Use It or Lose It

Category: mental_model Secondary: ['scientific_principle'] Difficulty: beginner Domains: psychology, neuroscience, education

USE IT OR LOSE IT

Try as I might to maintain some ideal, year-round Zen balance in my life, I never quite achieve it. During the final couple of months while writing a book under the weight of a brutal deadline, for example, it’s inevitable that the volume and quality of my physical activity suffers. I still get in an average of thirty minutes of activity most days—have to or my brain won’t work right and I feel cranky—but as the deadline nears, the book increasingly consumes my thoughts, time, and energy. Running mileage plummets, and intense, heavy-lifting torture sessions at the gym morph into wimpy high-rep play with light weights. Then, when I finish the book, I switch back to beast mode and resume the eternal and impossible quest for peak strength and endurance. I just can’t burn the candle, full flame, at both ends no matter how much I want to. It probably wouldn’t be wise to try, so I don’t worry about it. I accept this as the rhythm of my life. Rather than feel bad about the loss of my high fitness level, I’ve come to look forward to the challenge of working to get it back after the book is finished. This cycle that I go through alerted me to the need to keep reading, thinking, and learning, every day, year round. My brain is one “muscle” that I do not want to get flabby and weak. For the brain, there is no off-season, no downtime. Even when I’m not immersed in writing a book, I make sure to continue researching, learning, exploring, wondering, thinking, and doodling. As a result, I’m able to keep my brain functioning at or near the top of its game. I don’t want to ever have to get my brain “back in shape” because it’s too valuable and necessary to my life every day. I need it in shape and battle-hardened at all times for my overall health and happiness.

Forget snake-oil scams that promise to keep your brain razor-sharp and healthy forever with a pill or potion. Learning and discovery give you something more useful to do: practice skills, ask questions, and find out about things that interest you. You can keep doing that throughout adult life.

Everybody knows that baby brains need to explore, experience the world, and learn new things. What most people apparently don’t know is that adult brains need to do the same things. Grown-up brains also must explore, experience, and learn. Skills can get rusty without practice. When you stop and think about it, this is one of those things that seem very much like common sense. After all, to be good at something usually requires doing that particular thing. If you want to be good at running, running is required, right? Well, if you want to have a brain that thinks well, then think!

Practicing a skill gives the brain work to do. Research discussed here reports changes in brain connections during learning, including learning to juggle, and associations between bilingualism and cognitive aging. Those findings do not mean that any particular activity will improve every mental ability or prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Connective wiring, or “white matter,” as neuroscientists call it, is part of the picture, but a healthy brain cannot be reduced to having more of it. And you certainly won’t find a ready supply in a bottle at a health-food store or by calling a 1-800 number you see in some late-night infomercial. If Swahili and juggling bowling pins don’t appeal to you, there is an entire universe of other things to discover. Buy a telescope or microscope and start exploring. Learn to sculpt clay. Sketch, learn some new math, pick up a musical instrument and go to work. Choose something that makes you curious enough to keep practicing. The pleasure of learning is a good reason to begin.

Regular reading, no surprise, is good for you. But not only can this activity lead to a fuller life through knowledge, it also seems to help with your brain development and long-term mental fitness. Research discussed here links reading and writing with the “structural integrity” of the brain. That association is a reason for further study, rather than a promise that reading will prevent cognitive decline. I’m sure you will agree with me that having structural integrity inside your head sounds like a good idea.

Never underestimate the power of a teacher to influence a student. Nick Wynne, my favorite professor in college, pulled me aside one day and said, “You need to read incessantly.” I nodded in agreement. Later, back in my dorm room, I looked up incessantly to find out what it meant. I can’t say that my reading habits changed immediately, but that one, tiny statement stuck. Looking back, I suspect it was Dr. Wynne’s polite way of saying: “Guy, you are in danger of becoming a permanent idiot. Chase fewer girls and read more books.” The important thing is that it influenced me. I had loved books since childhood, thanks to many trips to the public library with my mother, but he was right. I needed to up my game. Within a few years, I did become an incessant reader. Today, I don’t go anywhere without a book. I keep extra books in my car—just in case I need them. I’m always prepared for those inevitable times when I have to sit in a waiting room or stand in line somewhere. Reading keeps me from being one of those wretched souls at the Department of Motor Vehicles who sit there, impatiently staring at their number, hoping to be called next. Long plane rides may be boring misery for some, but jetliners are wonderful, airborne libraries to me. Down time is never lost time because I read. My motivation to devour more and more books was to learn, but now it turns out that I have probably benefited in ways I never could have imagined years ago. Reading is like taking your brain for a jog or a swim. Researchers scanning people’s brains as they read reported “dramatic and unexpected” increases in blood flow to regions beyond those usually associated with reading. Those observations show how much of the brain reading can engage; they do not, by themselves, establish a lasting improvement in cognitive health. So make sure you read incessantly.

Don’t spend your whole life inside a book, however. There is too much world out there to miss. And experiencing it is also good for your brain. So go outside and connect with the natural world on a regular basis. Visit a mountain, a desert, a forest, a pond, a beach. We think of ourselves as thoroughly civilized and sanitized. But we are still creatures of the wilderness. Dirt, plants, trees, wild animals, and sky matter to us. And these things make our brains feel good. One of the best things you can do for your brain on a regular basis is join exercise, thinking, and nature into one outing. The closest thing to a miracle tonic for the brain might be something like a vigorous walk/run on a previously unexplored mountain trail or along a new stretch of beach, during which one notices and photographs an unusual plant or insect to research after returning home. That would be a good day for any brain.

Traveling to new countries is also wonderful brain stimulation. Consider cost and safety when planning a trip. I’ve been all over the world, to every continent except Antarctica, and I did most of it alone and with little money. If you do your research and don’t mind giving up massages and lobster tails, it is possible to experience much of your planet safely and economically. So if your international travel extends no farther than a few laps around the World Showcase at Epcot, it’s time to get off the porch. Few things stimulate your brain and make you feel alive as taking in the smells, tastes, sounds, and sights of faraway lands.

Whether at home or abroad, make sure to take full advantage of those very special buildings where art, history, culture, and science are preserved and displayed. I’m not ashamed to admit it, museums are my cathedrals. I don’t actually worship the artifacts within or anything weird like that, but the better ones really do stir up an abundance of awe and reverence in me. My heart rate soars in joyous anticipation when I walk up the steps and toward the entrance of a great museum. (I’m not joking.) All that excitement, learning, and creative thinking that good museums spark in me has to be good for my brain.

This has been a long love affair for me. When I was very young, my grandfather took me to museums, and I still remember seeing my first shrunken head in a glass case. I loved seeing dinosaur fossils two feet in front of my face and being able to touch World War II airplanes. I have no idea if my grandfather took me as part of some noble attempt to turn his goofy grandkid into an intellectual or if he just got stuck with me on those days and had no choice in the matter. But it doesn’t matter because I fed off his enthusiasm for museums and became hooked for life. Being surrounded by so much mental stimulation in one place is fun and, more important, very healthy for the thinking machine. Whenever I visit a city or town, one of the first things I do is head for the nearest museum. Try it.

If you ever have doubts about the joy and benefits of being eager to learn, just look at young kids. Most of them are profoundly inspiring. They know how to use their brains and don’t hesitate to do so. They want to learn. They have to learn. Kids ask questions. They explore, experiment, touch, and imagine. I used to teach science and history to elementary and middle-school students, and I will never forget how curious and excited they were about discovering new things. Before and after lectures, many of them would run to me and blurt out incoherent questions. They were so eager to learn something new that they couldn’t even slow their brains down to formulate their questions. Those kids inspired me in a very lasting way. I don’t care how long I live, I’ll never be so stupid as to imagine that I’ve heard it all and seen it all. I’ll never be so dead inside that I wouldn’t want to know what might be living under that rock up ahead or what might be waiting around the bend. And my brain is better off for this attitude.

Become a lifelong student and never stop exploring. Dreaming and thinking must never cease. Practice the kinds of thinking you want to get better at. Let one discovery lead to the next.