Reading Time: 2 minutesPerform a Mental Challenge, Puzzle, or Task Each Day This Week
Simple Instructions:
- Complete 10 minutes of whatever type of mental challenge or brain exercise you like. It can be different each day.
- Some suggestions are crossword puzzles, sudoku, memorization challenges, logic puzzles, or a really challenging game with some decent science behind it like Dual N-Back.
- You do not need to be able to complete the puzzle you choose in 10 minutes in order to get credit for doing the practice.
Michael and Andy stopped total strangers on the street to talk to them about this challenge. Watch to find out the creative ways one woman uses to keep her brain healthy and active.
Why Is This Practice Important?
While the brain is not technically a muscle, it does need exercise to avoid going “soft.” Just like your body, your brain responds to challenges with new growth — growth in learning, ability, associations, and facility with different kinds of information.
Even if the link between puzzles and the brain is poorly understood, it is observed over and over that people who engage in puzzle solving can increase their mental quickness and even slow cognitive decline.
The brain is a fantastic organ — the most complex one we have. Just like mundane, repetitive daily movement can hinder your body’s growth and health, subjecting your brain to the same kind of mundane and repetitive activities day in and day out can result in a kind of mental atrophy. So this week you get a chance to get your brain to the gym and see what kind of weight you can lift!
He graduated from UCLA with a BA in philosophy as well as a degree from the Southern California School of Culinary Arts, and feels food is one of the most important parts of a life - it can nourish, heal, and bring people together.
Michael believes health and well-being are as much a state of mind as they are a state of the body, and when it comes to fitness, food, and life in general, he thinks slow is much better than fast (most of the time). Stopping regularly to examine things is the surest way to put down roots and grow.
He knows he will never be done with his own work, and believes the best thing you can do for your well-being starts with loving and working from what you’ve got right now.
