Today’s post is about the last of Robert Sternberg’s intelligence subtypes: practical intelligence. This type is often referred to as ‘street smarts’ or contextual intelligence and describes an individual’s ability to navigate through everyday challenges. With that, this type allows a more relatable approach to intelligence.
Let’s look further into these individuals’ strengths and areas for improvement. Are you one of them?
Strengths:
One of these individuals’ biggest strengths is adaptability. We mentioned being adaptable in creative intelligence as well, and as these are all subtypes, they aren’t to be separated completely. But for this type, adaptability refers to these individuals’ skill to understand and analyze new practical situations very fast.
They are able to identify key elements and connect them to similar situations they’ve experienced. This makes this intelligence type more applicable in real-life situations. Practically intelligent individuals understand everyday situations and come up with solutions intuitively.
This skill also leads to great problem-solving in everyday life. They might not be the ones understanding every complex concept, but they are great at understanding their tools and how to use their full potential.
Many practically intelligent people have a tendency or at least interest in handiness and crafts work. These are the individuals who have never in their life called for a craftsman as they can handle every occurring problem on their own. This makes them very independent. You might even find interesting and innovative furnishings they designed and created themselves in their homes.
Resourcefulness is another very useful trait of practically intelligent individuals. Keeping an eye on resources is important in every work process; otherwise, it could cost one a lot of time and money.
Practically intelligent individuals have a good sense of structure. When building something, you need to be aware of many details regarding stability and safety before you can start. Therefore, you need to come up with organized plans on where to start and how to progress.
Lastly, these individuals’ resourcefulness and sense of structure when working make them great at managing. They are able to navigate complex environments as they can understand problems and consider real-life difficulties.
Areas for Improvement:
As we’ve said, once they’ve experienced something, their understanding is most often very intuitive. But, this can lead to over-reliance on intuition and therefore false conclusions.
Besides that, while these individuals might be structured in the way they work, practically intelligent individuals might struggle with long-term planning. Most of their highly advanced skills are situation-related. This does not apply to everyone, of course, but it could be a problem a highly practically intelligent individual has to face.
Have you recognized yourself? Congratulations on being a practically intelligent individual! To help you move forward and understand yourself better, we’ll now give you some tips on how to refine your strengths and start your improvement work.
Refining Strengths:
Your intelligence type is based on connecting experiences to unknown situations. Therefore, to refine your skills, you need to collect experiences.
Engage in a variety of different activities, especially handy or crafty ones, and gather information, ideas, and skills. Hands-on experiences represent the way you learn and understand this world. As a practically intelligent individual, you are not the book-person; you are the one getting your hands dirty in the process of trying.
Try a variety of activities in craftsmanship. You might enjoy pottery, sculpting, woodworking, weaving, or anything else. All of them include skills and techniques you can use in many areas of life. Real-world learning is crucial to you.
Go out there!
Structure your workplace. This way, you’ll work most efficiently. You might find some ideas on where to start in our post about structuring one’s environment. Read it here: >>Click here<<.
Get to know your tools. Technically, this is another form of gathering information, but still, being aware of the functionality and capabilities of your tools is key to the freedom of your work.
Build resourcefulness, whether personal or physical resources. Make sure you pay close attention to yourself and your surroundings. Understanding detail is important for practical working. If you ignore small details, work sloppily, or overlook problems, you could face serious consequences.
Learn to identify more details by actively searching for them. Go out or analyze something close by. Acknowledging small characteristics of various items or environments on a consistent basis will allow you to find them more easily over time.
Lastly, engage in understanding others. Working on your social skills and perspective ultimately upscales your management skills to the ability to work with and conduct groups. This will help you during your own projects and when working with other individuals.
Improvement Work:
Balance quick fixes with planning and practice mindfulness and patience. This way, you can avoid acting rashly and drawing false conclusions. Don’t stop trusting your intuition, but learn to value guidance and help during your process.
Develop strategies helpful for long-term planning. Practical intelligence gives you the freedom to create and design your environment to your liking. But some changes we wish to make might require a lot of time. Therefore, long-term planning is necessary when aiming for bigger projects.
Now that we’ve learned more about your skills, let’s look at some jobs and hobbies you might enjoy.
Jobs:
With your skill in optimally using everyday resources, you would be great as a manager. Besides that, a job as an entrepreneur or tradesperson suits practical intelligence as well, as these require quick and flexible thinking.
Hobbies:
As for hobbies, you might enjoy DIYs. Don’t get that wrong—this does not only mean making jewelry or pen holders or something of that kind. I know a person with very high practical intelligence, and this person DIYed a whole shelving and storage unit into their car. This project proves to be of use nowadays, and they had fun doing it. Engage in hands-on projects and create something useful while having fun.
Lastly, to fully understand the impact of emotional intelligence, we’ll take a look at its effect in everyday, social and personal settings.
Everyday Relevance:
In everyday life is where practical intelligence shines. This is the area your intelligence type applies to.
Practical intelligence refers to the ability to solve everyday problems with everyday resources and knowledge formed through everyday experiences, if you will.
If any problem occurs, you know how to handle it. And if not, you learn and prepare yourself for the next time something happens. This allows you to stay calm and goal-focused in difficult circumstances.
Your wide range of knowledge and the ability to come up with a variety of solutions enables you to make quick decisions. You don’t miss your chance or lose time due to being hung up on indecisiveness.
Societal and Personal Impact:
To society, you are a problem-solving star. Most of us give up on the smallest obstacle, but not you. Whenever you have to face a problem, you are eager to find a solution. This is the reason others perceive you as inspiring; you don’t back down. Besides feeling inspired, your presence is calming, as your positive mindset allows others to rely on you when they’re stressed and feel like giving up.
Personally, your practical intelligence grants you the gift of freedom and individuality. You are independent, and with your skills in handiness, honestly, you save up quite a bit of money. Your problem-solving skills also allow you to think more positively; being sure in finding a solution to every problem takes away the fear of the unknown.
We can talk a lot about the future, inventions, and forward-thinking, but if none of us is able to deal with the problems of our present, thinking of our tomorrow would be a luxury considered impossible to posses.
Your skills are important every day, useful and applicable to change and manage every unexpected or challenging situation. Acknowledge your talent and go through life with a solution-oriented mindset.