How To Exercise Your Brain?

[Midpack]

Something I’ve been thinking about lately, we can all benefit from exercising body and mind, both “use it or lose it.” I do Wordle and a couple crossword puzzles every day, but I read Outlive recently and he said doing crosswords every day just makes you good at crosswords - so I’m not sure that’s useful. I do exercise almost daily and I also spend a lots of time problem solving and learning every day in the hopes it helps exercise my brain. Other suggestions?

Take Care of Your Body
Draw a Map of Your Town From Memory (then what?)
Learn Something New
Try Using Your Non Dominant Hand
Socialize
Meditate

https://www.verywellmind.com/brain-exercises-to-strengthen-your-mind-2795039

 

[street]

A great thread of awareness as we age and if we don't use it, we do lose it. Of the 6 suggestions you gave one was socializing, for me that is one area I need more of.

Interesting link you added and added it to my favorites for later to look at.

The think is as we get older, we do less new things and that means fewer challenging things for the brain.

 

[marko]

Instead of crosswords, my exercise are my Excel sheets, mostly for tracking financials. They're often really useless, but I just enjoy finding new commands and such. Some, I look back on and don't even know what or why I was interested in a particular number! Some are very difficult to execute. ( show me the fourth largest number in this column since 2019; at this rate, what should my balance be on December 31st)

It's more about being able to do something complicated than getting a useful number.

My spreadsheets are often huge, going hundreds of rows and columns, one is now 1200 rows long, but it's my mental hobby.

 

[Midpack]

Instead of crosswords, my exercise are my Excel sheets, mostly for tracking financials. They're often really useless, but I just enjoy finding new commands and such. Some, I look back on and don't even know what or why I was interested in a particular number! Some are very difficult to execute. ( show me the fourth largest number in this column since 2019; at this rate, what should my balance be on December 31st)

It's more about being able to do something complicated than getting a useful number.

My spreadsheets are often huge, going hundreds of rows and columns, one is now 1200 rows long, but it's my mental hobby.

Wow, I could have written this post. I’ve worked with spreadsheets daily in my career, and thereafter, mostly financial now. And I’ve always hoped it was good for brain health if nothing else.

 

[DrRoy]

I do some geometry and math puzzles. Plan travel and navigate in new places. Read.

 

[steiny]

I have heard about this but never used it


https://www.brainhq.com/?v4=true&fr=y

 

[DayDreaming]

My gut feeling is that the most important things are staying physically fit, and leaning new things.

 

[audreyh1]

I resumed piano playing after almost 40 years and a big part of the motivation was to exercise my fingers and my brain. I memorize the pieces and learning a new piece is a lot of mental work. Performing a piece - there is just a whole lot of mind body coordination going on. Been doing this for several years now as the music is so enjoyable. Maintaining a repertoire is also pretty challenging - that’s what I’m struggling with a bit now.

 

[audreyh1]

My gut feeling is that the most important things are staying physically fit, and leaning new things.

I agree, and avoid all that sugar/high starchy carb foods. High blood sugar is really hard on the brain.

Learning new things forces the brain to create new synapses.

 

[FREE866]

I think about this often.

Every day I do Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Lumosity. In addition I exercise -swim, free weights......Also alternate deep stretching for 10 minutes a day and 15 minutes of yoga.


Meditate as well


Not sure what good that all does...I'm 56 now, I guess checking back in with me in 20 years

 

[audreyh1]

I do some geometry and math puzzles. Plan travel and navigate in new places. Read.

I also do a lot of research for travel planning including exploring routes. Lots of new mental challenges when you travel to new places too.

Learning a new skill is similar.

 

[FREE866]

Learning a new skill is similar.

Yeah, I learned chess maybe 10 years ago and my head would hurt when I went to bed. I get concerned that the activities I do are rote by now

 

[Osprey]

Pickleball gives me physical and mental exercise as I try and develop skills and improve.

Playing the game Mah jongg is mentally stimulating, there is a new card to learn each year.

Both of these activities are very social too.

I also plan travel to new locations and read novels as well as some non-fiction books.

 

[marko]

Wow, I could have written this post. I’ve worked with spreadsheets daily in my career, and thereafter, mostly financial now. And I’ve always hoped it was good for brain health if nothing else.

=ArrayFormula(iferror(average(query(if(len(H24:H76),{ROW(H24:H76),H24:H76},),"Select Col2 where Col2<0 order by Col1 Desc limit 5", G20))))

Sorry, just showing off here.

 

[Koolau]

=ArrayFormula(iferror(average(query(if(len(H24:H76),{ROW(H24:H76),H24:H76},),"Select Col2 where Col2<0 order by Col1 Desc limit 5", G20))))

Sorry, just showing off here.

Yeah, I guess so!

Not a clue what kind of math this is and I somehow bluffed my way through differential equations with a B.

 

[Koolau]

Something I’ve been thinking about lately, we can all benefit from exercising body and mind, both “use it or lose it.” I do Wordle and a couple crossword puzzles every day, but I read Outlive recently and he said doing crosswords every day just makes you good at crosswords - so I’m not sure that’s useful. I do exercise almost daily and I also spend a lots of time problem solving and learning every day in the hopes it helps exercise my brain. Other suggestions?

Take Care of Your Body
Draw a Map of Your Town From Memory (then what?)
Learn Something New
Try Using Your Non Dominant Hand
Socialize
Meditate

https://www.verywellmind.com/brain-exercises-to-strengthen-your-mind-2795039

Thanks for the reminder and the tools.

What I find difficult is forcing myself to do such exercises. I would rather just sit and watch TV or cruise the net. (I DO like to learn things on the net - not just totally waste my time.)

I guess it's a bit like starting physical training. Motivation is key - and I don't always recall where I left my keys.

 

[COcheesehead]

I do math in my head.

 

[Koolau]

I do math in my head.

Me too, as long as I don't run out of fingers.

 

[Car-Guy]

(1) Sudoku
(2) Trying to understand some of the posts here.
(3) Fixing my DW's PC. <----- I have no idea how she can get it so messed up so quickly.

 

[Midpack]

DW and I decided long ago watching most TV content is NOT good for the brain. We only allow TV after dinner unless there’s something very special on during the day, usually live sports. If we get bored during the day, we force ourselves to find something to do, not TV. If we’re actually learning something of value OK, but we avoid the mindless escape entertainment for the most part. I watch free YouTube to learn new things much more than broadcast TV anyway. And watching political “news” just makes me [-]mad[/-] sad, so I don’t watch most of that. YMMV

 

[Koolau]

(2) Trying to understand some of the posts here.

Heh, heh, we'll keep on doing our best to exercise your brain for you. It's what we live for.

 

[marko]

Yeah, I guess so!

Not a clue what kind of math this is and I somehow bluffed my way through differential equations with a B.

I'm horrible at math -- mostly math logic--as many of my posts demonstrate. That why I love Excel! It does the math for you. All you have to do is figure out what you want it to do.

Seriously, if it wasn't for Excel, I'd likely be a lot less wealthy than I am now.

 

[Koolau]

I'm horrible at math -- mostly math logic--as many of my posts demonstrate. That why I love Excel! It does the math for you. All you have to do is figure out what you want it to do.

Seriously, if it wasn't for Excel, I'd likely be a lot less wealthy than I am now.

I'm sure things have changed since I took my first Excel course back ca 1995. The teacher walked in and asked the class: "How many of you have ever used the documentation on Word?" A good portion of the class raised their hands. "Okay, how many of you have used the documentation on Excel?" 3 hands out of maybe 60 people. Point was, no one (back then) learned Excel from the book. They beat their heads against the wall until they got it or they took courses or they learned from the weirdo savant 3 cubes down the hall.

Is it still like that? Excel is incredibly powerful, but I never learned 1% of what it could do. I had a boss who was not quite, but w*rking his way toward weirdo savant. He built all of our department's spread sheets "for fun." I had been using one of his spread sheets for a month when I found a bug. I don't recall the details, but the weird answer popped out of the spread sheet and I knew it couldn't be right. SO I did it by hand, and sure enough the spread sheet was wrong. Boss took it as a fun challenge (Total wierdo savant status!) He figured it out in a couple of hours. I DID make points with him for catching it instead of just blithely following the spread sheet and taking the answers on faith.

Heady days of yore - and I'm glad they're gone. But I always respected the power of Excel.

 

[Car-Guy]

I'm horrible at math -- mostly math logic--as many of my posts demonstrate. That why I love Excel! It does the math for you. All you have to do is figure out what you want it to do.

Seriously, if it wasn't for Excel, I'd likely be a lot less wealthy than I am now.

Just think about the guys/gals that wrote the Excel program! Wow.

 

[sparky08]

I do a Suduko puzzle each day. I'm up to thge 'Hard' ones and hope to make it to the expert level.

I was a software developer, so I keep a dev environment on my laptop. I do a little coding now and again.

I'd love to learn a language, but I'm not sure what the best way is. Course at he community college? Babbel? Duolingo?