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The secret of successful, brilliant people has been uncovered
It’s ingrained in most people that brilliant people are just outliers and have good luck. It’s also widely believed that brilliant people are naturally smart since birth because of good genes.
This type of belief is highly damaging because it can demotivate and make you lose hope without even trying.
Even if genes play a part, you can’t fully depend on them. If you have Albert Einstein or Elon Musk’s genes but somehow you are abandoned in the jungle and grow up with wolves since little, you will howl and run on all fours. You will become a feral child, not a smart human. So, you still need to nurture your brain correctly.
Nurture > Nature
Without further ado, let’s dive deep to banish this belief once and for all.
What do successful people like Elon Musk, Benjamin Franklin, Larry Page, Albert Einstein, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger have in common other than the amount of money in the bank?
They read a lot consistently.
- Elon Musk would often read philosophy, science fiction or physics for 10 hours a day when he was a kid. He learned rocket science by borrowing books from his SpaceX co-founder, Jim Cantrell.
- In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “From a child, I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.”
- Larry Page when he was asked how did he learn to lead, answered “I read a lot.”
- Einstein was a voracious reader. He was reading physics books at age 12, and Critique of Pure Reason and the work of other philosophers at 13. He also said that he didn’t like school but loved reading and learning on his own.
- Warren Buffet dedicates 80% of his day to reading and thinking.
- Charlie Munger always carries a book or newspaper just in case he might be delayed. He also said, “My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Why do they read a lot?
It’s simple. They want to learn and know more to be smarter.
Okay. But why does reading make them smarter?
Reading is a form of mental exercise. It makes the brain work and thinks. When the brain consistently works and thinks, brain function improves. Just like when you regularly work on your muscle, your strength improves.
Why does reading improve brain function?
When reading, several parts of the brain become active and stimulated. In a study by a neuroscientist named Stanislas Dehaene, he found that reading exercises the occipital lobe and the parietal lobe.
The occipital lobe processes visual information. Literate readers could process visual information more accurately. This increases imagination and creativity, and the occipital lobe also has a big impact on decision-making.
The parietal lobe and frontal lobe handle language processing. They help with reading comprehension and writing skills. They also work with the temporal lobe to store information.
Also, the angular and supramarginal gyrus link the different parts of the brain together to execute the action of reading. These areas of the brain connect the letters c, a, and t to construct the word “cat” that we can then understand.
Why active and stimulated brain improves brain function?
A regularly active and stimulated brain will develop new neurons as well as increase and strengthens the connections between them, which are called neural connections.
When the neural connections in the respective part of the brain are increased and strengthened, the electric and chemical signals will travel more efficiently and improves the particular brain function.
For example, as your neural connections in the occipital lobe are increased, strengthened and more efficient, the better your imagination, creativity and decision-making will be.
The stronger and more efficient your neural connections in the frontal lobe, the greater your reading comprehension and the more knowledge you can understand.
When your neural connections are increased, strengthened and connected efficiently with every part of the brain, the greater your overall brain function is. So, the better your brain can work with each other to make decisions, be empathetic, come up with ideas, consider opposing opinions, visualise scenarios, learn, remember information, etc.
For example, when your neural connections between the frontal lobe, occipital lobe and temporal lobe are efficient, the better you can understand what you’re reading, imagine the scenario from the text you’re reading and remember the information that you read.
Since everyone including you, your friends, Elon and Einstein has a brain and neurons in it, that means you just have to enhance your neural connections to be smart. One of the most basic but powerful ways to do that is by consistently reading books that embrace your curiosity because as Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
In general, the more you read, the better your overall neural connections, the more you’ll know, the better you can think and the smarter you’ll be.
Now, the secret of successful, brilliant people has been uncovered.
Even though it isn’t a guarantee that you’ll discover a new breakthrough Physics formula or build the next company that saves humanity, I can promise you that if you consistently go to bed smarter than when you woke up, you’ll feel like a brand new person.
This secret is found using the first principle thinking mental model. As a wise man said,
“The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses.”
— Aristotle
Here’s the summary of this article and also how I used the first principle thinking mental model to write this article:
Here are a few reads if you are interested to learn more about first principle thinking and other mental models:
First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself
First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge
100 Mental Models (This is an affiliate link. I’ll receive a small compensation at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase through this link. It’s a win-win for you and me)
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