Imagine an argument between Capn' Jack Sparrow,  Sherlock, Dr. House and Tyrion Lannister.  I know 11 people who would die to witness that spectacle.

Having a sharp brain with the ability to churn out crucial knowledge whenever needed is something many people dream of. Because the idea of a sharp brain mixed with an interesting personality is fiercely attractive. That is, the idea of always being two steps ahead in your mind, compared to the general population.

We'll keep the ambiguous concept of an interesting personality for a later time. How do you build up your brain to play the part first? How to think your way ahead of everyone and turn your brain into an efficient problem solving machine? I'm going to show you the answer..

Once upon a time, I happened to be standing in front of a system of gears rotating beautifully in unison. I was a jerk so grabbed a few pebbles and dropped it on the system of gears. Alas! The one pebble got stuck in between and the gears stopped rotating.

I apologize for making the lamest analogy in the world. What I'm saying is, if you have random thoughts littering your mind all the time, then they're bound to create obstructions for brain gears from functioning smoothly.  De-clutter your mind and you will be amazed at how efficient your brain actually is, without disturbances.

Endless thoughts bounce around the walls of your mind restlessly. De-cluttering it all may seem like a monumental task. But I assure you, its not. There are just 2 things you have to do.

a) Physical clutter reflects in your mind. So get your desk cleared up right after reading this step.

b) Finally give your brain the much needed calming boost, by Meditating. If you're too lazy to read all of it, just skip the article's 6th point, "The Thought Train", and enjoy the goodies after practicing it.

This first step itself is going to give you a unexpected boost to your brain's ability.

 "A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone to keep its edge. That's why I read so much." One of the most badass Tyrion dialogues.

Regular reading serves as the most effective all in one workout for your brain. Read the last sentence again. Drill it in your mind.

*Sounding like the superfast Terms and Conditions narrator in TV Ads*

Reading boosts creativity, spikes intelligence, improves analytical thinking, adds to your knowledge storage, improves memory, generates ideas, covers your vocabulary, strengthens your command with words, increases concentration, gives a peek into the most brilliant minds on earth, blah...blah

I have blabbered too much.

In simple words, reading is damn important. You could argue, why visual media doesn't serve as a better learning tool? With visual media, what you're doing is getting spoon fed with information. Your brain doesn't get to work out much. Consuming information effortlessly hardly leaves much of a trace in your mind for long time, unless you were watching an awesome movie like Die Hard. It also leaves a lot less room for thinking, which kills half the purpose.

Read everyday, switching between fiction and non fiction. And bte, reading tweets doesn't count as "reading".

Memory may the most pesky element of this whole cycle for most people.

"How the hell do I remember what I read?"

"I read this whole thing a month ago, and I don't remember shit"

The first thing you have to do is stop googling for "How to get an Eidetic (Photographic) memory"

Secondly, remember that forgetting is a natural thing and the brain has to let go of things that it doesn't consider useful. Such useless thoughts end up in the recycle bin(where you can still restore them), and after a while get deleted permanently.

Now we have identified why you forget. So what is the obvious solution? I said, the brain deletes things, it considers useless. All we have to do is, convince  the brain that it is not useless. Sounds simple enough. Lets directly dive into an example.

Suppose right now you're reading the book, "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. You've reached the part where you learn about the 2 scientists who accidentally discover an important proof towards that the Big Bang theory. You prolly forgot the names of those two scientists and how they did it right after reading that part.

The ridiculously simple way to counter that it is, spend just 10 minutes on Google everyday, to look up bits about what you read. Look at the scientist's pics. Visual data is much easier to store. Your brain automatically creates a locker about what you searched and related stuff. Even better, if you find something related to your today's reading session in real life, observe it, or engage with it. It's all a way of telling your brain that what you read is not useless. Ofcourse, you can't remember every word you read, but its easy to remember the important chunks of knowledge this way. Engage with the information after you've read it once.

"सदस्यता के बॉक्स में अपना ईमेल टाइप करें, और सभी अद्यतन प्राप्त"

Did you understand what's written above? Don't do Google translate. Admit that you'd have felt a lot wiser you had understood on reading.

Don't worry about that sentence. Learning a new language opens new horizons to the way your mind thinks. It broadens your understanding of everything, and also makes things easy if you have your crush is foreign and speaks that language.

I want this step to be the simplest of all 7. So lets' just learn a new language in our sleep. Fortunately I'm not joking.  Just follow the below steps. I'll take French for instance.

a) You're in bed after an exhausting episode of Game of Thrones Season 6. Ofcourse you can't sleep. So follow step b)

b)  Go to this Youtube video

c) Listen to it for about 20-30 minutes, with eyes closed, in your bed. If you get sleepy in between, just stop and go to sleep.

d) Start watching French entertainment i.e. movies, TV series, etc . Identify the words you know from the sleep sessions, get familiar with how French is spoken. Watch with English subs first and slowly remove the crutches and watch it without subs.

e) Go 2-3 months like this, and you'll be able to pretty much make sense out of most French you hear. That's when you start looking at French words start reading small comics. Google will help you through.

I know this way to learn a new language would sound amateurish to some, as opposed to starting from the letters, grammar and pronunciations. But this is a  more effortless and more fun way to get grasp a new language. Go for it. Richard Feynman said it,

"Study hard what interests you in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible"

Btw, the Hindi sentence above meant, 'Please scribble your email in the subscribe box to the right, so you can receive cool updates'. I know right, shameless plug.

Curiosity never killed the cat. That was just a stupid old story, made up by a stuck old guy.

Look around your room. What do you see? Don't tell me you see dirty tissues. Do you see a Wifi Router? Okay...Do you know how a router works? Do you know how exactly are you able to read this article that I wrote while I was eating m&m's in my room. Google for how a router works. Good, you're about to learn something cool.

That's a basic mechanism of curiosity. It takes you places just to find one itching answer and you learn loads of new stuff along the way. Start asking questions. Start observing the big and small things around you. Try to understand how things work. Be Curious.

Because understanding how things work, is the best possible shot you have at taking any situation under control when the time comes.

Do you want this? Do you need to work out your way to a powerful intellect? Every single big thing starts with one decision. The simple decision to try. You have to start somewhere. Start now.