The Book of Genius

I bought this book two years ago, at a second hand bookshop. Actually, I was looking for a copy of Tony Buzan’s Mindmap-book, but this one was much better. For two years it has been my pillow-book, and now I needed it to write something about “Goethendipity“, a word coined by Buzan, on my Goethe-website. Flipping through the pages of the book, I saw how good the book actually is, especially the first part, which explains the basics of genius.

The chapter on MindMapping for example, is much better than the book, because it is shorter, so you know the basics of MindMapping faster, without doing all the tedious exercises in Buzan’s rather expensive MindMap-book.

For Memory-development I like Buzan’s “Smashin’ Scope”, that puts together the three basic pinciples of memory (Association, Imagination, Order & Structure) in one little acronym, that refers to:

• S – Synaeshesia and sensuality
• M – Movement
• A – Association
• S – Sexuality
• H – Humor
• I – Imagination
• N – Number
• S – Symbolism
• C – Color
• O – Order/sequence
• P – Positivity
• E – Exaggeration

If you need a book on memory and learning skills, I like Kenneth Higbee’s Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It”, that, after a loooong introduction on general learning skills informs extensively about mental filing systems. And, of course Dominic O’Brien’s “How to develop a perfect memory” is very good.

Back to Buzan. And, of course, to myself. Because, while my intellectual greed is my good habit, one of my less respected habits (by other people) is my intellectual pride – which is after all why I maintain this weblog. So I took Buzan’s Genius-test. I had to find out my Genius Quotient by giving myself marks on the following traits:

1. Vision
2. Desire
3. Faith
4. Commitment
5. Planning
6. Persistance
7. Learning from mistakes
8. Subject Knowledge
9. Mental Literacy
10. Imagination
11. Positive Attitude
12. Auto-suggestion
13. Intuition
14. Mastermind Group (real)
15. Mastermind Group (internal)
16. Truth/Honesty
17. Facing Fears/Courage
18. Creativity/Flexibility
19. Love of the Task
20. Energy (Physical/sensual/sexual)

The point is, of course, did I cheat on the test? Would I lie to myself? Of course not :-), So I ranked myself as honestly as possible and on a six-step scale of 0 – 2000 I did 1605 – slightly more than 80%. Which is just enough to stumble over the threshold of level 3, according to Buzan

An exceptionally good score. With such high marks you will generally be near the top, and occasionally at the top, of your chosen endeavour.

That sounds fine, but it is not enough for me. In fact, I will not be satisfied until I find myself in Level One, somewhere between 1900 – 2000 (and still pushing for 2000, which will give me the God-like status of a singularity 🙂 ).