What are the top hobbies that make you smarter?

This is a wonderful question to answer.

The moment I read this, I wanted to answer it. But there are lots of things to mention, so I’ll just quote a few, so one can digest the read. Here goes:

1. Staying Silent (especially when emotional): This is the simplest thing one could do, i.e. not do anything. Yet, people fail at this, more often than not. Staying silent makes a person control his speech. Everything you do, every discussion you have, every action, involves speech. When you limit your speech, it causes you to speak more meaningful sentences, and leave out the ones which involve gossips, fights, arguments and any form of disrespect. In short, it makes you think before you speak. Seems like a second standard moral science lesson, yet 99% people fail at it.

Doing this has many advantages. Firstly, people pay more attention to what you say. They know that you speak meaningful sentences. You have more respect among people. Secondly, you avoid many conflicts (believe me, more than you can think of), and hence you have peace of mind.Thirdly, it makes you smarter. In the sense, it instills a habit of thinking before speaking, and thinking makes you smarter. All issues in the world can be done with proper negotiation. Think what power speech has.

2. Playing music:It is now a proven fact that playing music makes you smarter. In the sense that, playing any music instrument incites your right hemisphere of brain, creating more interconnections and evolving your brain. Have a look at this image to understand more:

Buy a guitar. Apart from music, girls will love you. :PJK.

3. Reading:

Reading increases your knowledge. The more one reads, the more one knows. Itincreases your brain activity, makes you more creative, more patient, you enjoy living by yourself, and many more things.

It gives you more command over the language. You learn new words. This creates new neurons in your brain, increasing the capacity of the brain. Your memory increases, since you can relate reading to the real world, and this causes the number of interconnections in the brain to increase, thus leading to increased memory.

4. Watching intellectual TV Series and movies:

Many might differ from this opinion of mine, but I have personally benefited from this.  Dr. House and Sherlock are my personal favourites.

5. Understanding people’s actions/motives/mindsets:

People are complex beings. Everytime you think you’ve seen enough of the world, they keep surprising you. In your life, you will get more done by talking to people than just working like a donkey. Dealing with people, is therefore an important thing. Ask any adult you know, and almost, say 100% will agree. All wars are just a play of your knowledge about the mindset of the opponent! Truth

Watching documentaries on the ancient worlds. YouTube is full of them; so is BBC; so is the History Channel. One of my favorite historians is Bettany Hughes and I loved her series called The Ancient Worlds; her passion for what she does, her interest in this time in history and the details she divulges in each episode are a delight to see and hear. Bonus: you learn about everyday life in ancient Alexandria, Rome, Athens... and about the way society was organized among Minoans, Spartans, and the Moors. Another excellent 3-part series by the BBC is Ibn Battuta: The Man Who Walked Across the World.

Listening to podcasts. We spend a lot of time every day going from place to place; we walk, take the bus, train, we drive for what seems an eternity on the highway. Why pollute your brain with commercials and radio? Take control over the input of information during this time of your day by selecting podcasts that are fun, that feed your imagination, suggest ways to improve your daily life, give practical tips on managing your time, your career, your personal goals. Reading books. There are writers, and then there are writers. The people who are such excellent storytellers that you are drawn into their world so quickly

. . Reading

 reading is very important in order to increase one's cognitive abilities, creativity and keep that brain young. Not only does it relieve stress, but also stimulates your cerebral cortex by building new synapses and strengthening the existing ones. . Chess

Chess is not only a great hobby, but also has been proven to literally make you smarter by exercising both sides of your brain. Studies have shown it to raise levels of IQ in students, stimulate creativity, improve memory, strengthen concentration, prevent Alzheimer's and grow dendrites ( tree-like branches that conduct signals from other neural cells.

Ms.Ghada posted a great answer, thank you for invitation 

excercise math problems, probably the most effective hobbies that make you smarter becasue it will enhance your logical decisions.

As others have mentioned and as well as plenty of Youtube channels,such as "smarter every day" which is only one of the many 

agree with the experts.......

my hobbies which make me smarter are as follows

1)READING TECHNOLOGICAL &BUSSINESS PUBLICATIONS

this increases me my knowledge power ,keeps me busy,i will always remain eager to research  and makes me creative .i always enjoy learning new things  and learn learning more issues.As it is always said that little knowledge is dangerous ,reading exposes me more to various opportunities ,how they can be done .Reading has also made me smarter by having the capability to teach others .

B)WATCHING TELEVISION

watching television enables me to have analytical thinking,expressing my own opinion against what might be  being shown,it increases my knowledge power and even exposure to new things.it increases in me a sense of humour and helps me to help those who might be be stressed to be stress free.

C)PLAYING MUSIC

playing music helps me to smile always,keeps me busy .it also enables me to be stressfree and positive minded.Music has enabled me to  be always atttentive in everything as i would love to hear every word .

i love music ,reading  and watching tv ,they contribute to making me SMARTER.