Mental Stimulation

[lithera]

Hey guys out there in LJ land.

My brain is feeling slow.

What do you do when you're starting to feel less quick mentally.

I need some brain exercised or something. I'm forgetting all sorts of things these days and I want to stretch my brain.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Prove a few basic math problems. That always works for me.

A good one is to find a way of showing that the difference between any two squares (a)^2 and (a+1)^2 is the a+1 th odd number.

Use induction!


Hey you asked, I answered ;)

[lithera.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

Well, it is an answer. Hrmmm.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Actually I lied. Don't use induction for that one. Induction is for proving that 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + a = (a)(a+1)/2

That's basic algebra ;)

[gamethyme.livejournal.com]

Find and take an online IQ test.

Play a board game.

Set fire to things.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

IQ test would be good...

[sharkcowsheep.livejournal.com]

Logic puzzles, if you can find them. The kind with the grid. :)

Also, physical activity helps a lot. Getting the blood moving has definite brain-perking effects. Maybe a couple flights of stairs?

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Heh. The kind with the grid.

Physical activity is a good idea too. I'm working on doing mroe of that. (I'm always working on it because it seems to generally be against my nature.)

[fixerbard.livejournal.com]

I agree with SCS with this one, physical activity good. I'll be at the Merc tonight with some friends if you want to come down.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Already booked for this weekend but thanks for the offer!

[arithon.livejournal.com]

Try to remember a few words from a foreign language. Throughout the day check back and re-memorize them if you've forgotten. Not only will this work your memory, but you'll build a bit of a foreign vocabulary.

Tokidoki is japanese for sometimes. =D

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Woooo!

That's a good idea.

[jameel.livejournal.com]

Kill someone with your mind.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

That never works.

[jameel.livejournal.com]

Start small, then. Pinch someone with your mind.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

I can try.

[moesmith88.livejournal.com]

OW!

Hey, what was that for???

[lithera.livejournal.com]

.... Huh.

That totally wasn't who I was going for.

Sorry!

[moesmith88.livejournal.com]

Well, ok.

It's just going to make working at my desk a little awkward, until I can sit down again...

[lysistratah.livejournal.com]

Gotta second the excercise. Take a "smoke break" and use it to walk around outside the building. "Realize" you've left something in your car and need to go out to the parking lot for it. A little movement can go a long way towards clearing one's head.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I go and troll the free book piles. It isn't just a momentary fuzziness, though. It is more of a fear of a gradual mental decay.

[theonlymegumegu.livejournal.com]

I would also advocate the physical activity. Barring that though, something easy to do with tools at hand that I like to do occassionally (often when I'm driving) is to try and identify specific instruments in the music I'm listening to. What I mean by that is to try and single out that instrument's melody from the rest of the song. I actually started doing this because I started to feel that some parts of musical compositions become "unsung heroes", as they get overshadowed by either vocals or drums. Anyhoo, enough for rationale, that's an exercise you can try. Doesn't have to be music either though. In a noisy room you can try to pick out different sounds and such.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

That's a good reminder. I do that from time to time with movie scores.

[grymor.livejournal.com]

Generally I dive headfirst into some area of physics or math I've scratched the surface of and keep beating my head against it untill it fits in. Hence my large collection of books on General Relativity and Computation Fluid Dynamics.

Failing that, I find some puzzle (Sudoku for instance), and write a program to solve it.

Learn something complicated

[seanb.livejournal.com]

Not just a fact, or collection of facts. Learning a toolkit, things you can use in combination, is a great way to stretch.

For me, this is one of my main reasons for playing with languges, programming or otherwise. It might be a good stretch to get to he point where you can do a few senances in lojban, toki pona, quenya, welsh, or some such. You can alwways get back into Japanese, for something more serious.

Sometimes, the right book can be a good stretch. If you haven't read "Godel, Escher, Bach", it could work for you, spiraling between discussions of logic, music theory, cognitive science, and the open-ended nature of mathematics. Sometimes the very, very "hard" science fiction gives me the feeling of a good stretch.

Sex is good. There's always many opportunities for creativity and learning there.

Pick up a game book, something with its own system and an interesting-looking setting. Read it until you grok both.

Pick a classical game - checkers, chess, go, etc. - and start playing it with somebody on a regular basis. If you aren't good at it, get good. If you already are good, learn what you need to to get better.

Join MENSA, or some other club focused on swapping puzzles and brainteasers. Even a daily/weekly brainteaser list could be good.

Get in touch with Marci about working with her on the Perplex City puzzle thingy. The few samples I've played with have been fun, but I've never gotten around to spending money on them.

Re: Learn something complicated

[lithera.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm.

"Godel, Escher, Bach" is something I should buy or borrow.