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Our brain is like muscles. The more you use and exercise it, the stronger
it becomes. But, if you want to get maximum results, you should do more than
just practice. What you need is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is the
kind of practice that stretches the boundaries of your capabilities. While in
normal practice you just do the same activity again and again, in deliberate
practice you push yourself to the limit. It’s not easy, but deliberate practice
makes the difference between an expert and everyone else.
The principle of deliberate practice can be applied in whatever field you
want to excel in, but here I will focus on mind development. Below are 8 ways to
challenge and exercise your mind. Choose some of them you haven’t done and take
your mind to the next level:
1. Read challenging articles
You can measure the difficulty level of an article by using Google Docs.
Here is how to do it:
Create a new document
Paste the content of the article to the new document
Open the Tools -Word Count menu item. It will show you three metrics:
Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kindcaid Grade Level, and Automated Readability
Index. The higher it is, the more difficult the article is.
Of course, it’s not necessary to measure the difficulty level of every
article you read. Simply take some samples from a blog or web site and you will
have good idea about the difficulty level of the articles there.
2. Read challenging books
Classic books are good candidates since they are usually more difficult to
read than new books. You could start with my list of classic books. You can also
read the Pulitzer-winning books.
3. Read academic journals
One form of challenging reading we often overlook is academic journals.
There are a lot of free journal articles you can read from Open science
Directory. Some of the journal articles in Google Scholar are also free. Go
there, pick a topic of your interest and read a journal article.
4. Play mind games
Choose a free mind game to play and you can have fun while exercising your
mind. I started playing Sudoku last week and it was more difficult than I
expected. But over time my mind got used to it and I can now solve the puzzles
faster.
5. Aim to produce certain number of ideas everyday
The ideas can be in whatever fields you are working on. In my case, I try
to write certain number of words everyday. Q10 - which I first learned from Dale
- is an excellent tool you can use if you are a writer. One of its features is
global target with which you can set the target number of words you want to
write.
6. Brainstorm using thinking tools
There are many thinking tools you can use. The book Thinkertoys has many of
them in one book and the web site Exploratree has a collection of tools you can
use.
7. Do ultradian sprint
Doing ultradian sprint is a good way to train your focus and concentration.
One trait of a well-trained brain is the ability to concentrate for long time
and ultradian sprint can help you increase your ability to concentrate.
8. Set a project
Is there a project that has been in the back of your mind for some time?
Perhaps you postpone it because you think it’s too difficult. Well, that’s a
good candidate for deliberate practice. Often we are afraid of failure, but a
mantra to quick progress is to make mistakes and make them quick. This way you
will have a short feedback loop that will help you adjust your performance
faster.
As I wrote in the beginning of this article, a key of deliberate practice
is to push your current limit of ability. These challenges will stretch your
boundary when you first do them, but after some time, you will get comfortable
with it and it will no longer be deliberate practice. Here are some things you
can do to keep making them deliberate practice:
1. For reading, try reading something in an unfamiliar field or read more
challenging materials in the same field.
2. For playing mind games, increase the level of difficulty or try a new
game you are not familiar with.
3. For producing certain number of ideas everyday, increase the target
number or the quality of the ideas.
4. For doing ultradian sprint, increase the duration of the session.
5. For thinking challenge, try more difficult challenges.
6. For setting project, increase the scope of the project or do similar
projects with stricter deadline.
Do you have tips or thoughts on mind exercise? I would love to hear
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:36:26