Year of Gratitude - Day 85 - Caffeine for the Creative Mind

Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain
By Stefan Mumaw

I totally forgot about this book and had trouble finding any of my notes on it! Luckily, I figured it out and have added it to my Goodreads. I read through the whole book, but did not take notes for the entire thing. I'll have to pick this title back up, because I wasn't able to find the notes I DID take. Such is life.

Here's one of the exercises I did and posted to Instagram - the alphabet all around us!

More brain work please...and make it difficult!

"One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts." —Albert Einstein

Weeks ago, I read this Scientific American guest article in bed and then drifted to sleep. The article was all about making the mind work and since that night it's been working on my mind. The author, behavioral therapist and autism expert Andrea Kuszewski, began by sharing a fantastic story about increasing IQ in kids with autism by over 20 points! Then, the article went into different ways of putting your neurons to work. Finally, I was dazzled by her works cited. I'm a geek, but so what?

I loved this article because it explored the mind, one of my favorite topics, and the article also made me a little uncomfortable. It was the same kind of discomfort caused by that The Atlantic article about Google's effect on the mind called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" I don't think Google makes us stupider, but it does make us more complacent by making everything easier. Kuszewski would argue that makes your mind a lazy sh*t (my words, not hers.) I also experienced a similar type of discomfort after reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink.

Kuszewski's article touches on a couple things that hit very close to home for me. For example, I will forever curse the invention of Autocorrect and blame it for my atrocious spelling (truth be told - I misspelled "atrocious" AND "misspelled" during the creation of this blog post). My buddy Carlie once told me she would always backspace and retry to spell those words with the little red squiggles under them. I wish I would've had the smarts to have done the same. It would have saved me a lot of grief.

This article covered so many parts of my interest about the mind and the human abilities to think, remember and learn. I've read, reread and recommended this article to many. I STRONGLY urge you to enjoy this article and learn a couple of great ways to make your brain do work!

Read: You can increase your intelligence: 5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential

Today's Knowledge: How technology can change how we think

T-Bone sent me this great Atlantic Magazine article called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" It's a great piece. You'll learn a ton about all sorts of things. This article is so thoughtful and exquisitely well-written that it really tickles the mind. For me, it was quite thought provoking and I found that it was well worth taking the time and effort to read it all the way through.