Everyone wants to seem a little smarter than they really are. The problem is that it’s so hard and takes so much time to get really smart. But fortunately, it is quite easy to create a smarter look and thus also appear much smarter than we really are.
• Wear glasses
It is no secret that people who wear glasses are considered smart. On film and TV, smart people always wear glasses. It’s an old stereotype that has flourished for a long time. The myth says that people who read a lot (and therefore are smarter than others) strain their eyes so much that they have to wear glasses.
Just twenty years ago, it was ugly to wear glasses and people wandered around half-blind rather than getting glasses. Nobody wanted to be branded a “nerd”.
Today, the situation is the opposite. Glasses have become fashionable even for people without visual impairments. The “nerd” has stayed inside. The “glasses norm” is cool, both among boys and girls. Being a bit of a “nerd” is nice these days. It probably means that you dare to invest in yourself and in your career. There are several studies that show that people with glasses are perceived as both smarter and more serious. To a little discreetly pick on and off and finger their glasses during e.g. a job interview can make you look thoughtful and wise (ie serious). Such things always impress.
Try to get yourself a pair of glasses and see what happens. There are glasses with regular window glass to buy. In Asia, the trend is even greater, where people only use the frames without plastic glass in. Try it too.
• Carrying a book Carrying a book
with you at all times, everywhere (preferably thick and “difficult”) is also a worn-out, but effective classic that shows that you are a “deep” person. If you do not read (or have read) the book, so that you at least have a sense of what the book is about and who the author is, otherwise there is a great risk that it will be embarrassing if someone wants to start discussing the content with you! (More on how to talk about books you did not read in a chapter later)
Good books to be seen with are e.g. “Crime and Punishment” (Fyodor Dostoevsky), “Odysseus” (James Joyce) and “In Search of the Time That Flee” (Marchel Proust).
Otherwise, the authors are often more important than the titles themselves. Being seen with books written by Proust, Sartre, Keats, Strindberg, Kafka, Yeats, Boye, Tolstoy, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hesse and Coelho will create an image of you as an intellectual giant.
Books by e.g. Dan Brown, Camilla Läckberg and Lisa Marklund should be avoided at all costs!
• Put a pencil behind your ear
It’s a silly but old way of creating the illusion that you’re busy. The signal you send says that your time is so valuable, that you can not waste a single second rummaging around in pockets, desk drawers or handbags for a pen when all your fantastic ideas that are constantly buzzing in your head must be written down. If you also replace the pencil with a ballpoint pen, you are telling the world that you are so sure of your thing when you write that you do not even think about making any mistakes (which cannot be erased).
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• Buy an attaché portfolio
Carrying an attaché portfolio is another old-fashioned cliché that still works and works just as well for boys as for girls. It’s an easy way to look a little more important and more significant than anyone else who frolicks around their stuff in backpacks or cheap sports bags. No one needs to know that you may then have the bag full of Phantom magazines, Cosmopolitan and other loose rubbish.
• Solve crossword puzzles
When you still have a pen available, you can present a fairly demanding crossword puzzle, either in your lap when you are sitting on the train or on the café table in front of you. Not only does it make you look smarter, learning to solve crossword puzzles will also make you a little wiser.
• Sit with one leg over the other
Strange as it may sound, we look more intelligent if we put one leg over the other when we sit.
Why?
I have no idea, but several studies confirm that it signals control and class.
• Patch the elbows
In recent years, the trend of patched elbows on sweaters and jackets has been given new life. The reason is, of course, that it makes people look smarter. The classic prejudice says that those with patched elbows hang over books and other intellectual pursuits so much that their elbows are punctured and that they are so engrossed in their pursuits that they do not have time for worldly petitesses like torn clothes. The trend has been around for hundreds of years. That should mean that it works to look a little more intellectual. You can always try while you think about how everyone with patched elbows has time to cut out well-shaped pieces of leather and sew over the holes, but not buy new clothes.
• Drink coffee
If you are not already a coffee drinker, learn to drink coffee. In combination with the other points above, by constantly being seen with a coffee mug in hand, you will say that you constantly need new energy because you (in the eyes of those around you) are probably always up late at night with important projects. People might think that you might be studying quantum physics, reading Greek philosophy, or writing a book. It makes you an interesting person, right…?
• Massage your temples
Another old worn-out classic based on the illusion that you – preferably when you get a question during a discussion and with a thoughtful, slightly bothered look – rub your temples and pull on the answer for a while even if you have no idea what the question is applies. By massaging your temples, you not only gain valuable time to think before you have to answer. You also make it look as if you are having a headache from being forced to go through all the enormous collection of information and life experience that your brain is piling on to find the answer to the particular question you are now facing. If you have a beard or mustache, it works just as well to twist the hair or rub your chin for a while, but beware. Do not hold for more than a couple of seconds before you say something, because then it looks like you do not know the answer at all.
• Dye your hair
Both you and I know that intelligence is not in the hair color.
There is no scientific evidence that blondes are stupider than others.
The smartest girl I know is blonde. Her sister is just as nimble, but brunette.
Nevertheless, the prejudice about blondes is impossible to upset. It is too deeply rooted in an ancient popular cultural performance without a grounding in reality. The reason why blondes are generally considered stupider is that famous blondes often pretend to be more confused and stupider than they really are. The media has been diluting the stereotype for so long now that we no longer even question the truthfulness of it. In the eyes of the world, blondes are forever stupid, so if you are blonde try to dye your hair. There is a good chance that you will be treated in a completely different way, such as brunette.
ALSO READ: 3 smart tips for talking to people without having anything meaningful to say
• Dress “smarter”
A slightly conservative attire always makes you look more intelligent and well-educated.
For boys, it’s about a shirt, tie and jacket or suit and being well-shaven and well-combed. For girls, dress, trouser suit, “tie blouse” and “discreet” make-up and set hair apply. No matter what people say, all people always make the same mistake – we judge the book by its cover. A person with strict attire is always treated better than someone with a hooded jacket and torn jeans or a short skirt and high heels, then it does not matter how rich, smart or nice the person really is. You always have a better chance of being treated better, upgraded to a better seat on the plane, get people to listen to you and take your suggestions or complaints seriously if you are properly and “intellectually” dressed. Your attire reveals much more about you to the outside world than you can ever (and really want to) tell yourself.
• Grow a beard and tie your hair in a knot.
If you’re a guy, grow a beard. The cliché that intelligent men always have beards still applies. Invest in a well-groomed, fine beard (á la Sigmund Freud) and no big, bushy “lumberjack beard” (á la Captain Haddock).
Also avoid “goatee”, it only has villains and other suspicious individuals on film.
Although Socrates, Charles Darwin and Leonardo Da Vinci are among the smartest and most influential people in history and they all had bushy giant beards, it’s just to say – times have changed. Big beards no longer give intellectual associations, on the contrary. Big-bearded beards today are more reminiscent of the slacker “The Dude” in the movie “The Big Lebowski” and eccentric cowboys or crazy scientists than smart, modern world citizens.
Girls put their hair up, either in a knot or “pig’s back”. All librarians always have it in all movies and they always look just as smart. Avoid tassel or ponytail, then you look more like a schoolgirl. Stretched hair signals to the world that you are a person who is far too busy with important things to waste valuable time constantly poking away hair tests that fall down your face and break your concentration.
• Straight in the back and nose in the air
Just as your clothes send signals to other people about who you are, so does your posture.
Slack shoulders, sluggish gait and crooked back make you look sluggish, indifferent and unintelligent.
Straight back, determined steps and a little nose in the air make you look engaged, focused and smart.
