The habits that make us less intelligent are:
- Procrastinating. Why? Because procrastination creates a continuous moral burden that keeps accumulating and makes us prone to more disorganization, more procrastination, and less time to act. Action strengthens and refines our knowledge.
- Not making decisions/letting things happen. Why? Making a decision is preceded by reflection and weighing things up. Letting others decide for us prevents us from mastering our own destiny and regularly puts us in situations we have to endure. Enduring limits our choices; acting expands them.
- Being impulsive. Why? Acting impulsively is a shortcut in the process of analysis and weighing things up. It gives more weight to chance, increases risks and, consequently, increases the probability of having to endure (the consequences of that choice).
- Not reading/acquiring knowledge regularly. Why? Reading is like any practice: the more you train it, the easier it gets. The easier it gets, the more you enjoy it. Acquiring knowledge or new ideas therefore gives you more creative tools and expands your mechanisms of thought.
- Staying on familiar ground/surrounding yourself with similar people. Why? Diversity is not just there to look good; it is simply necessary to acquire new perspectives, new ways of thinking, put yourself in other people’s shoes, better understand certain situations (including conflicts), have better opportunities to negotiate, and extend your empathy. Diversity naturally triggers the cognitive mechanisms of comparison and classification. This is the very foundation of scientific research. Staying in a circle of people, and especially media, that always convey the same schools of thought only reinforces knowledge already acquired, whether it is correct or incorrect. It is through diversity and the objective, neutral confrontation of ideas that we can distinguish truth from falsehood.
Regards, Yannick HUCHARD
Originally written on Quora: 25 mai 2022. Original answer. Translated from the original French.
