Royane Real
How To Think Better By Writing
By: Steve Gillman
Introductory comments by Royane Real
I’m a person who takes learning very seriously. I have always been fascinated by the topic of what can we do to become more intelligent and improve our brain power.
As a child, I loved to read, to learn, and I loved to write. I wrote constantly, and I loved writing essays in school, even on difficult topics. I felt as if I could actually feel myself getting smarter after I finished a difficult paper, and I was very proud of myself for my accomplishment.
I’m shocked and saddened to learn that many college and university students today don’t bother to write essays for their assignments, preferring instead to buy a finished essay on the blackmarket so they don’t need to burden themselves with having to research and think and write.
These students may feel proud of themselves for fooling the system. They can get good marks as long as they don’t get caught, and they don’t even have to work for it.
Not only is it immoral to cheat the school and cheat the system this way, but these students are also cheating themselves in terms of not developing their own brain power. The act of writing essays and journals is one of the best ways to get your brain cells activated, to cement your knowledge in your mind, to improve your intellectual performance.
Learning expert Steve Gillman shows in the following article how important writing is as a tool for developing your intelligence.
( These introductory comments were written by Royane Real, author of the popular book How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative Learn more about how to boost your brain power. Download it today or get the paperback version at http://www.lulu.com/real )
How To Think Better By Writing
By: Steve Gillman
You have probably had the experience of trying to “get clear” on something. Sometimes we can't quite make sense of a topic, an experience or a thought. You have also probably had the experience of explaining your problem to someone, just to have it all become clear as you explain it. This is the power of putting your thinking out there in words.
Better Thinking On Paper
The same thing happens when you write an idea down. Often, the more you force yourself to write about a half-understood idea, the more you start to understand the idea in the process. You are effectively "thinking on paper," which has some advantages. Your thoughts are not likely to be lost, for example, and they are forced into logical sentences.
As you start putting thoughts into words, you are outlining the logic behind what you think, feel, or partly understand. This process of explaining a thought in a sense is the process of understanding. To express it more poetically, you are boosting your brainpower by exercising your "explain power."
To better learn something, then, you can start keeping a journal of your ideas and take notes. You can also go beyond that. For example, suppose you have a problem to solve. Start writing an explanation of how you will solve it, even if you have no idea how right now. Just start writing anything, and create an explanation. You might be surprised how often this exercise in thinking on paper (or a computer screen) becomes a workable plan.
If you really want to understand a topic, write a book about it. As a writer, I can tell you that writers don't always write because they understand something beforehand. We often write about something because we don't quite get it yet, and we want to understand it better. I felt strongly about the idea of writing as a means to better thinking before I started this article, but in writing it, I have come to a much better understanding of how the process works.
Of course, you may not want to write a book, or even an article, but you can write something. If you're learning something new, write a letter to a friend about it, and you'll understand it better. To invent something, write an explanation of the problem, and why it is worth solving, and you're half-way there. Writing is a powerful way to think better. Why not give it a try?
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