In a previous post, we indicated that taking a nap has many benefits regarding your cognition. Cognition is the mental process of attaining knowledge and understanding through your thoughts, experiences, and senses. It is important to note that a growing body of work indicates that sleep has these positive effects because it increases activation. Activation is the process of associating similar concepts within our memories. This type of processing facilitates the restructuring of information that is a key part of problem solving.

Sio et al. (2012)’s work adds to this body of work. Specifically participants in the sleep group in their experiments demonstrated that performance on problem solving improves after a period of sleep. The sleep group out performed participants who remained awake while they slept. The sleep group solved a greater number of difficult problems than did the other groups. The researchers concluded that sleep facilitates problem solving, most likely via spreading activation. This effect was not remarkable for easy problems.

This means that taking a nap will likely increase your performance with problem solving at school or work. Of course, sometimes we do not have the option of taking a nap and must employ other strategies to solve our problems. Collaborative problem solving, which is working with others to solve your problems, is a viable option in circumstances like these.

Intelligence has an innate basis. Yet, a number of scientists indicate how smart you become is dependent on your environment (Sternberg, 2009).  To put it another way, you can shape and even increase your intelligence through various types of programs and interventions. According to Sternberg’s theory of intelligence, intelligence has three dimensions. These concern a person’s a) information processing, b) management of their living environment, and c) personal experience.

Information processing comprises three different types of components used to plan, monitor, and evaluate problems that require solving. Second are performance processes that one uses to implement planning, monitoring, and evaluation components. The final component of information processing is knowledge acquisition and people use these processes to gather resources to solve problems that they face. Examples of these components include goal setting for planning activities, self-evaluation as a form of monitoring, and seeking help as a method for obtaining additional resources to succeed.

Sternberg’s theory of intelligence assumes that we apply our intelligence in three ways to manage our environment. First, we must adapt ourselves to our existing environments. Second, we must shape our existing environment to create new sustainable environments. Third, we must select new environments as necessary to achieve our goals. For instance when you first start a new job, you probably try to figure out the implicit and explicit rules of your corporate culture. You then try to use these rules to succeed in your new company. You can also shape your new company by creating a social club or users group for after work activities. Finally, if you are unable to adapt yourself or shape your new work environment to suit you needs, you might consider selecting a new job where you can better achieve your goals.

Our level of experience affects how well we perform each task that we perform. Each of us faces tasks in conditions with which we have varying levels of experience. As tasks become progressively more familiar, many parts of the tasks may become automatic. They need little conscious effort for determining what steps to take next and how to accomplish the next step.  New and unfamiliar tasks can make demands on intelligence that are different from those of tasks from which one has developed automatic procedures.

In the end your goal should be to increase your familiarly with the skills required in each of the three dimensions of intelligence. For example these skills include problem solving, planning, logic, and word comprehension among others. Continue to read this blog for more information on how to get smarter.

When it comes to the topic of napping most of us will agree that taking a nap feels good. According to Sara Mednick, Ph.D. talking a nap will actually make you smarter. In her book, Take a Nap! Change your life. Mednick maintains that napping has a number of scientifically proven benefits. They are:

• Increasing your alertness. This is an important factor for many people for example astronauts, stock-car drivers, bus drivers, telemarketers, healthcare workers and others interacting with public. NASA space studies have demonstrated that alertness increases by as much as 100% after a nap.
• Improving your accuracy. Making mistakes costs us time, money, and energy. Making a mistake can sometimes destroy people’s lives. While working with greater speed usually causes more errors, napping offers a valuable exception. So whether you throw pitches or darts, play chess or checkers, cut grass or precious stones, a nap helps you get it right.
• Helping you better decisions. Where are you going to eat dinner? Should you propose today or wait a while. What car should you buy? Should you sell your car? Every second, every minute, every day, we make decisions both trivial and small. Research indicates that pilots who took a nap in the cockpit made fewer judgment errors on take-off and landings and those who did not.
• Improving your perception. We depend upon our eyes, our ears and, to a lesser extent taste, touch and smell to live a successful life. Science has demonstrated that we can enhance our driving, cooking, appreciating art forms, reading, quality control and even bird-watching after a nap.
• Boosts your creativity. Many of history’s great artists and inventors, for example Mozart and Einstein, have said that napping allows the brain to create associations necessary for creative insight and opens the way for new ideas.
• Helps your memory. Our memory consolidation, bringing information together to form knowledge, cannot occur in any significant way without sleep. We can improve everything from learning a new programming language to remembering human anatomy by taking a short nap between study periods.

Mednick’s book demonstrates that taking a nap has many selling points. It also helps you plan the optimum nap: when to take it, how long to sleep, and how not to wake up groggy. Taking a nap is a way to improve many of the thinking abilities that make you smarter.

According to Bandura (2012) self-efficacy is the belief in ones capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations. The idea emphasizes the exercise of human agency; specifically, peoples’ ability to exercise influence over what they think and do. Examples of self-efficacy include a person’s belief that they can perform a particular job, sing a song, or solve a logic problem.

Scientists have investigated the effects of self-efficacy in numerous domains and many people have assumed it is a significant influence on human performance.  Self-efficacy beliefs affect our choice of activities and effort expended upon personal actions. It also influences our perseverance in the face of obstacles; how we feel and the goals that we choose.

The best methods to improve your Self-Efficacy

You have three ways to increase our self-efficacy. First are mastery experiences that result from the desire to develop a competency. Researchers tend to regard mastery experiences as the most influential source of self-efficacy. Although mastery experiences imply proficiency, futile attempts will undermine self-efficacy beliefs. Vicarious experiences encompass viewing a comparable other’s performance on given tasks. This source of self-efficacy is particularly powerful when people are unsure of their own abilities or when they have modest prior knowledge of the pertinent activity. Discussions and other forms of persuasive communication can also raise self-efficacy. These are most successful when expressed by parties who are capable and honest. Click here to receive your guide to self-efficacy development.

Self-evaluation refers to measuring goal progress by comparing one’s current level of performance to a desired goal state. Self –evaluation is important because it helps you improve your performance. Self-evaluation certainly implies that one is self-monitoring their performance. Self-monitoring could be as simple as keeping mental notes on performance but should involve keeping a written record of performances.

Goals and feedback on performance are also required for self-evaluation.  They can be internal or external factors. This means that both personal and social matters are relevant to self-evaluation. One example could be the goal of losing five pounds and feedback would pertain to self-measurements of weight. A similar scenario would concern a supervisor’s assigned goal to exceed weekly sales quota and feedback comes from a company sales reports.

Individuals assess whether they have successfully fulfilled their expectations as part of self-evaluation. This results in changes in effort, perceptions of performance, and goal commitment.  Negative feelings often present if progress is slower than expected towards goals.  Low performers react negatively to this type of self-evaluation.  They are unlikely to try to improve their performance because they attribute their errors to internal, stable factors, such as low ability. They also attribute their performance to circumstances that they cannot change. It is not surprising that a person may change their goals due to negative self-evaluation.

Did you know self-evaluation is a precursor to high performance?

People who achieve high performance continue to pursue their goals following negative self-evaluation. They tend to attribute their failure to low effort and poor use of learning strategies. If progress is not sufficient, one may increase effort or change strategies to increase the likelihood of goal attainment and improving performance. High performers focus their attention on circumstances they can change. High performers are persistent.

Self-evaluations have both indirect and direct consequences. They have important implications for how we feel about ourselves and how we respond to challenges. Self-evaluation influences whether we pursue our goals. In the end, our self-evaluations will be negative at some point in our life; you must be persistent, increase your effort and try new strategies for great performance.