Taking On Intellectual Challenges to Grow Your Mind

in #triptolemus6 years ago

Growth in life - physically, mentally, emotionally, financially and otherwise comes through diligent training and repetitive effort.

In weight lifting, this type of growth comes from something referred to as "progressive overload."

Whenever I'm training in the gym, I'm quick to remind myself to do 1 more rep, to lift 5 lbs heavier, to do an extra set or exercise because progressively overloading my body with more stress is what causes my muscles to grow.

Our minds are no different. If we wish to get smarter and better intellectually, then we must progressively overload our minds as well.

Reading every day, writing every day and intellectual challenges are 3 of my favorite ways to grow my mind.

Reading - I read every morning. I have a library of books downloaded to my phone and ipad, so there is no excuse for me to not read. I always have something available to read at my fingertips.

I read for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, but typically I read for more than an hour. I go based on how I feel and how much work I have to do that day. But I never fail to hit my 30 minute minimum and I always try to "overload progressively" by adding in more time here and there.

For example, sometimes I have extended reading sessions (several hours) for 1-2 days each week. This simply propels my progress and allows me to get a lot of extra "mental exercise" in.

Writing - I write everyday, regardless of what's going on. I have evernote on my laptop, iPad and iPhone, so I have no excuse to not write - similar to the reading.

I've found writing my feelings and deep thoughts about different subjects to be extremely eye-opening and beneficial to my mind. I feel like a mental cloud was fogging up my brain until I started writing. Now that I write so much, my mind feels as though new room has been cleared up for new thoughts.

Intellectual Challenges - you could think of these challenges as being sort of puzzles or problems to solve.

I'm always on the lookout for problems to solve and I love solving them. Whether it's a simple technical problem for a family member or a complex idea that I'm trying to breakdown or a new investment strategy that needs to be put into a spreadsheet to be better understood.

Solving problems will make your mind so much stronger. It strengthens every part of your brain. In my opinion, our bodies and minds evolved to solve problems. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors had to fight to survive and find food and they had to constantly problem solve.

Today, life is so much easier and if we're not careful, we can aimlessly meander through our days with no problems to solve and thus, no growth to be had.

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Reading some useful material will help in broaden your horizon.As instance,some macros textbook,haha guess what stage am I now?

Truth sir! We dobjot currently use Up to 15% of our Brain capacity. Imagine we challenge ourselves daily to grow intellectually and constantly add value to our kinda one way or the other. Good thing our generation has access to loads and loads of information via the internet. But bad news is that most young people do not rightly inform and grow their minds with the right activities and engagement. Thanks ks for sharing.

This post got me like

I like you daily routine I also try to follow looks like very impressive routine @triptolemus

This game is very nice amazing this game

Chess is amazing, it's one of my favorites as well!

Coming across this post without making a reasonable comment will keep someone away from destiny. Now i have channeled my mind to reading at least 30 minutes perday. Am not a good writer but i know thousands of memory flow my mind daily. Thanks for such a nice article.

Extraodinario excrito, de gran ayuda para sistematizar lo que queremos lograr. gracias por permitirnos conocer tu manera de hacer las cosas

Thanks! great post!

I really loved this post and posts similar to this, I am always open to knew ideas or even old ideas rehashed when it comes to matters of growth as you said, "physically, mentally, emotionally, financially"

It is only in understanding and realising the need for continuous stimulation that we make sense and justify our mere existence, it empowers the should and it is what drives us forward.

Thanks for posting, interesting read.
Resteemed :-)

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