One thing I’ve always found horridly offense is when someone treats me with a certain amount of disdain for being an intelligent geek while at the same time turning around and begging for my help. It’s a great hypocrisy of our time, especially when now more than ever we need intelligent deep thinking people more than ever. US education and know-how has slipped and we aren’t always considered the place for real scientific innovation any more. I hope we are at the dawn of an era where knowledge becomes important again.
As such I want to give the world a few brain exercises to test and stretch your mind. These aren’t brain teasers or games on your nintendo DS. These are every day things you can do to question yourself, what you do, and the world around you and practice important basic skills.
The first idea is to manage your change. You know that change in your pocket? If you are the type to take your change home and put it in a jar, stop. Often you won’t have exact change, but instead of just giving them a twenty, practice your math and figure out how to get the minimum amount of change. Pennies are annoying but you don’t need to keep them. For example, someone gives you 13.48, but you only have quarters and pennies. Give them 13.53, your get a nickel back. At least give them three pennies, so that you don’t get pennies back. With practice you should never have more than 5 pennies and much more than a dollar in change. Think about this all the time and use it to practice basic math.
Read at least three things every day for pleasure. News articles on your favorite thing, short stories, web sites, whatever. Just read something. Make it something you’ll like so that you continue to read it daily. Just like they said back in grade school, read every day!
Get a hobby. This hobby should be something not to hard but not to simple. Work at it. Learn as much as you can and expand your knowledge. Not all hobbies actually have you do things. Music listening as a hobby is a good thing if you practice looking up local or lesser known bands. Knitting is also sometimes considered an “old peoples hobby” but I now have a few friends who are younger than me who regularly knit and it’s no trivial task.
Write! Now not everyone feels the have the knack for writing and I can understand some people may feel self conscious about it. However, writing helps you express your ideas and a good way to practice and get better at expression. You may find you are better at writing than you think. At the same time, do it anonymously. Find a protected community like livejournal.com where you can limit your exposure, and don’t mix your online persona with real life until you know individuals. If you want to blog publicly, like me, don’t post your name on your blog.
Play puzzles. Crosswords, Sudoku, lateral thinking puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, even tetris. These all exercise your brain. And I mean puzzles, not big crazy computer games. Puzzle games like i’m talking about you can plat at various levels and play a little here and a little there, or when you have time you can play a harder more involved puzzle. Shoot em ups and world conquering games are, in general, fun, but in general just entertainment. Puzzles entertain and exercise at the same time! Plus these puzzles are available both on computers and off, so you don’t need to be a computer whiz to do them
Listen to NPR News and BBC news. If you are in the US, listen to both. Otherwise, BBC and whatever else approximates a fair and balanced news program. Fox is NOT fair and balanced! It’s total and utter crap pretending to be fair and balanced. And while other channels have some good TV, BBC has some of the best. NPR has some of the best radio programs as well, dedicated to good quality programming rather than getting the most money. Now, once you have listened, use these broadcasts to critically understand why what you were watching is not as good as what you are watching. Also, don’t accept it as better, analyze for yourself why. You’ll actually get multiple sides, and occasionally you’ll be hearing yourself say “hey, I didn’t think of that, maybe I should rethink my viewpoint.”
If you have your own suggestions, please post them here!
