Yesterday I was standing next to a coworker and we were looking into a problem in our inventory system. I said "may I?" as I grabbed the mouse and clicked a couple of times and showed him something. He had never seen it before and said "great I learned something new today"! Moments later he went to a screen and I saw something I didn't know existed. We celebrated with laughter and high fives! Learning is so much fun!
The last few years I've seen a lot of studies tauting the benefits of building brain reserves. Experts claim you can improve memory, sleep and self confidence and even prevent Alzheimer's. One article from a 2008 Wall Street Journal was particularly interesting to me. It recommends memorization, solving riddles, working puzzles, investigative thinking and altering routines.
I can attest to the working puzzles part. Here's the game I play on my cell phone. It's called wordfued, very similar to scrabble. I play against total strangers and one friend. Not only does it challenge my brain but I often have to get out a dictionary when someone plays a word I don't know. Great fun!
I love the recommendation about altering patterns and routines. Man, I'm a serious routine freak. I do things in the exact same order every single day. The article said "take a new route, eat with your other hand, rearrange your computer desktop. Vary your habits regularly to create new brain pathways." I can create a new brain pathway? Wow, it feels like blazing a trail I like it!
What the heck, I'll bite. I'm going to try to alter some of my routines and change things up a bit, want to join me?
Learning a foreign language was listed as one of the most beneficial activities from a variety of sources. I'm also going to attempt to learn some German between now and my trip in August. Wish me luck!
I didn't find any articles that claim that learning is non-beneficial. It may be an indisputable truth. They're aren't very many of those!
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