It is almost a year since a number of us have been working from home due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Being indoors for a prolonged period of time indeed affects our overall well-being, hence medical experts and even World Health Organization has adviced everyone to keep active at home. Keeping physically active is commonly emphasised as it has an array of benefits to our overall health, but did you know that exercising our minds is equally as important?
One may wonder, what is brain exercise? This might be the first time for some in hearing this phrase. Brain exercise is a routine of regular activities implies to maintain or improve one's cognitive function. The phrase “cognitive ability” usually refers to components of fluid intelligence such as executive function and working memory. Let's look at the benefits of brain exercise.
The Benefits of Mental Exercise
Stretching those mental muscles can increase your productivity in the following ways:
Exercising your brain creates new mental pathways and habits that allow you to observe and make decisions quicker. Just as using your muscles makes them stronger, mental practice improves processing speed.
Memory is more of a skill than a born ability. There are ways to train your memory to recall information more quickly and completely.
To solve a problem, the mind must think outside the box. It must analyze and reorganize data into new relationships. Creativity is the ability to think in a new way more quickly. Practice helps creativity come more easily and quickly.
Mental exercises raise your alertness. You become more observant and aware of your surroundings. As you practice observing, your mind forms mental habits that are always on the lookout.
Practicing our mental processing increases our information intake and recall. As we become more knowledgeable, we become more confident. Confidence saturates productivity and people become happier and more efficient.
Being stuck at home can get boring. Providing a challenge to occupy the mind maintains an element of fun throughout the day. If one is are overcome with boredom, their productivity will drag. Being occupied by some mind consuming thought helps to increase productivity.
Now that we've covered the benefits, here are some brain exercises that you can do to focus, improve your memory and boost overall productivity:
1. Learn a new language
The ultimate goal is to activate the brain by making it do something brand new and interesting such as learning a foreign language. It is particularly useful if you are studying a completely unknown language such as French or Chinese. Language learning is also a great tactic to increase your knowledge, gain additional skills, and meet new people through studying.
2. Do Sudoku puzzles
Sudoku is an ancient logical game that combines numbers and puzzles. It’s a perfect solution for adventurous individuals who enjoy playing with numbers. What makes it even more practical is the fact that a number of Sudoku apps can be downloaded on your smartphones and train the brain whenever you have a few minutes to spare or simply when you feel like doing so.
3. Memorize things
It may seem weird, but memorizing things is an excellent way to exercise your mind muscles. Make it a goal to memorize a poem, a famous phrase by philosophers or a verse of scripture each week.
4. Meditate
Not only does meditation help keep you cool, calm, and collected, research has also shown again and again that mindfulness meditation can boost your attention span significantly.
Now that you know why brain exercise is important, do remember fit in some time to train those mental muscles! Keeping the brain focused and alert will indeed reap its benefits in the long run.
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