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systematic
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Exercise idea

Hi guys,

Sorry if this ends up somewhat incoherent and poorly written. I'm quite tired right now, but I thought I'd like to make my first serious post.

I was on my way home today on the bus and I was wondering whether I could spend my time doing some mental exercise. I came up with this exercise, and I'd really appreciate if anyone could offer an evaluation of it to see if it's something worth doing.

The idea is to choose something to count throughout the duration of your journey. For example, I thought an interesting thing to try would be to count how many red cars I could see from the bus window. I soon realised it takes quite a lot of concentration and attention to stay aware of the environment, so it must improve these faculties to some degree. It seems to train the senses and related abilities (visual perception and spatial awareness?), and some aspect of the memory (since the count must be retained and constantly updated) which I'm not quite about at present (working memory, short term memory?)

Anyway, this is just a first attempt at devising an exercise which one can do while out and about to make the most of spare time during the day which would perhaps be wasted otherwise. My next idea is to choose a variety of colours, objects, shapes, ideas, geometric patterns, etc., to count/identify and increase the complexity of the exercise over time. I'd appreciate any comments.


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Sakiro
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Re: Exercise idea

Hi dude, i think that one of the more important steps to "design" an exercise is looking for stuff that we enjoy doing it (and see the "brain benefits" like a bonus), if you look at the tutorials and get more in deep what each networks function "does" you can tailor yourself your own exercises.

Of course in the activity you are explaining in your post, will require attention/concentration skills, plus maybe a little of working memory to "update" it, keeping track of the numbers etc ..

Tip: If it is (for you) too easy, or you get bored fast .. probably is not (for you) the best exercise to do.

I think is cool the idea to "make the best" of our day, because me too for example have a lot of "wasted time" where for example i'm waiting for someone, and i feel like my brain is in "passive mode" doing nothing productive ..

Which i think could be great trying to do stuff like this "outdoors", because theorically we need to "filter" a lot of "noise" (other people talking, sounds that could distract us etc) and that alone can be a challange to focus our mind to do whatever mental exercise you try to do.

For me, the difficult is being selective of which exercises i choose! (too many interesting stuff to try, 24 hs only in a day)

A tip that work for me (if you have the time) if maybe not choose a "simple" exercise that probably will not bring a direct "practicity" in your everydaylife, but for example more like hobbies that not only will train your brain but hopefully enjoy more and open new possibilities in your life, for example learn to play the guitar (N4), you will not only build up that network but gain a great skill that can be used for the rest of your life ... makes sense? that way i can stay months doing it, getting better at it gradually,  and not worrying that i need to change every day or every week my "list of exercises".

Other people maybe enjoy it more doing more "selective/simple" (isolated) exercises for N4, and that's cool too, variety is good.

My theory is that if you choose to learn the guitar (only an example to make my point) in that long process you will still do/practise all that isolated components anyways (because the process of playing the guitar good requieres it).

Probably in the best case you will do both =)

Sorry i wrote a lot, hope that it helped in something.


Cheers


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Alex
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Re: Exercise idea

Hi dudes,

I started doing something else at the same time as exercises I find tedious but felt I need to do. It started with physical exercise as I generally feel uncomfortable 'just' working out, as if it's a waste of mental time or something  :  )  So I've been going through music/movie collections etc, labeling stuff properly, throwing away the unwanted, etc.

With mental exercises its the other way round -do something physical at the same time. In fact it's a good time to do all the boring things that don't take much thought -having a bath, cooking, cleaning etc. And mindfulness can be done while doing anything, of course.

If I feel aversion to an exercise, it's sometimes hard to tell whether it's my unconscious saving me time and effort because it 'knows' some exercise won't help me, or if its anxiety being afraid of change. My solution is to try it, and see if things improve or not. It won't hurt me to try something out, then I have the real evidence and experience that it will or won't help me and I can either confirm it was just anxiety and get used to recognizing how that feels -or I can confirm it was intuition and get used to how that feels.

Learning a new language during journeys and waiting times was my housemates' project at one time. Of course one can't repeat foreign phrases on public transport out loud, but subvocalizing the speech still gave the practice she needed to do it all out loud when she got home and progress at twice the speed. Every time she had to wait in lines, or sit still unoccupied anywhere, she would practice, turning all those little waits into one very valuable skill. Getting that together takes frontal lobe skills in itself; forward planning strategy etc. but there are probably all sorts of things we can do with such times as well as meditate.
Best,
AR


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