How to Think like a Genius to Optimize Your Business and Life
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How to think like a genius…? “Ho ho, thinking very highly of yourself today aren’t you Jellis..?” Well no, I am not trying to be arrogant or give myself praise here at all.
What I want to share with you all is a way of thinking, a thought process, a way of seeing that absolutely anyone can learn.
However, my reason for sharing it is because I find not many people actually do. Yet, the benefits to be gained out of it – both in business and in life are tremendous.
Now, to get right into it as I hate the whole “when is it coming?” moment too.
Whenever I set out to do something in life or business wise with The IPS Project or any of my other projects, I always ask myself “How can I absolutely optimize everything out of this?”
How can I squeeze every last bit of juice out of this orange I’ve taken up?
Let’s jump straight into an example of how to think like a genius:
A great friend and very talented movie maker Marvin Flamme came up to me with a project idea for a short movie.
After hearing it out and giving it some thought, I said yes. We decided together to shoot the movie in Vietnam, and so we booked our tickets and embarked some months later. (When the short movie is done I’ll link it up here. It’s currently being produced.)
Now, the way that many people think and act would be simply to go to Vietnam, shoot the movie, and be done with it.
Here is my thought process, and what I did:
My first priority was, of course, the short movie.
But alongside that there were also these other factors: I had always wanted to see Vietnam; this project was a good chance for me to experiment with crowdfunding; this trip and our project made for a great vlog so I took the chance to film behind the scenes of the movie being made, and everything that goes with it, both for myself as a record of our time there, but also for my YouTube channel which I could then use for promotional reasons – for the short movie and to build up my channel.
Also, traveling through Vietnam was a beautiful opportunity for me to take some stunning photos.
Once again, these could be used for my own personal collection and memories, for my portfolio here on this website, for The IPS Project, and to sell online on my stock portfolio.
Of course, traveling brings stories and new ideas, which I wrote down whenever they came to me. Out of those, many new articles arose, like this one.
And finally, I had been thinking of doing my Dive Masters in Thailand for a long time, so, after we were done shooting for the movie, I traveled onwards to Thailand to do my Dive Masters, as both countries were too close not to take that opportunity.
You see what I am doing? I am trying to connect dots.
I try to look for the maximum amount of opportunities that I can get out of a single opportunity.
Why?
Because if all I did was just focus on the short movie and upon release it was a complete flop (absolutely not what we are going for of course!) the whole trip would still have been very worthwhile for me as I got so many other things out of it – all helping to push my business and personal life forward.
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More Examples of How to Think Like a Genius
Let me give you another example of a recent thought process. Currently, I am living in Barcelona, for a bunch of different reasons as you might guess.
However, I have established these reasons, and have been making upcoming plans to move to Bali and live there for some months.
Here is why I decided to do this: First of all, I can dive there… which I miss, a lot. Secondly, it’s waaaay cheaper than Barcelona.
For the price that I am hiring my apartment here, I could have a place with a private swimming pool there…
Also while I am planning to go to Bali, I am working on my next 3-month goals (I will write an article about my goal setting plan sometime in the future), which is my first book.
I am more than confident I will end up with some interesting thoughts, feelings, and experiences to use as I know the impacts traveling brings.
Also, one of my year challenges is doing one public speech.
As in many cities, Denpasar (capital city of Bali) has a Toastmasters, which is an international organization to help people improve their communication, public speaking, and leadership skills, which I will join to accomplish that challenge.
Other reasons why I am going to Bali: the food – Asian food is the best (in my opinion at least); the weather is great; the ocean is all around; there are many digital nomads traveling/staying in Bali, which will more than likely lead to meeting some interesting people, and last but not least, it increases my chance of finally visiting Tokyo as it’s not too far compared with Barcelona.
Again, if you look at the thought process you will see I am trying to squeeze every bit of juice from the orange.
But I examined more than a single orange to see which one was the best before I came to a decision.
In a less metaphorical way, I checked off many different places, until I found one which offered the most opportunities and hence made the most sense for me to go to.
This thought process is a perfect example of how to think like a genius, and one I apply to just about anything I do.
Another example would be my podcast, The IPS Podcast. I didn’t create it just out of the blue.
There were many different reasons why it made sense and was a good decision. It allowed me to have a platform to which I could invite fascinating people to.
I am able to help and reach thousands of new people with it through Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, YouTube, etc. and through it I can promote any new products or events for The IPS Project.
From the interviews I can create new content, for example the audio I can use for creating short movies, the show notes of the episodes gives me new content for The IPS Project, and in the future, I’ve even thought about writing a book around all the lessons taken from each interview and guest.
These are just a few of the many additional opportunities around why I created the podcast. If I had only looked at doing the interviews and nothing else, I would have – as you can see – missed out on an enormous amount of potential.
This thought process of thinking deeper, before doing something can help you maximize every single aspect of your life, allowing you to gain so much more out of everything you do.
All you need to do is think and look deeper and further and see where you are able to connect the most dots. That’s what it means to think like a genius.
Whenever I am going through this thought process when deciding upon something, I always draw this out on a notebook.
Getting it down on paper and drawing it, as opposed to simply creating the thought process in your head, helps with the whole process, especially with finding the connections, and you quickly start to see where the maximum amount of possibilities lay. It’s like drawing out a blueprint.
I would say, give this thought process a go, it’s a highly effective way, on how to think like a genius.