8 evidence-based ways to improve your IQ score
Your underlying reasoning ability is fairly stable — but a large part of what a test measures on the day is trainable. Here is where the effort actually pays off.
Start with the uncomfortable part: no habit turns an average score into a top-2% score. What the following list does is recover the points you are currently losing to fatigue, unfamiliarity and poor pacing, and slowly widen the abilities the test is sampling.
1. Sleep, properly and consistently
This is the single largest lever and the one most people ignore. Working memory and processing speed — two of the six abilities a test samples — degrade measurably after a short night. No amount of practice compensates.
2. Aerobic exercise
Regular cardiovascular exercise has better evidence for cognitive benefit than any commercial brain-training product. The effect is modest and cumulative, and it shows up most clearly in attention and executive function.
3. Read difficult material
Verbal comprehension responds to input. Reading in unfamiliar domains — not just more of what you already enjoy — builds the vocabulary and inference habits that verbal sections test.
4. Learn something structured
A language, an instrument, a branch of mathematics. Extended structured learning exercises working memory and pattern extraction in a way that short puzzle sessions do not.
5. Practise the formats, then stop
Familiarity with matrices, sequences and analogies is worth real points on the first few tests, then it plateaus. Do enough that no format surprises you, and do not mistake the plateau for a ceiling on your ability.
6. Train pacing deliberately
Sit timed practice tests, not untimed ones. The most common scoring mistake is spending three minutes on a hard item and then rushing four easy ones — a net loss every time.
7. Cut cognitive load on the day
- Test when you are normally alert, not late at night.
- Remove notifications entirely — task switching is expensive and the cost is invisible to you.
- Eat something, but not heavily.
- If you are ill or badly stressed, postpone. The score will not represent you.
8. Track attempts instead of chasing one number
A single score contains a lot of noise. Several attempts over weeks show you a trend, and a trend is the only thing you can actually act on. This is why the app keeps every attempt rather than overwriting your best one.
What does not work
Single-game brain trainers mostly make you better at that game. Nootropic supplements have thin evidence for healthy adults. Listening to music does not raise reasoning ability — the widely repeated 'Mozart effect' was a brief arousal effect that failed to replicate.