Page 166 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

simple problems, going for the convoluted answer and overlooking the simple,
more obvious solution. Research has shown that smart people can have more of
a tendency to lose themselves in the weeds of complexity. People with less
apparent intellectual horsepower, on the other hand, can cut more easily to
simpler solutions. 9

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S HOW YOU THINK

“Experience has shown me an almost inverse correlation between high GRE scores and
ultimate career success. Indeed, many of the students with the lowest scores became
highly successful, whereas a surprising number of the ‘geniuses’ fell by the wayside for
some reason or other.” 10
—Bill Zettler, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, longtime academic advisor, and winner of
the Teacher of the Year Award, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

If you are one of those people who can’t hold a lot in mind at once—you lose
focus and start daydreaming in lectures, and have to get to someplace quiet to
focus so you can use your working memory to its maximum—well, welcome to
the clan of the creative. Having a somewhat smaller working memory means you

can more easily generalize your learning into new, more creative combinations.
Because your working memory, which grows from the focusing abilities of the
prefrontal cortex, doesn’t lock everything up so tightly, you can more easily get
input from other parts of your brain. These other areas, which include the
sensory cortex, not only are more in tune with what’s going on in the

environment, but also are the source of dreams, not to mention creative ideas. 11
You may have to work harder sometimes (or even much of the time) to
understand what’s going on, but once you’ve got something chunked, you can
take that chunk and turn it outside in and inside round—putting it through
creative paces even you didn’t think you were capable of!
Here’s another point to put into your mental chunker: Chess, that bastion of
intellectuals, has some elite players with roughly average IQs. These seemingly

middling intellects are able to do better than some more intelligent players
12
because they practice more. That’s the key idea. Every chess player, whether
average or elite, grows talent by practicing. It is the practice—particularly
deliberate practice on the toughest aspects of the material—that can help
lift average brains into the realm of those with more “natural” gifts. Just as