Would Magnus Carlsen Be The Best Strategic Businessman As Well?

For those of you who don't know who Carlsen is - He is the current World Chess Champion and quite possibly the final boss when it comes to playing chess competitively. Statistically speaking, Carlsen is the greatest chess player of all time.

If chess is not your piece of cake, do not worry. This article is not about Magnus Carlsen or about chess. Instead, this article is about finding out if a certain brain training activity (like chess & sudoku) would make you more intelligent.

Despite having preformulated moves and opening theories, Chess undoubtedly is a game of logic and the five time regaining world chess champion should be the most strategic person out there. Hypothetically, if Carlsen quits chess today and decides to choose business as his regular job, would he be the best strategic businessman as well?

The short answer is probably not.

The Mind-Muscle Myth

Hitting the gym and lifting weights is certainly going to help you pick groceries and other loads at ease. In a similar analogy, certain people believe that the mind is also a muscle and it can be trained by brain training activities Furthermore, they also subscribe to the idea that brain training activities is going to help you get better in school, work and life. Unfortunately, this analogy is wrong and training your brain on a narrowed down task such as chess will not make you better in other aspects of life. To put it up in simpler words, a good chess position and proper business strategy don’t use the same procedures and thus don’t go hand in hand.

Two major studies show why the mind muscle memory narrative is a myth and does not work like how people believe it to be. The first major study was by Edward Thorndike, who showed practicing similar tasks didn’t have any improvement in unrelated tasks. Thorndike also went further to quote “the mind is so specialized that we alter human nature in small spots.” Although Thorndike pioneered falsifying the mind-muscle narrative, John Anderson and Mark Singley released another study with updated metrics to Thorndike’s model. They also concluded that training in one skill won't help with another if it depends on different approaches or theories.

Boosting Your Intelligence

Brain-training activities hardly makes you more intelligent since it’s a narrowed down activity. Education however, is not. Developing a regular reading habit is not going to directly affect your work or life but it is certainly going to make you a better person.

Education improves general thinking by exposing you to different ideas and expanding your cognitive ability. Most importantly, the ability to learn anything that can help you solve problems is your ticket to becoming smarter. Ultimately, the need for intelligence is to solve a variety problems and if you can define your problems and learn to work your way through it, there’s no stopping you.

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