Life After Full-time Work Blog

Fun things to do on your own or in groups

I’ve focused on the brain in the last couple of blog posts, first on why we need to exercise the brain to slow down its natural shrinkage with age, and then on mindfulness as a specific form of brain exercise. In this final post on the brain, I’ll mention other kinds of brain exercises that help to create new brain cells and pathways. I’ll skip the obvious support systems (such as diet, physical exercise and sleep), fundamental though they are, and the obvious applications of skills (such as memory games and doing puzzles). Instead, I’ll mention a few of the somewhat different mental exercises that intrigued me as I researched the subject. As always, it’s easy to do your own research on the internet if this is really important to you.

I particularly like the ones that Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin (authors of Keep Your Brain Alive) call “neurobic” exercises, rather like cross-training for the brain, in that they combine mental activities with some of our physical senses (vision, smell, touch, taste, hearing).

In no particular order, here are ten you can do on your own:

1. Use your non-dominant hand. For example, switch hands when eating dinner. Or brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. Of course, you’ll also open the tube of toothpaste and apply the toothpaste to the toothbrush in reverse directions.
2. Shower with your eyes closed. This includes locating the taps by feel, and adjusting the water temperature. Be sure to use common sense to avoid burning yourself! Then wash and rinse off with your eyes closed. And if you shave in the shower, shave with your eyes closed. Again: careful!
3. Learn a new sport to focus on mind/body co-ordination.
4. Take a new route. These days the nice thing about this is that, if you get lost, a map app on a cell phone will enable you to find your way back. I did this recently, walking in London’s enormous and multiply-divided Regent’s Park. I’m proud to say that I didn’t need the map, though it took me more than half an hour to find my way back.
5. Draw a map of your town or neighborhood from memory. Or if you’ve recently visited a new place, draw a map of it from memory.
6. Turn familiar objects upside down and see what different aspects of them you particularly notice.
7. Play “10 things”: pick up a familiar object, and imagine 10 non-traditional uses it can be put to (in an emergency, perhaps). Let your imagination run wild!
8. Learn new skills: a new language, a musical instrument, a new hobby (drawing, painting, dancing, knitting, cooking). This one alone can keep you going for years! This year, for example, I’m learning to play the piano, because (a) I’ve never played any musical instrument before and have never studied music, so it’s totally new to me, and (b) I’m so very linear, needing to focus on one thing at a time and complete it before starting anything else, that I felt that co-ordinating the use of the fingers of both hands simultaneously would be the toughest challenge I could imagine. (Don’t ask …) Oh, and my next year’s challenge will be to learn French, well enough that I can (attempt to) use it when I visit France (even if I make a fool of myself).
9. Other ways to refine or enhance hand-eye co-ordination: like painting, knitting – oh, right, those are already mentioned as possible new hobbies in the previous list. Well, it’s a long enough set of new skills that it’s worth two numbers!
10. Eat unfamiliar foods. Experience the individual ingredients and flavors in your meal (with your eyes closed). Enhance the experience by trying to identify subtle floral or other flavors in wine. This is a skill that has always eluded me, but I do enjoy the experience!

Given that humans are social creatures, and that social interaction is enormously helpful  in retaining our cognitive abilities and maintaining mental health and happiness, here are a couple of activities that you can’t do on your own:

11. Read aloud with a partner or friend. Alternate the roles of reader and listener. Or, in a group, have a narrator and have the others read the words of particular characters. In fact, you can go further and get the script of a play you’ve enjoyed, or for that matter a play you’ve never seen, and each of you reads the part of a particular character. While all of this will slow down the consumption of the literature, it will make it a totally different experience.
12. Do an art project in a group. Each person draws something associated with a particular theme, perhaps a season or an emotion or a current event. Then discuss what you’ve all drawn.

You get the idea. These are all approaches to exercising your mind in new ways. And, as I mentioned in Post #160, it’s that novelty that generates new neurons and neural pathways. Remember too that you need to keep up these activities, because it takes repetition to strengthen those pathways. And as our brains shrink, it’s the newest cells and connections that we lose first. The nice thing, then, is to identify the new activities that you enjoy the most; and then the pleasure of performing them is only one of the benefits, the other being the consolidation of your brain’s expansion.

***

Takeaway

There are many unusual yet fun activities, performed either alone or with others, that help to preserve and enhance our brain function as we age.

4 Comments