Intelligence Becomes Limited Without Curating Your Imagination

There are many low-cost or free intellectually stimulating activities that you can engage in nowadays. If you are interested in logic puzzles or riddles, there are plenty of them online like daily jumble solver. Strikingly has an entire page dedicated to riddles, which includes oldies but goodies like “A word that goes ‘thump’ in the night” (the answer being “mumps”) and “What’s black when it’s dirty and white when it’s clean?” (The answer being “a newspaper”). Some websites even have contests with cash prizes for people who solve the most complex problems.

Train Your Brain

The reason logic puzzles and riddles exist is that they strengthen the mind in many ways. They sharpen your intelligence by giving you opportunities to flex your logic skills in a similar way that playing chess or Sudoku might, but often at a much quicker pace. Logic puzzles also force us to think indirectly about certain things, especially when the solution requires abstract thought. Even if you take breaks from time to time and don’t repeatedly solve puzzles regularly, any brain exercise is better than no brain exercise.

Read Often

If you’re trying to catch up on classic literature, Project Gutenberg is a goldmine of books that can be read (and taken freely) online. The site offers thousands of free e-books covering a wide range of topics, like the seminal Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, credited as one of the first examples of science fiction. You can also find poetry from writers such as Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe and political statements from Gandhi and Jefferson. Everyone should take advantage of this opportunity to become more cultured because it’s all free.

Art And Music

If you enjoy art and music, the internet has many options for both. There are countless free songs available on YouTube, including hits from famous composers. Furthermore, there are always new musicians who people may not have heard of yet but deserve recognition (e.g., check out Steve Lacy, a teenager who is one-third of The Internet).

You can also find public domain images that can be used freely on Pixabay or Wikimedia Commons websites. These libraries of images cover everything from landscapes to plants to abstract works. Googling something like “free photos” will give you plenty of options to choose from.

Ask Me Anything

If you want to get your hands dirty right away, Reddit has boards called “ Ask me anything,” which lets famous people answer random questions from anyone in the world. There are boards dedicated to everything from metaphysics and morality to more narrow subjects such as dating advice. This wide variety means everyone should be able to find something they’re interested in at least once.

Imagine

All these different types of intellectual stimulation require creativity, so people should take advantage of this aspect while trying out new activities. Without imagination, intelligence becomes very limited because there’s only one way to solve a problem—however, with creativity, there are multiple paths you can take. This is also how people construct new ideas that have never been thought of before.