Halt brain decline with learning

Here’s another way to halt the decline of your brain - it’s pretty straightforward and is much more what people think about when they talk about improving your brain.

Learn something new

The newer and more different it is, the better. It’s good for your brain because it encourages you to grow new connections in your brain.

So, if you already speak seven languages, instead of learning a new one, learn to do watercolour painting or dance the tango.

If you can already tango, what about learning to play chess?

In his book “Aging with Grace: The Nun Study and the science of old age. How we can all live longer, healthier and more vital lives.” David Snowdon identifies that further education delays the onset of dementia.

You’ll find lots of suggestions for things to learn, depending on your personal preferences and what you already do in my booklet “Boost Your Brain in Your Spare Time.”

Tomorrow and Friday, some rather surprising suggestions that you may not have come across, so stay tuned.

Halt brain decline with non-aerobic exercise

Sea Squirt

Here’s the next way to halt brain decline. Non-aerobic exercise. This is weight training or other activities that include movement, but don’t raise your heart rate a great deal or make you break out in a sweat, like gardening, dancing and walking.

 

 

Why is non-aerobic exercise so good for your brain?

Think about your brain. Where do you think it ends? At your neck? No. It ends at the ends of your fingers and the ends of your toes. Nerves are simply the ‘stalks’ of your brain cells or neurons.

As you get older the protective sheath around your nerves (the myelin) can start to degrade which means that the messages sent down those nerves are not transmitted properly.

You control all your movements by sending signals along those fibres. If the signals are not received correctly you can start using your joints badly, so they start to get damaged.

Imagine how complicated your knees and elbows are. Each muscle involved in their movement needs to contract and relax at exactly the correct moment for your knee or elbow to work properly. If not, your joints can start to deteriorate.

The good news

You can do something to drastically reduce this problem - that is non-aerobic exercise. Repeating the same movement time and time again sends signals down your nerves. Repeating the same signal along your nerve encourages it to repair any damage.

Use it or lose it

That’s what non-aerobic exercise does, so make sure you get some at least each week, if possible, get it every day.

Why movement is so important for your brain

Do you know the life cycle of the see squirt? It swims around in the ocean till it finds a nice spot to make its home. Then it attaches itself to a rock and stays there for the rest of its life.

Guess what its first meal is? It digests its own brain. This is because it doesn’t need it any more. You need your brain to decide if you are in the right place or not. If not, it makes you move to another place.

When you are young and your brain is developing, movement is a vital part of that process.

Movement is vital for keeping your brain healthy and active. It’s pretty good for your heart too.

Look out for more ways of keeping your brain from decline on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week.

Go here for the last post on stopping the decline in your brain.

Prevent decline in your brain

You may have heard the reports today of a study published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) stating that mental decline can start as early as 45.

When you read a bit more about it, you discover that what they are talking about seems to be dementia. They are suggesting that it can start earlier than people had previously thought.

What they are also saying is that people who are healthy tend to keep their cognitive skills more effectively than those who are not.

How to keep your brain working

There have been many other studies that have found the same thing, including one study of Harvard Alumni (several thousand of them), which correlated their cognitive skills with their life style.

Five factors

This study discovered that there were five factors that were linked to a high level of cognitive skills. I’ll be going over them in detail with suggestions next week, but, to get you going, here’s the first and most potent of them all:

Aerobic exercise

Yes, I’m sorry, but this kind of exercise is not only good for your body; it’s good for your brain too.

Why aerobic exercise is good for your brain

Aerobic exercise increases the blood flow to your brain, which increases your brain’s access to nutrients. For your brain, these are glucose and oxygen. Aerobic exercise increases arterial growth and the growth of capillaries in your brain.

But most importantly of all it increases your ability to grow new brain cells, and which of us could not do with a few more of those? It does this by releasing neurotropic factors (what John Ratey, neuroscientist and author of “Spark!: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”
…. refers to as "brain fertiliser").

Get some exercise now

If you really want to look after your brain, aerobic exercise has 50% more impact than anything else on your brain. So how about resolving to get some ever week as your New Year’s resolution? When you retire and are still mentally sharp as a needle, you’ll thank me for it - and so will your brain.

Next week you’ll find out about the other 4 factors. But you may not want to wait that long. To get more help go here.

More ways to prevent decline:

Non-aerobic exercise

Learning

Friends

Why You Procrastinate and What to Do About It

I was going to write this today, but then I thought it could wait….

Why do we procrastinate? Here are some of the reasons:

• Poor motivation
• Unable to make a decision
• Frightened of making a mistake
• Lack of clear objectives
• Don’t know what to do
• It’s easier to talk about it than to do anything
• And, as Dave McCoy commented on my blog earlier this week, “..going to the gym the hardest exercise is putting on your training shoes!!” It's the getting started bit that most people find difficult.

So how do you get over it?

Usually people who procrastinate spend too much time thinking how unpleasant the task will be which makes it worse.

Plan

Instead of this you need to spend your time planning it and imagining how nice it will be when the task is finished.

Break it up

When planning, break the task into small chunks that you can complete in a short period of time, then put them into your diary of schedule.

Think about the end

With each one, plan in something pleasant to do immediately after you have finished your chunk and focus on that rather than the unpleasantness of the task itself.

Clarify your objective

If you are having trouble planning break that too into small chunks, perhaps start by clarifying your objective (chunk 1) then list the tasks (chunk 2) and so on.

Keep the chunks small and you’ll find it’s much easier. Get more help with motivation here.

Why do ‘transformational change’ program fail so often?

Why do ‘transformational change’ programs fail so often? (Apparently 7 out of 10 do).

You will probably have seen this happen, if not in your own organisation, then somewhere else.

There are lots of reasons, and I’m sure communications is one; bad communications and the lack of communications. Have a look at this short video made by one of our clients - Twist and Shout - and see if you recognise anyone.

The question is; what do you do about it? How do you deal with people who behave in this way?

Firstly you need to recognise that you recruited and trained these people. You have created them. So you might need to ask how that happened.

Secondly it’s worth thinking about how you have communicated your messages. So often people at the top are really enthusiastic about change and haven’t carefully thought through the implications for others.

So when they do tell everyone about the changes, they seem to forget that some people are not going to like them and, as a result, handle the message insensitively.

This creates cynicism and negativity. Then the people at the top complain about all the negativity and cynicism, which, had they been more skilled in their communications, could have been avoided.

I heard several people tell me of one senior manager who told his whole site how great the changes were going to be and how much he was looking forward to his new role. The changes clearly meant that at least 30% of the audience would lose their jobs.

They watched his crass insensitivity open-mouthed and he still didn’t notice.

And, not doubt, senior managers later complained of negativity and cynicism and were surprised when employees did not want to uproot their entire families to stay with the company. They all knew people who had done that before only to be made redundant months later.    

I’m not suggesting all senior managers are so inept. But I do think that it can be very easy for extremely senior people to lose touch with the vast majority and, as a result, completely ignore their needs.





Change doesn't 'have to be so difficult.

Why plans fail

I was quite surprised to read Seth Godin, who I normally admire, saying that plans almost always fail.
I don’t agree with this. Bad plans fail. Plans that are not updated fail and plans that have no clear objective fail.

Plans that work

However, well thought out plans do work, very often. The trouble is that most people don’t bother to plan carefully and think that they will just be able to muddle through.
Then they get used to what it’s like to muddle through and so muddling through becomes the norm.
When you allow that to happen you have lowered your standards. So now, you don’t even think about planning effectively, you just accept the status quo.

"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine."

-- John C. Maxwell

What planning means

Planning effectively means taking time to think a task through, to identify what needs to be done when, and what could go wrong. It means you need to review your plan regularly and keep your eyes open for indications that you need to modify your plan.

It means, as John Maxwell says, changing something in your life daily. All you need to do is think about things before you start them. Just give yourself a few minutes. Ask:

• Why am I doing this?
• What do I need to achieve?
• What would be the most effective way to do it?

That will get you started. Then build the habit. As you start to see a return on your investment, you can build your skill, which in turn will give you more time.

The pay off`

Planning really pays off. It is the corner stone of time management.

A client of mine who is a project manager recently had a performance review. His manager said: “I don’t know how you get so much done.” 

This is a sad reflection on the manager. The individual is good at planning. He does not rush into any project or new situation; he gathers the information, organises it and works out his plan very carefully. Then he keeps monitoring it all.

When there are problems he usually has a contingency plan. He has many contingency plans. Most of them never need to be used.

The result you get from planning

The result is he is able to achieve twice what most of his colleagues do. He is not superhuman. He just puts his effort in where it gives the most benefit. It may not be as glamorous as charging in and saving the day, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, but it is much cheaper and less stressful.
In fact most people are working far harder than they need to do just because they don’t plan. Make sure you’re not one of them.

Get more help here.

http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/TimeManagementTips.htm

Distractions, attention and the M5

On Friday here in the UK there was one of the worst motorway crashes we have experienced.

It was on the M5 in Somerset. As it happened a friend of ours passed the very spot of the accident just one hour before.

She told us of a large bonfire and fireworks very close to the motorway. She told us that she saw lorries swerving and that she and the others in the car were all distracted by it.

Attention

There are several facets of the skill of attention. They include the ability to:

• Give your attention to one part of the environment
• Sustain your attention
• Release your attention so you can move it to something else

You can have problems in any one of these areas.

Key skills

You need to be able to choose what we pay attention to. When you are easily distracted this means you have a problem in this area.

However, your visual system is tuned to spot things that might pose a danger to you. In particular, to spot movement and difference.

So, for example, if there is one white stone amongst 300 grey stones, you will spot that white stone.

If you are watching TV and, on the other side of the room, there is a sudden movement, your eyes will be drawn to it. Or if there
This is an instinctive reaction and it’s very hard to stop yourself responding in this way.

Once you have moved your attention, you then need to decide what to do next. If the movement is nothing to worry about (for example, curtains fluttering in the breeze) the chances are you will resume your enjoyment of your TV programme.

If an animal is springing at you from the gloom or a fire has started, you will probably decide that the new threat is more worthy of your attention than the TV.

The important thing is to be able to make those decisions.

Problems with attention

Either being unable to move your attention when you need to, or being unable to keep it on the matter in hand is a problem.

Bored?

Boredom is an emotion that tells your body that there is nothing to be gained from paying attention to a specific topic. Unfortunately, when you are trying to work on an important task, this can be very counter-productive.

On the other hand, when you are driving and your attention is caught by fireworks, this can make driving safely momentarily much more difficult. If you are startled by something, you tend to raise your hands in the air.

However, you raise your dominant hand less (because you have better control of it). This is an entirely voluntary response; you can’t stop yourself.

What it means is that if you are a right-handed driver, and you are startled, you are likely to swerve to the right. If you are left-handed, you will swerve to the left.

On a normal duel carriageway this is bad enough, but on a motorway, it’s very dangerous to have three lanes of traffic swerving.

I don’t know if this was the cause of, or contributed to the dreadful accident on Friday, but it’s easy to imagine that having fireworks apparently so close to the motorway would not help. Driving does need concentration and focus of attention.

We know this because even talking on a hands-free phone while you are driving increases the risk of accident.

Your brain

Your brain only has so much room for conscious processing. To test this out just try remembering a new phone number at the same time as doing your next task. Unless you have an effective memory technique (which takes it out of your working memory) you’ll find it hard to perform to your usual standard.

Being able to concentrate on your tasks is a key aspect of time management.

There’s a whole section on how to concentrate more effectively in my booklet “Time Management Made Easy” on page 11. You will find seven tips there on now to maintain attention.

For more help go here.