How to Become Smarter (47 page)

In my experience, the aforementioned physical treatments reduce impulsivity and slow a person down. If the depressant diet excludes artificial ingredients and junk food, then it will not impair judgment and the person will be able to make rational decisions. One or two days of this regimen are sufficient to achieve low impulsivity, for someone who starts out with a normal mental state. For someone who is agitated, hyperactive, or euphoric, it may be necessary to use this regimen for 3-4 days in order to reduce impulsivity. In my experience, lowered (not depressed) mood is the best mental state for suppressing impulses. This mental state is conducive to sound and realistic decisions in situations when the decision will have profound and far-reaching effects on your subsequent life. There is one caveat, though. The low-impulsivity regimen described above is not useful for solving complex problems and can make you pessimistic and too cautious. Therefore, once you overcome an impulse (a strong desire), you can switch to the modified high-protein diet or the antidepressant diet, which can improve the problem-solving ability. Normal mood (neither low nor elevated) is optimal for solving problems and making sound decisions, but it is not helpful when you need to suppress a strong impulse.

Some readers may have noticed that the low-impulsivity regimen is the same as the anti-procrastination regimen we discussed in Chapter Five. Therefore, the combination of a hot environment with the depressant diet improves two important components of self-control:

1. preventing oneself from doing unwise things;
   
2. forcing oneself to do necessary things.
   

The psychological techniques that are useful for reducing impulsiveness are: 1) writing in a diary; 2) temporary disconnection of communications devices. Writing one’s thoughts on a piece of paper or in a diary has many benefits. When making a difficult decision, it is useful to write out all the pros and cons in detail. Drawing a diagram is also useful. You can then reread your text and make corrections or additions. When you have visualized, analyzed, and digested all the information, it will be easy to make a good decision. It is crucial that everything you write in a diary remain strictly confidential. A good way to ensure privacy is encryption software. We talked about this in detail in the section about solitude (
point #5
).

Disconnecting both cellular and landline phones for several days also reduces impulsivity. (
Warning
: With this approach, there is a danger of being unable to make emergency phone calls.
) These are radical measures that are rarely necessary, but you need to keep them in mind because they can be useful in some situations. Instead of being one second away from acting on your impulse, now you are 10-15 minutes away from implementing your impulses. You may have to go outside and use a payphone or you may have to write an e-mail message or do something else. This short delay is sufficient for controlling most impulses. This approach will give you peace of mind in certain situations when low impulsivity is crucial. You don’t have to terminate your account with the phone company. You can store all the equipment somewhere away from your home for some time, such that you cannot get your hands on these devices.

If your impulses are related to the use of the Internet, disconnecting your internet service for several days can help to overcome this problem. For instance, you may get into an argument and can’t help posting on some message boards. Likewise, you don’t have to suspend your account with the internet service provider. Instead, you can disconnect the modem and unplug all cords and store them temporarily somewhere away from your home (for example, at work). If you have internet access at work, it is possible to disconnect the internet service at home permanently. In most cases, you will not need these radical interventions in order to reduce impulsivity; the physical treatments will suffice.

What about a self-control emergency, when you are away from home and a wrong desire suddenly overcomes you, the desire you can’t resist? For example, you know you are going to do something stupid and can’t help it. The following method will help:

1. Eat a large amount of boiled meat, 0.5 to 1 kg (1-2 lbs.) in one sitting, until you cannot look at it anymore (you can read about the risks in
   Chapter Three
   ). If boiled meat is not available, any cooked meat will do (fried, grilled, baked, processed, and so on) as long as it is free of pungent vegetables.
   
2. Also eat some cooked whole grains, preferably boiled grains, but whole-grain bread will do.
   
3. If you can, go to a place where you will have no access to any means of communication: no cell phones, landline phones, and no Internet (TV and radio are OK). You need this place even if you can stay there for a brief period of time (15-30 minutes).
   
4. Increase your environmental temperature if possible and don an extra layer of clothing (for example, warm pants and a sweater). Avoid fresh air, if possible: a stuffy, hot environment is most effective. Avoid both hot and cold hydrotherapy.
   
5. Weigh all the pros and cons of the decision that is bugging you, in writing. After that, you can distract yourself by watching a movie, TV, reading a book, or listening to music.
   

To maintain a good level of self-control in the short term
after
the emergency, you can use the general recommendations outlined at the beginning of this section.

• The combination of a hot environment (Chapter Two) and the depressant diet (Chapter Four) can help achieve a low level of impulsivity and prevent rash and imprudent action. Eating large amounts of boiled meat and whole-grain bread is especially effective.
  
• This method is not useful for solving complex problems. Once you overcome an impulse (strong desire), you can replace the aforementioned “low-impulsivity regimen” with a lifestyle that facilitates problem-solving.
  
• Healthy people should not use adapted cold showers on a regular basis. This procedure can make you feel great, but it also promotes impulsivity and taking of unreasonable risks, which are likely to have disastrous consequences. (Cold showers are OK during a physical illness.)
  
• In general, moderate consumption of boiled whole grains and boiled meat is essential for maintaining a normal or low level of impulsivity (and for avoiding financial ruin that can result from uncontrolled impulses).
  
• Occasional consumption of whole-grain bread (two to four times a month) is also necessary for good impulse control and for psychiatric normalcy.
  
• Temporarily disconnecting your telephone and internet service (a radical measure that is rarely necessary) will further reduce impulsivity. With this approach, there is a danger of being unable to make emergency calls.
  
• Writing in a diary and drawing diagrams will help you to comprehend and analyze a problem and thereby control impulses.
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As you may have noticed, the lifestyle changes described in this book can improve one mental ability but often worsen other mental abilities. For example, the fruit-and-vegetable diet can sharpen your wit, but it also increases impulsiveness and distractibility. The creativity regimen activates imagination but reduces motivation for difficult and boring types of work. Fortunately, you will rarely need all possible mental abilities at their peak level simultaneously. Therefore, you can choose different lifestyles depending on a task in question. You can even vary your diet on a day-to-day or a meal-to-meal basis.

For example, if you are a student and have to sit through lectures in the morning, you can have breakfast that consists of fruits and vegetables. In my experience, listening is easier than reading and does not require significant mental concentration. Thus, you do not need a high-protein meal in the morning in this case. When you come home, however, and have to do some homework, in this case, you will need to concentrate on reading, writing, or both. Therefore, a high-protein meal will be necessary for lunch. When you are done with your homework and want to get together with your friends in the evening, you can use a fruit-and-vegetable-only dinner. This type of food facilitates social activities. Let’s say, the next day, Saturday, you decide to visit your cousin who lives in the suburbs. You spend the whole day at your cousin’s and on this day, you do not adhere to any particular diet consuming everything that your hosts offer you to eat. To avoid overeating, you choose to use the special chewing techniques from Chapter One. In order to be a less boring person, you decide to use an adapted cold shower in the morning and afternoon. You have a lot of fun and become so excited that you are unable to fall asleep until 3 AM. The next day, Sunday, you come back home and decide that you need to normalize your sleep. You consume nothing but boiled shredded wheat the whole day and use a head-out hot shower before going to bed. This allows you to fall asleep at your usual time. You wake up on Monday morning rested and ready for another busy week.

The above description is a hypothetical way of life of a person who does not adhere to any permanent lifestyle and does not subscribe to any particular diet. Yet this person can enjoy good productivity at school, have fun in their spare time, and lead a more or less normal life in general. If you change lifestyles depending on circumstances, you will become a more versatile and flexible person, who can function well in a variety of settings.

• This book does not advocate following one lifestyle permanently but proposes at least seven different regimens, depending on circumstances, and recommends changing the lifestyle frequently.
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Since higher intelligence correlates with higher income [
24
], some readers may be wondering if the advice offered in this book can help them to get rich or at least to become self-employed. My answer is: this information is unlikely to help you get rich and will not guarantee self-employment, but it may increase your chances of successful self-employment. One reason is that any publicly available information, if it is useful, spreads quickly and provides no special advantage to any one person. Another reason is that wealth and successful business ownership depend on luck, as explained below. In particular, there is no correlation between net worth and IQ [
24
]. What this book
will
help you to achieve is to get a good education and find a good job. If you have those, it is realistic to become financially independent and well-to-do at the retirement age. Having an advanced academic degree will increase the probability of successful self-employment before the retirement age by about two-fold [
507
].

This section explains why you shouldn’t invest your hard-earned money in the following things:
a)
individual stocks;
b)
your own startup business;
c)
trading of financial instruments;
d)
various prepackaged profit systems;
e)
pure gambling activities such as the lottery; and
f)
online poker. This section also explains why wealth requires luck and advice on how to get rich is always useless. I studied economics and finance in my spare time in the United States and can share some of my thoughts on this subject. Since I do not have any certificates or academic degrees in this field, readers need to be careful when interpreting my conclusions. Some of the advice below is not new and people who are not interested in this topic can jump to
the end
of this section.

I
NVESTING IN A
L
UCKY
S
TOCK
.
Investing all your savings in one or several stocks is a bad idea because there are too many variables that the investor cannot predict, for instance:

1. future changes in the management of the company
   
2. accidents
   
3. natural disasters
   
4. political changes
   
5. future changes in the marketplace such as:
   
   • new technologies
     
   • consumer preferences
     
   • new competitors
     
   • changes in investor preferences
     

Investing in one or several stocks is similar to gambling because luck plays a major role in the successful outcome of this activity. It is understandable that this type of investors are trying to outperform the market index (such as the S&P 500). Yet the probability that they will pick a winning stock and keep holding and buying it as their single investment for decades is close to zero. Past performance of a stock is not a guarantee of future results. They are trying to win a lottery, but instead, there is a high probability that this investing strategy will perform worse than the stock index in the long run. There is also a small risk that the company in question will go bankrupt.

The only exception to this advice is the rare situation when you have complete control over the fate of the corporation in question. For example, if you are a CEO or a chairman (or a chairwoman) of the board of directors. In this case, it will be reasonable to have most of your net worth in the stock of a single company. People who hold these positions can grow their net worth rapidly by awarding themselves bonuses and stock options. If you do not expect to become a chairman or CEO of a publicly traded corporation, it will be a bad idea to invest in a single stock. This investment is unlikely to outperform the market average.