Do Something Different
My dad does a lot of Sudoku puzzles, and I think that most weekends he takes the morning newspaper and does the crossword puzzle. He does this, he says, in the interest of keeping his brain sharp.
While doing Sudokus over and over again are certainly a better means of keeping your brain active than no stimulation at all, the brain would be helped a great deal more by doing something different. After ten Sudoku puzzles, the net benefit to your brain activity starts to wane due to diminishing marginal utility.
The best way to help your brain is to do something different, something that forces your brain to operate on a level that it's not accustomed to. Yesterday, I tried reading a book aloud to my girlfriend and discovered that I had some difficulty in both reading the words aloud and actually comprehending what I was reading at the same time. I'm pretty good at multi-tasking, but this activity was difficult for me. It's precisely this kind of thing that I should spend some time doing more of, to try and get my brain used to doing both of these activities.
If you have a job that makes you do spatial reasoning or analyze large amounts of data looking for trends, learning a musical instrument. If you're a musician, take a class in logic. It occurred to me as I was walking to work this morning that a really good way of using your brain in a new way would be to learn sign language; just the mere act of transferring thoughts from the mind to your hands would be a completely new challenge for people. (At least, it would be for those who don't already know it)
As human beings, we like to emphasize our strengths and downplay our weaknesses, particularly in social settings. I think it's this behavior, more than anything else, is an enabler that allows our brains to atrophy. Doing something different is the best means of countering this. It requires humility on our parts, but I think it's worth it.
While doing Sudokus over and over again are certainly a better means of keeping your brain active than no stimulation at all, the brain would be helped a great deal more by doing something different. After ten Sudoku puzzles, the net benefit to your brain activity starts to wane due to diminishing marginal utility.
The best way to help your brain is to do something different, something that forces your brain to operate on a level that it's not accustomed to. Yesterday, I tried reading a book aloud to my girlfriend and discovered that I had some difficulty in both reading the words aloud and actually comprehending what I was reading at the same time. I'm pretty good at multi-tasking, but this activity was difficult for me. It's precisely this kind of thing that I should spend some time doing more of, to try and get my brain used to doing both of these activities.
If you have a job that makes you do spatial reasoning or analyze large amounts of data looking for trends, learning a musical instrument. If you're a musician, take a class in logic. It occurred to me as I was walking to work this morning that a really good way of using your brain in a new way would be to learn sign language; just the mere act of transferring thoughts from the mind to your hands would be a completely new challenge for people. (At least, it would be for those who don't already know it)
As human beings, we like to emphasize our strengths and downplay our weaknesses, particularly in social settings. I think it's this behavior, more than anything else, is an enabler that allows our brains to atrophy. Doing something different is the best means of countering this. It requires humility on our parts, but I think it's worth it.