel ways.
And so, here is one of the most useful exercises you can do to increase your analytical intelligence based on Sternberg's and others' research. Every time you encounter an idea, force yourself to identify three things. One, what is the central claim? Two, what is the evidence offered for it? And three, what assumptions must be true for that claim to work? And yes, I'm a little hoarse today because I'm getting over a cold, but just bear with me.
Now, trust me, this is much harder than it sounds. You see, a lot of people can repeat an author's conclusion as in school learning, but they cannot tell you what really supports it. Even more importantly, they cannot tell you what hidden assumptions are doing the real work underneath the surface. And this is a skill I actively teach to practically all of my students as well. For example, if someone says hard work always pays off, the statement may sound aspirational, great. But the assumptions there are enormous, namely that effort is recognized, that incentives are fair, that external constraints are not overwhelming, that luck doesn't dominate all the outcomes, and so on.
You see, once you start identifying assumptions and questioning the methods used to reach those conclusions, you start upgrading from being a merely IQ-based learner to being a more holistic, and let's be honest, rarer learner. But then, this alone is not enough because according to the official pedagogy developed to train analytical intelligence, it's not enough to ask simply whether a claim is true. Instead, you should also ask what else could explain the same facts. If someone says, for instance, a company failed because the founder was not disciplined enough, force yourself to generate two or three alternative explanations. Was the market too early, maybe? Was demand misread? Were incentives inside the team misaligned?
Because real analytical intelligence is not about locking onto one explanation and defending it. It's instead about comparing competing models of reality. And that's precisely where another vital aspect intelligence lies, in what is called boundary testing. And what exactly is boundary testing? Well, once you think you understand an idea, ask under what conditions it would fail. In what environment would this principle stop working? When does such and such a strategy backfire? You see, the shallow thinker wants one universal rule, but the stronger thinker wants to know when the rule works, when it doesn't, and why.
Now, if you stop here, you may become very good at all the traditional academic tasks, solving math problems, writing essays, scoring high on standardized tests, and so on. And you'll even develop critical thinking skills that school typically doesn't teach. But you still will not become what I would call a real-world genius. Because let's be real, analytical ability helps you understand and operate in the current game, but it does not by itself help you generate something new and useful. And that takes us to the second type of intelligence, creative intelligence.
Now, this is where a lot of people become confused because they think creativity means artistic talent, eccentricity, or just being naturally original. But that's not how the research frames it. A large neurocognitive review on creativity found that creative performance is strongly tied to cognitive activities such as associative thinking, divergent thinking, executive control, and predictive representation. In plain English, creativity isn't just spontaneous inspiration. It's a cognitive process that is actually trainable. It involves generating multiple possibilities, connecting distant ideas, and then refining those ideas into something workable. So, although creative people might not always look the most disciplined, creativity is actually a sort of unique type of discipline. You might say it's disciplined novelty.
And one of the simplest ways to train this is through what is called forced divergence. Instead of taking a problem and trying to solve it as quickly as possible, force yourself to generate 10 possible solutions before selecting one. The reason this is so key is that most people stop at the first remotely plausible answer. In other words, they converge too early. But the whole point of this exercise is to stretch your possibility space. You see, once you get past the first three or four obvious answers, your brain is forced to leave the well-worn path and start exploring less familiar terrain. And that is exactly where creativity begins.
A second exercise to build and train creativity is what is called cross-domain transfer. Take a problem you care about and ask how it would look if you were approaching it from the perspective of a completely different field. How would an engineer think about this problem? A lawyer? A military strategist? The reason this works is that highly creative thinkers are often able to import structures from one domain into another. They don't simply think harder inside one frame. Instead, they're great at shifting frames.
And finally, there is yet another method you can use to build creative intelligence, namely what is called predictive simulation. When you come up with an idea, don't just ask, "Is this a good idea?" Instead, ask, "What happens if I scale it? What breaks down under different conditions? What are the likely second-order effects that happen after the first-order effects?" And are you starting to see how you could be great at analytical intelligence, yet weak on creative intelligence? I mean, I can't tell you how many students I've worked with who have performed really well on standardized tests, for instance, but who have such a hard time thinking outside the box. I mean, it's no wonder. The school system trains you to endlessly memorize and regurgitate information, but very rarely to think creatively. And this isn't just me being polemical here. There's actually widespread evidence in the psychological literature that school simply doesn't train these skills.
But do you see why it's so important in today's world for you to develop both analytical and creative intelligence? Well, if you want to keep training these, then be sure to check out my free critical thinking masterclass at the link in the pinned comment below.
Okay, so once we move away from analysis and creativity into actual life, we hit the third type of intelligence, practical intelligence. This type of intelligence is massively neglected, and it's also the reason so many academically bright people struggle when they leave structured, stable environments. You see, practical intelligence is not just so-called street smarts. It's much more specific than that. In particular, on Sternberg's theory, it is the ability to read contexts accurately, navigate constraints, make decisions under uncertainty, and know what kind of action fits what kind of situation. It's not just about what's true in the abstract, which is what analytical intelligence demands. Instead, it's about what works here in environment X with Y people under Z conditions.
Sternberg and others have long linked practical intelligence to what is called tacit knowledge in psychology, which is kind of knowledge you often can't fully state, but can nonetheless use. For instance, it's knowing how to read a room. It's knowing when to argue and when to just shut up. It's knowing that a technically correct point can still fail because it was delivered in the wrong tone, at the wrong time, to the wrong person.
And according to research on practical intelligence, one of the most effective ways to build this ability is through what is called structured reflection. The basic idea is that experience by itself is not enough. What matters is whether you are extracting principles from that experience. For instance, when I started my first business, I was horrible at reading people. I was horrible at prospecting. I was horrible at networking and building professional relationships. But eventually, all that stuff became intuitive. [music] And it was largely because I engaged in something like structured reflection, which you can implement in the following way. After any meaningful situation, especially one that went badly, write down a condition-action rule. When X happens, do Y. For instance, when a conversation becomes defensive, ask a question instead of making another assertion. Write that out explicitly somewhere and then test it in a real situation. When a client goes silent, clarify the bottleneck instead of filling the silence with more persuasion. Again, test it out because this is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to transform experience into eventual tacit knowledge.
A second exercise you can engage in here to build practical intelligence is simulation. Don't simply read a bunch of self-help books and study ideas that are supposed to help you in the real world. Simulate using them. Write [music] actual emails. Rehearse difficult conversations. Take a business or life scenario and ask, "What exactly would I say? What exactly would I do first?" Because the real world rarely presents you with the [music] idealized scenarios you find in those books anyway. Instead, it gives you ambiguity, incomplete information, interpersonal complexity, and emotional noise. After all, all the best performers and actors do rehearsal after rehearsal before they become exceptional. So, why shouldn't you?
And yet, a third exercise you can engage in to build your practical intelligence is what is called environmental diagnosis. At the end of each week, ask yourself three questions. One, what kind of environment was I in? Two, what did that environment reward? And three, where was I mismatched to it? And asking these three questions on a regular basis is key because one of Sternberg's most important points is that intelligence is not just about adapting to environments. No, sometimes it's about shaping them. And sometimes it's even about selecting different ones altogether. In other words, not every failure is a failure of skill. Sometimes you're simply in the wrong environment, and that's a point I really want you to reflect on here.
Now, if you combine analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence, you already have a much stronger model of self-education than most people will ever build. But Sternberg adds a fourth layer, and I would argue this is one [music] that most clearly separates, yeah, let's just admit it, intelligent idiots [music] from truly admirable people. And that fourth type of intelligence is what Sternberg calls wisdom. Now, wisdom is a vital concept, but it's also a concept that I can't do justice to in two or three [music] minutes here. Instead, it really requires an entire video to discuss it further. So, if you want to watch that next video, you can watch it here.