21–26 of 26 posts
General Intelligence, Stress Level, Familiarity with the task at hand, Good night's sleep, Coffee/tea/other stimulants, Nutrition, Exercise
I think the single most important in this list is stress levels which can really lower your iq by dozens of points at a particular moment. Everything except the first is modifiable.
Once that's taken care off, stimulant is another way. Coffee in general is a widely accepted way to accelerate thinking.
As some people mentioned, general anxiety or fear/emotion could impact thinking both positively and negatively. A healthy dose of cortisol could improve performance but too much of it especially if you get into panic/terror mode would impede fast thinking.
Fasting once you past through the low glucose phase could actually help assuming you are not one of those who are plagued with persistent brain fog due to lack of fuel during a fast.
Toxic load matters. If your body chemicals are out of whack or intoxicated it might cause brain inflammation which would impact your thinking.
But more importantly the baseline is genetics - how your brain is wired really matters. The amount of grey matters & glia along with the unique way your body myelinate connections impact how fast you could think.
Nootropics - could help to a certain extend but they ALL have side effects, some permanent so I don't recommend them.
Good question. In my view, thinking fast has to do with how well you can process emotion. Do you get stuck in the headlights or do you dive out of the way of the truck coming at you? That is not a question of preparedness mentally. It is a question of emotional preparedness. As in, how do you process fear? As to the ability to process information, that is also related to emotion, as in, what do you care to pay attent…
emotion and feeling! this is a wonderful angle to look at the ability of "quickness in thinking". I always suspect there is more to the 'hard' portion(knowledge/experience/skills) that contributes to one's quickness. The 'soft' part might be _more_ important. This is one question needed to be studied. Another question is how to tap into and train the emotion/feeling part to modify/increase/utilize it, or is it mostly…
Good question. In my view, thinking fast has to do with how well you can process emotion. Do you get stuck in the headlights or do you dive out of the way of the truck coming at you? That is not a question of preparedness mentally. It is a question of emotional preparedness. As in, how do you process fear? As to the ability to process information, that is also related to emotion, as in, what do you care to pay attent…
For example: I sat an exam just two days ago when one question offered an unfamiliar ordering of events in an incomplete version of the Paxos consensus algorithm. The question was looking for candidates to identify situations under which the protocol would fail. There is a huge amount of pressure to figure it out in the 20 minutes you have. Getting stressed out and context switching between questions WILL prevent you from getting the answer right. Stay cool, think clearly, and 9/10 you will get the answer.
Conversely, there was a lady sitting next to me in one of my exams this morning. The questions were challenging and largely unexpected. I could see that she was holding back tears and frantically trying to find questions she thought she could answer. As awful as it sounds, she let her emotions take control of the situation and as a result lost at least 30 minutes where she could have been working her way through the exam getting at least partial marks on questions.
I think taking control of your emotions is something you can learn. Whether it is easy or not probably depends on the individual. I am no expert. For me, a masters degree has really helped me take control of high stress situations. I am much more capable at identifying causation, eliminating correlation and finding the answer than I ever was before.
There's tons of books on the subject but read both parts of this:
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/current-alert-sp-29853922...
I think everyone has the capacity to be a quick thinker. The two main components to being a quick thinker are not what you think. The first one is a competitive spirit. If you have ever played any sports and you have felt the desire to win, this will get you half way to thinking quickly. Train yourself to be able to look at the problem and give up many different possibilities rather than just the smoking gun fix. Som…
I totally agree on the "competitive spirit" point. If one has a strong desire to take control and to win, the needed energy and sense of emergency will come quickly. To expand on this point, I think in addition to the competitive spirit, a carefree mindset also helps to keep cool, make you to step back a little bit, to think quickly in unconventional ways. I am not so sure about your second point. I understand more k…