Welcome to my book, How To Be Smarter: Brighter Brains Meditate.
How To Be Smarter: Brighter Brains Meditate is a practical book that clearly explains the small steps you can take today that make you smarter and brighter.
Updated: 13th June 2026
Note: This is a work-in-progress draft version that is continuously being edited and updated. This will be free to access until the final version is published.
How To Be Smarter
Brighter Brains Meditate
Introduction
Balance your brain.
Regularly balancing your brain makes you smarter and brighter.
Faster learning.
Faster problem solving.
Faster decision making.
You will gain the understanding of why our brains need to be balanced as we look at the science of the human brain.
You will see how famous geniuses understand how to use their brains to think innovatively and change the world as we look at how Archimedes, Newton and Darwin used their brains.
You will learn the small steps you can take today that balance your brain making you smarter and brighter as we look at practical ways to balance our brains that are easy to use in daily life.
Smarter
Principle
How smart and how bright you are is determined by your brain and how you use your brain.
Using your brain in the most optimal way makes you smarter and brighter.
There is a simple principle that gives you full control of your brain.
Brain Balance Principle
Brighter brains meditate.
To understand what “brighter brains meditate” means, let’s look at the expanded scientific Brain Balance Principle.
Brain Balance Principle
Brain performance is optimal when conscious and non-conscious brain activity is balanced.
To understand the Brain Balance Principle and why the Brain Balance Principle is true we are going to look at brain science.
Your brain is a biological computer with a finite processing capacity. It processes your conscious and non-conscious.
Conscious brain activity is what gives you a first person experience of yourself and the world around you. It is what allows you to be awake, to think and to experience what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste.
You have control of your conscious brain activity with the ability to direct your thoughts, focus your attention and intentionally act upon your thoughts.
Your conscious brain activity takes up a minimal amount of your brain’s processing capacity as your non-conscious does most of the work taking up the majority of your brain’s processing capacity.
Non-conscious brain activity is everything that your brain does outside your conscious awareness. It is the automated system that keeps your body alive and supports your conscious.
Your non-conscious brain has vital functions that use a relatively fixed amount of brain processing capacity and non-vital functions that are dynamically assigned brain processing capacity depending on priority.
The non-conscious vital functions are what keep your body alive and we can’t free up this brain processing capacity.
The non-conscious non-vital functions can be managed to free up brain processing capacity which automatically makes you smarter and brighter.
The main areas of non-conscious brain activity that are important are motor management, sensory management, memory and processing.
Motor Management
When your conscious brain instructs your body to move there is a huge amount of work required by your non-conscious brain to accurately carry out that movement.
Sensory Management
The raw visual, auditory and sensory data that is constantly streaming into your non-conscious brain is stitched together to create a coherent perception of the world which is what your conscious brain experiences.
Memory
Storage and retrieval of data. Required for motor management and sensory management to work.
Processing
Learning, problem solving and decision making.
Conscious support = Priorty 1
Non-conscious processing = Priority 2
To do this your brain is constantly processing sensory information,
Conscious brain activity = Awake = Go Brain
Non-conscious brain activity = Assist + Bright = Bright Brain
Conscious Awake is what we experience as our present consciousness and is supported by Non-Conscious Assist (sensory processing, memory retrieval, etc).
Non-conscious Bright is where information is processed, linked and stored (complex problem solving, deep learning, detailed memory).
The scientific reason for this principle is evolution.
Humans evolved in an environment where there were long valleys of non-conscious brain activity with short peaks of conscious brain activity.
Human brains evolved to be highly cognitively efficient with this balance between conscious and non-conscious brain activity.
Human brain is a biological computer with a fixed amount of processing capacity.
Active conscious brain activity takes up a large amount of processing capacity. To get around this capacity limitation human brains store information for processing later when conscious brain activity is low and there is the capacity available to process information, link information together and make sense of it which is done automatically with no conscious effort required.
Evolution
Human evolution history.
Human brain evolution history.
Hunter gatherer society > Agrarian society > Industrial Society > Information society.
Clock to indicate visually. 12 hours = whole of human history, last 5 minutes is modern humans, etc.
Balance
Hunter gatherer and agrarian = Lots of walking around which allows low Awake Brain activity and high Bright Brain activity.
Industrial = Specialisation at work which means higher Awake Brain activity and lower Bright Brain activity.
Information = Very high Awake Brain activity and very low Bright Brain activity.
Human brain activity has recently changed from mainly Bright Brain activity with bursts of Awake Brain activity to mainly Awake Brain activity with hardly any Bright Brain activity.
Human brains evolved to work in the environment we lived in for the majority of human history.
Human brains are not designed to be used with a constantly high Awake Brain activity and low or no Bright Brain activity.
Burnout vs boredom.
Simplify life so that Awake Brain has less to deal with.
Have a healthy balance between Awake Brain activity and Bright Brain activity.
Brighter Brains
Archimedes
Eureka! Bath.
Newton
Apple falling. Sitting outside, in countryside due to plague.
Darwin
Theory of evolution. Daily schedule.
Meditate
What
Definition of meditation.
At it’s core meditation is the minimization of conscious brain activity which frees up the brain capacity for the non-conscious brain activity to work.
Ancient humans understood the need for a healthy balance between conscious and non-conscious brain activity.
Over time this became part of tradition, culture and religion. Over time meditation grew it’s own variations which were added piece by piece by the people of that culture.
How
Daily use. Anything where your conscious brain activity is minimal.
Mini-meditation during the day. Walk, close your eyes, sit somewhere quiet, get a drink.
Evenings and weekends. Exercise (walking, running, yoga, weights), sitting outside, lying down, bath.
Dynamic
Life is dynamic.
Sometimes life will be busy and other times not so busy.
If you want high performance prioritize time to meditate.
Non-conscious brain activity is where the brightness comes from.
Simplify life and have a healthy balance.
The balance needs to dynamically change to match what is going on in your life.
Summary
Human brains evolved to work with a balance between conscious and non-conscious brain activity.
Use your brain how it evolved to work.
Brain balance principle = Brain performance is optimal when conscious and non-conscious brain activity is balanced = Brighter brains meditate
Build meditation into your daily and weekly life.
Dynamically adjust as required by life circumstances.
Edwin Leo 