I've written previously that your mind is more important than money and that there are steps you can take to make sure your brain stays fit. So when I saw this web show from Forbes on how to make your brain fitter in six (sort of) easy steps, I had to share it. Their six ways to help keep your brain fitter:
1. Music
2. Languages
3. Juggling
4. Dancing
5. Puzzles
6. Ping Pong
Ok, I'm in trouble with these because:
1. If they mean LISTENING to music, I'd be cool. However, they're talking about playing. Not one of my strong points.
2. I'm still working on mastering English (though I can count to ten in French and Spanish and I learned some Russian this past year -- enough to say, "I don't understand Russian." Think this will help me out?)
3. I can juggle a career, a wife, two kids, church commitments, a side business, riding my bike several thousand miles a year and a seemingly endless list of "to-do's", but that's about all I can keep up in the air at once.
4. Let's put it this way: saying that I have "two left feet" would actually be a gross over-exaggeration of my dancing ability.
5. FINALLY! One that works for me. I love puzzles (and their cousin -- challenging games/brain teasers). Maybe there's hope for me yet.
6. Yes! Two in a row! I love ping pong as well. Too bad I haven't played it in 10 years.
Ok, at least I have a handle on many of these - there may be hope for me yet. ;-)
Music; no hope for me. My brother got all the musical ability in the family.
Languages; well, I can't speak french anymore but I can still read it and write it well enough to be understood. I can remember quite a bit of esperanto. Never got a handle on the Spanish or Portueguese despite having had to work with them.
Juggling is something I used to do professionally; the most I do now is juggling my torches no the fourth of july for all the kids at the fireworks show, and juggling the weighted balls when I am waiting for my fiance to finish up at the gym when I am done first.
Dancing is something I am currently taking lessons for and that I am getting better at.
Puzzles used to be fun, but I never have time for them anymore.
Ping pong is a thing of the past; when I was growing up we had a table, but I haven't played for almost two decades.
Posted by: Blaine Moore (Run to Win) | March 23, 2006 at 04:05 PM
Try piano. The main advantage: The first time you sit down at the keyboard, and play a note, it sounds good!
Posted by: mbhunter | March 24, 2006 at 01:35 AM
Well, it was interesting to see that Blaine mentioned Esperanto. I've been reading Mind Performance Hacks over the past few days. One of the suggestions in that book is to learn an artificial language. Esperanto is one of the ones suggested.
It really is easier to learn, and retain than natural languages for several really straightforward reasons.
1) The spelling is entirely phonetic. Spanish is close enough to being phonetic to share some of that advantage.
2) With the exception of a few special words (prepositions, pronouns, some adverbs, etc.) every word is grammatically tagged. The nouns end in "o". Adjectives end in "a". You make either of those plural by adding a "j" to the end.
3) Esperanto speakers are free to make up words out of the parts they already know. That means that many of the words you use will be compounds that you just use on-the-fly. You don't have to remember the Esperanto word for the verb "to accompany". That means "to go with". In Esperanto, "to go" is "iri", "with" is "kun". You put them together and get "kuniri". You would be just as correct to express it as two words and say "iri kun", which means literally "to go with".
4) Esperantists are generally talkative. The whole point of an artificial "bridge language" is to talk and correspond with people outside your own linguistic community without the effort to learn several foreign languages. I've met quite a few friendly Esperantists who were eager to share their thoughts with me.
Posted by: Dejlo | March 28, 2007 at 05:09 PM