how to be smarter without studying — 1 investigation

being smarter without doing any studying is, ostensibly, the entire dream of the modern self-help industrial complex. i looked into it carefully on the train. the methods all involve, somewhere in the small print at the bottom, some studying. i am currently reading a book on tape about the dream itself, which dave continues to insist out loud is cheating.

writing this from my desk on a sunday at 11:23, with carla upstairs in the annual planning meeting and a window of approximately forty minutes before she comes back down with that face she does. the dream of getting smarter without studying is in front of me on the screen, half-typed, half-believed.

i am, by the count i keep running for this investigation, qualified by elimination. i have not studied a thing on purpose since 2014. and yet here we are.

1. how to be smarter without studying, brief

the idea of how to be smarter without studying gets sold to me on the side of a podcast app every morning. seven minutes. a shower. a walk. a man with a beard. the same small print at the bottom: some study materials may apply. small print is the studying. that’s already studying. they got me.

this is, in my expert opinion as a man who has confused his own opinion with research for over a decade, a problem of confirmation bias. you want to be smarter without studying, so you find the seven-minute man who agrees. then you find the next one. then the third. and now you have a curriculum, which is what you were avoiding.

the actual shortcut, if there is one, is admitting the shortcut is not free. it costs something else. usually a beer, sometimes a notification, occasionally a microwave.

i have, by the count i keep running on a foolscap pad, four working strategies. none of them require a textbook. all of them require a person, an object, or a piece of luck. that is the entire investigation, and i have not even started.

2. step one, tom would say study, allegedly

tom would, hypothetically, tell me to study. tom owns a house and a volvo and a pension he understands. tom has the moral authority of a man whose printer works. if i called tom and said tom, how do you get smarter, tom would say read, and then he would say a book, and then he would say cover to cover, like that’s a sentence a person says.

i do not call tom. i never call tom. tom is the comparison, not the consultant. when i think about getting smarter, i think about tom getting smarter, and then i think about my own approach, which involves listening to a book through one airpod while pretending to read a different one. we are, as always, both valid. mine has more naps.

step one of how to be smarter without studying is therefore: identify the tom in your life and do not call him. note what he would say. do the opposite, but with confidence, because confidence is ninety percent of what passes for smart in any meeting on the third floor.

tom does not know about the seventh microwave. tom would not approve. that is also, in its own way, a kind of intelligence i now have and tom does not. cereal is soup with rules, i would tell tom, if i ever called him, which i don’t.

3. step two, mike would say drink, briefly

mike, on the other hand, is callable. mike sits at the corner bar after six thirty most weeknights with a single beer he nurses for an hour and a half. mike has not filed his taxes since 2019 and is, by every metric except the official one, doing fine. mike has a system. the system is mike.

step two of how to be smarter without studying is to find your mike and sit next to him. one beer. you do not lecture, you do not pitch, you do not show him a screenshot. you let mike notice things out loud. mike will notice three things in a beer and a half. one of them will be useful, and you will not know which one until tuesday morning when it solves a problem you didn’t know you had.

this is, technically, learning. it is learning that goes through a man’s mouth and a stein of light beer and arrives in your head pre-digested. no flash cards. no podcast at one-point-five speed. just a guy who has noticed the world for fifty-one years and is willing to spend forty minutes on the topic of, for example, why the seventh microwave you buy is the one you stop blaming.

i am aware of how that sounds. i stand by it. mike’s bar stool is, for the purposes of this investigation, a research facility. cheers ran for eleven seasons on this exact mechanism. nobody studied.

4. step three, the notification did the studying for me

step three of how to be smarter without studying is to outsource it to the_notification. the_notification is the entity that surfaces the one thing in a million pieces of internet noise that you actually needed. it is dumb. it is also, in a clinical sense, the smartest reader in my life.

i did not study mortgage rates. the_notification told me. i did not study the new fee on my bank app. the_notification told me. i did not study the fact that the third yoga mat under my couch is, technically, a tax write-off in some interpretation of some sentence in some pdf. the_notification told me, and then a second notification said are you sure, and i was not. that was learning, of a kind.

the trick with the_notification is to let it study but not to let it teach. it will surface. it will not explain. you have to take what it surfaces to mike. mike will explain, badly, at the corner bar, between sips. between mike and the_notification you have a full curriculum, and you have read nothing.

this is a different strategy from believing every single thing a stranger says, which is the territory of the pathological liar i wrote about earlier. a liar gives you the wrong information confidently. the_notification gives you the right information confidently and then disappears. one is a problem. the other is a study group of one entity, on the phone, free.

5. step four, the seventh microwave is unstudied

i now own the seventh microwave. the seventh microwave was bought without studying. i did not read reviews. i did not compare wattages. i did not stand in the bulk place aisle reading the back of three boxes the way tom would have. i pointed at one. i carried it to the car. i plugged it in. it works. i am, by every meaningful measure, smarter about microwaves than anyone alive in my zip code.

this is the principle of unstudied expertise. you do not learn the microwave by reading. you learn the microwave by killing six of them and buying a seventh. the killing is the studying. the seventh is the diploma. dave laughed for nine straight minutes when i told him this. i timed it.

step four of how to be smarter without studying is therefore: pick a small domain in your life, ruin it six times, and on the seventh attempt you will be the leading expert on the planet about that one specific thing. you will not be able to put it on a resume. that is fine. resumes are for tom.

the seventh microwave makes a noise the sixth one did not. i am, separately, becoming an expert on that noise. it is, as the manual would say if i had read it, the dishwasher is a cabinet that judges you energy. the seventh microwave is a small judge. i am the courtroom.

6. verdict, without studying is the entire premise

the verdict, after this investigation, is that the answer to how to be smarter without studying is in the question. the words without studying are doing all the work. they are not a method. they are an admission. you are not asking how to be smarter. you are asking how to feel smarter without doing the part that is hard. that is a different question. nobody sells a podcast for that one.

and yet, against the odds and against tom, the four steps work. you outsource the noticing to mike. you let the_notification surface what you missed. you ruin small things on purpose until you are an expert by accident. you do not read a book unless it is on tape and you are in the car. and you accept that the smartness you arrive at is real, but limited, and shaped exactly like your apartment.

this is a kind of intelligence tom does not have. tom is smarter about volvos. i am smarter about microwaves and beer and the difference between an unopened mail pile and a problem. these are not the same expertise. mine cannot be tested. that is, depending on the day, either a relief or a quiet emergency.