What is a good alternative to obsessing with I.Q. scores in real life?

A good obsession, but the changes are small and take a pant load of work. I think you got what you got.

Good obsessions:
Collecting AND reading books. Even if you aren’t going to read every book that you buy, you can help your future generation grow with wisdom and intelligence by collecting some good books.

Collecting new words. Writing each and every new word you come across, taking screen shot of it. Precisely, hoarding the words. Because you can love words more than a person.
Walk in Nature daily
Read the NY Times newspaper everyday (Or other good Newspapers)
Have a zero carbon footprint
Waking up early.
Do things related to sustainability
Being neat.
Eating healthy
The need to take homemade food for lunch on weekdays and skip eating out.
Write down 10 ideas a day
Eating within 15 minutes max. For obvious health reasons.
Bookmarking certain URLs in folders.
Seeking inspiration in anything and everything.
Uninterrupted reading mode.
Nicely made bed without any wrinkles on the sheet.
Determine the Perfect speed of a running fan.
Ending your day by writing journal.

@Forever_Free Thanks… Collecting AND reading books I can do. I purchased lots of $0.01 cent books from Amazon for fun in the past 5 years. I just have to read them. I canceled my cable for more time and money to read and buy books. I canceled my Amazon Prime account and saved $75 by tomorrow.

Keep the suggestions coming everyone.

The thing is to train yourself not to worry about it. It simply doesn’t matter, if you’re content with yourself.

I remember when I was younger thinking that I didn’t have ‘cool’ hair, or I was too tall, or I liked some music that others didn’t, and feeling inadequate.

Once I figured out that no one cared and no one was judging me – I was doing it to myself—I convinced myself to stop.

Don’t go looking for trouble.

Realize you cannot increase your intelligence, you gotta go with what you have,

GURPS is massively better than D&D, IMO. Much more based on things making sense.

Raising your IQ is the wrong approach. You want to LEARN. You must play the cards you’ve been dealt, but only you can determine what it is that will improve your hand. Because in the end, you alone can fully understand just what it is that might render you content. And don’t fool yourself. There are more intellectually gifted folks and miserable individuals sitting on piles of money that we see hurling themselves from buildings than we can track. If D&D trips your switch, take pride in the fact that you harm no one and we love you here. Forget all that hollow achievement bullshit. If you disappeared tomorrow, the extraordinary thing for which i must credit you and I promise to never forget is that it is impossible to recall or for that matter even imagine in all these many years —you ever expressing a mean thought or comment about ANYONE. You cannot possibly understand how extraordinary an achievement that it is.

I grew up being shamed for my intelligence. I spent my childhood wishing I was more intelligent and being jealous of the cool “intelligent” around me.

I have never passed IQ tests. I highly suspect that the way I proceed information isn’t suitable for IQ tests. I’m bad ar math and I think slowly and deeply, while IQ tests require you to be quick.

The thing with IQ tests is that you can game the system by training yourself to be familiar with the problems. It doesn’t accurately measure how “intelligent” you are. Anything that you can game isn’t worth it.

To drive home to the point, I know a friend who aces almost every single IQ problem. We were helping another friend with some intelligent tests. The IQ friends solved every single IQ problem nicely. But when she came across a problem that didn’t require “IQ”, she was stunned and couldn’t understand what she was required to do, and it took us 3 tries to finally explain to her the problem successfully. The problem was: there was this string of numbers, add each two numbers and write down the last number of the result. Repeat until you were done with the string of numbers. For example: 16494. 1+6=7. You write 7. 6+4=10, you write 0. Repeat the process and you have 7033. It only took me less than half a minute to figure out what they required.

This begs the question: what is “intelligence” anyway? People often use IQ to measure intelligence, but how would that explain my story above? How could someone who aces IQ tests utterly failed to understand a simple problem?

These days I stop obsessing over intelligence and focus more on critical thinking instead. I observe the real world and ask questions, and try to listen to people with different opinions.

At least critical thinking can be learned and measured, unlike the vague thing which is intelligence.

What matters is having an interest in something and then pursuing it. If D&D is what interests you then pursue it.

@Mimishu1995 You may not be good at math or have high processing speed, but you seem to be quite good with language.

It sounds like your friend was having a hard time with comprehending the instructions. Were the instructions written or spoken? It might be an auditory processing thing.

@zenvelo I believe in neuroplasticity. The mind can be worked like a muscle.

I also recommend going outside regularly, and walking around and noticing things, as a good brain stimulant.

Intelligence isn’t necessarily linear. At any given point in your life, you will be “more intelligent” in one area and “less intelligent in another.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10794186/

Generally speaking, finding something personally meaningful to yourself increases cognitive health. :)

@raum the instruction was written. But yeah, that’s another angle I haven’t considered yet :)

Do you have a better way to measure success, rather than D&D?

—Collecting life skills such as learning a musical instrument, learning how to do your own repair work around the house, creating art, mastering a game like chess, learning several trades that result in fulfilling employment etc…

Also what is better life goals in rather than the pursuit of ability stats?

—Having developed real skills

What is better? Money? University degrees?
accolades?

—None of these. Being happy and healthy as well as being a productive member of your community.