Selfimprovement

Coco Chanel once said, ‘There are no ugly women in the world, just lazy ones’. And I think she was absolutely right.

Of course, this quote could be considered very old-fashioned, but as the popular motto on social media at the moment is ‘Beauty and Brains’, I'll leave this objection and the whole beauty part out of it. In this article, I'm focussing on one of our inner values - intelligence. Because it can definitely make an impression.

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Regardless of whether you have the ability to express yourself eloquently, reason well or simply have a great deal of general knowledge. All of these skills help you to socialise.

Imagine you arrive at an event and position yourself at a table with a drink. Soon someone joins you and starts making small talk. And as small talk often goes, after a short time neither of you knows what else to ask the other.

At the next table, however, the conversation takes a completely different course. Instead of asking the other person superficial questions, the two guests are immersed in a conversation about current political issues.

Whether you like politics or not, it is a topic that offers countless starting points for conversations.

And I think people are very curious by nature anyway. Which makes a person from whom you can learn a lot instantly more interesting.

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News

To keep up to date politically, it is advisable to simply watch the news regularly. If you want to save time, simply visit a news channel's website once a day and scroll through the headlines. If there is anything important, the article should still be read or listened to in full to gather background information for discussion.

Many news channels now also have their own app that provides push notifications about the most important news of the day.

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Podcasts

Podcasts are a very practical way of finding out about interesting topics without too much effort. Whether on the way to work, while cooking or doing sport, nowadays many people listen to music during these activities. But why not listen to a podcast?

The practical thing is that you can select specific topics that you would like to delve into and understand better. In addition, many news podcasts also summarise the news of the day at the end.

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Documentaries

Now we come to the more time-consuming ways of acquiring knowledge. But you can never go wrong with documentaries!

Many may not be on the entertainment level of a rom-com, but there are some exciting productions that shed light on interesting topics.

For example, the film Seaspiracy produced by Netflix started a real trend on TikTok a few years ago, although it is certainly not for the faint-hearted.

Nevertheless, this documentary film was rather the exception on Netflix. If you want a somewhat broader selection, you're better off on Disney, where the National Geographic programme offers a whole range of interesting documentaries.

If you can't find what you're looking for there, you can also simply watch it on public broadcasters in the media library (such as the ARD media library/BBC media library) or on YouTube.

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Books

Let's move on to what is probably the most old-fashioned medium. The book!

It doesn't necessarily have to be non-fiction books, which are sometimes written in an incredibly boring and incomprehensible technical language, but there are also the classics of literature.

Sometimes quite challenging, but nevertheless entertaining, they are among the books that can often be used in conversation as a comparison or for a quote.

Even if they are novels and tell a love story, there is usually a moral behind them that makes a classic a classic.

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Newspaper

If you would like to focus on more sophisticated language, it makes sense to read newspaper articles. Journalists often include foreign words in their texts in order to convey their marvellous level of knowledge to readers.

Reading newspapers not only informs you about current hot topics, but also improves your vocabulary if you make a note of specific terms and try to incorporate them into texts or conversations yourself.

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Yuno

I would particularly like to recommend the Yuno app. The developers have made it their goal to enable interested parties to acquire general knowledge through daily lessons. Each lesson consists of a 10-minute podcast followed by quiz questions on a specific topic.

The app is divided into different sections and these are each divided into different chapters.

This gives you the opportunity to delve into politics, history, science and many other topics.

The quiz questions are repeated bit by bit until they are firmly anchored in your head.

Of course there is a premium version, but I think that the standard functions are perfectly adequate.

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All these options are great for finding out information and acquiring general knowledge on the side. I hope you find them useful! But don't get overwhelmed, because everything is part of a process :) ...