I was scrolling through a site the other day and was asked if I knew my IQ score. It then proposed a test that I could take. I took it.

Some of the test was mathematics, but a lot was special with a series of shapes, each changing from one to the other. Then, it asked what the next shape would be. I laughed because I had run into this type of testing many years before.

We were all going to take the high school aptitude test for our college applications. For me, this was 1959. It was called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT. Interestingly, the ACT test that would later become more popular was first created in that very year, 1959.

My dad had an interesting challenge for me. Most cadets for West Point or the Naval Academy were selected via congressional requests, not testing. But there were a few who could enter such prestigious schools by taking a test and having impressive scores. My dad suggested that I could prepare myself for the SAT by taking this test beforehand.

Although I had no desire to go to any of these military schools, I took the test.

My strength was mathematics, and when I later got my SAT math score, it was 710 out of 800! (The English half was not so good.) But the test to enter the military schools was much different. While my English was similar to my SAT score, the math came in at only 84% – quite a bit below my eventual SAT numbers.

But this test had a completely different section about spatial reasoning. I apparently killed this section, even though I had never heard of it. The test I took online last week had a lot of spatial reasoning. Apparently for the academies, this kind of intelligence was needed in that line of careers.

Even though we all hear about someone’s IQ score, what is intelligence? Are we just born with it, or is it made in large part by the effort one puts into his or her mind over time?

I decided once again to investigate a subject. Retired guys can do this.

Intelligence and an IQ score can be quite different. Each of us is born with some level of intelligence, be it from our parents or just brain development in utero.

What happens after that makes much of a difference in one’s intellectual level. In other words, science says intelligence can be improved with one’s lifestyle, or it can be reduced from habits that sabotage it. Unfortunately, most of us will be far too familiar with the second category.

A foggy brain can come from a well-enjoyed bottle of wine or from only getting four hours of sleep. We can drink, sleep poorly or have an environment that drains our attention. Need I mention the cellphone addiction?

The best brains need reasonable effort to stay even or ahead of the basic brain we are given.

Another shortcoming is mental traps, with people shying away from topics of intelligence, perhaps even not wanting others to know their intelligence level. It is ignoring the habits that actually matter for our effective IQ.

When one thinks of the people we praise for their high-level intelligence, we often remember the amount of work these people put into their lives. Think of Thomas Edison, who would only sleep four hours a night and catch up a bit with an hour catnap in the afternoon. He had work to do.

Learning cannot happen without intention. We don’t actually stumble into a higher level of performance by accident. Athletes practice. Singers train their voices. Inventors of our modern technology got there via hard work, be it Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Steve Jobs.

So, what are the habits that help make you smarter? Mixing what we are learning with different subjects can lead to improvement when we test ourselves regularly. But recent research has shown that reading beats listening for retention. Sorry, podcasters. The brain survives by tying what we have just read into other experiences or known facts, and this makes recall so much easier.

We don’t get smart by sitting still or merely memorizing the Gettysburg Address. We get smarter by exploring our world, seeing patterns, making predictions and then making changes when we are wrong.

So, that IQ score doesn’t define you. What matters is what you do with what you’ve got in the first place. This becomes even more true as we age and give up our chosen work of life for retirement.

No matter what age, if you want to maintain that edge, try new topics, or go to places that are not all that familiar, be it travel or community services. There is a tendency to fall back into old habits.

That is one of the reasons that I write – not for recognition, but to keep the brain alive by challenging it almost every week with a new subject, rehearing an old song and thinking about the words, or trying to make sense out of our current world.

· Dennis Marek can be reached at llamalaw23@gmail.com.