18 signs of a smart person

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Lifehacker publishes excerpts from the article “How to become smarter” by Belarusian businessman Ivan Maslyukov.

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1. An intelligent person talks with a specific purpose

At a meeting, by phone, in a chat. Conversation is a tool to achieve a goal.

Foolish people talk for the sake of talking. This is how they indulge their laziness when they are busy. Or they struggle with boredom and idleness in their free time from work.

2. Feels comfortable alone

The clever is not bored with his thoughts. He understands that important events and discoveries can take place inside a person.

The stupid, on the contrary, try with all their might to avoid loneliness: being alone with themselves, they are forced to observe their own emptiness. Therefore, it seems to them that important and meaningful things can only happen around them. They follow the news, seek companies and hangouts, check social networks a hundred times a day.

3. Tries to keep balance

• Between outside experience (movies, books, stories of friends) and your own experience.
• Between believing in himself and knowing that he can be wrong.
• Between ready knowledge (patterns) and new knowledge (thinking).
• Between an intuitive clue from the subconscious and an accurate logical analysis of limited data.

The foolish easily go to one extreme.

4. Seeks to expand the range of his perception

The smart one wants to achieve accuracy in sensations, feelings, thoughts. He understands that the whole consists of the smallest details, therefore he is so attentive to the little things, shades, to the small.

The foolish are content with average cliches.

5. Knows many "languages"

An intelligent person communicates with architects through buildings, with writers through books, with designers through interfaces, with artists through paintings, with composers through music, with a janitor through a clean courtyard. He knows how to communicate with people through what they do.

Foolish people only understand the language of words.

6. An intelligent person completes what he started

The stupid one stops, barely starting, or in the middle, or almost finishing, on the assumption that what he has done may turn out to be unclaimed and will not bring any benefit to anyone.

7. Understands that a huge part of the surrounding world was invented and created by humans

After all, a shoe, concrete, bottle, sheet of paper, light bulb, window did not exist once. Using what was invented and created, he wants to give something from himself to humanity in gratitude. He happily creates himself. And when he uses what others have done, he gladly gives money for it.

Foolish people, when they pay for a thing, a service, an object of art, do it without gratitude and with regret that the money has become less.

8. Follows an informational diet

A smart person does not litter his memory with facts and data that are not needed to solve current problems. At the same time, studying the world, he seeks first of all to understand the cause-and-effect relationships between events, phenomena, things.

Foolish people consume information indiscriminately and without trying to understand the relationship.

9. Understands that nothing can be assessed without context

Therefore, he is not in a hurry with conclusions and assessments of any things, events, phenomena, until he analyzes the totality of all circumstances and details. The clever one very rarely criticizes, condemns.

A stupid person easily evaluates things, events, phenomena, without delving into details and circumstances. He criticizes and condemns with pleasure, thus, as if feeling himself above what is the object of his criticism.

10. Considers the authority of the one who has earned his authority

A smart one never forgets that even if everyone is of the same opinion, they can be wrong.

Foolish people recognize an opinion as correct if it is supported by the majority. It is enough for them that many other people consider a certain person an authority.

11. Very selective about books and films

The clever does not care at all when and by whom the book was written or when the film was made. The priority is content and meaning.

The stupid person prefers fashionable books and films.

12. Has a passion for self-development and growth

To grow up, a smart person says to himself, "I'm not good enough, I can get better."

The stupid, seeking to rise in the eyes of others, humiliate others and, thus, humiliate themselves.

13. Not afraid to make mistakes

A smart person perceives mistakes as a natural part of moving forward. At the same time, he tries not to repeat them.

The foolish have learned once and for all the shame of making mistakes.

14. Knows how to concentrate

For maximum concentration, an intelligent person can withdraw into himself, be inaccessible to anyone and for nothing.

Foolish people are always open to communication.

15. An intelligent person convinces himself that everything in this life depends only on him

Although he understands that this is not so. Therefore, he believes in himself, and not in the word "luck".

Foolish people convince themselves that everything in this life depends on the circumstances and other people. This allows them to relieve themselves of any responsibility for what is happening in their lives.

16. It can be hard as steel, or soft as clay

At the same time, an intelligent person proceeds from his ideas about how he should be under different circumstances.

A foolish person can be as hard as steel or as soft as clay, based on the desire to meet the expectations of others.

17. Easily admits his mistakes

His goal is to understand the real state of affairs, and not always be right. He understands too well how difficult it is to understand all the diversity of life. Therefore, he is not lying.

Fools deceive themselves and others.

18. Behaves mostly like a smart person

Sometimes smart people allow themselves to relax and behave like stupid people.

Foolish people sometimes concentrate, exercise willpower, exert effort, and act like smart people.

Of course, no one can act smart anytime, anywhere. But the more you are from a smart person, the smarter you are. The more from the stupid, the more stupid.