Mentalrobics®
Stay mentally fit with these daily brain exercises. You will learn how to flex your mind, improve your creativity and boost your memory. Pick your favorite exercises from our daily suggestions and repeat them as desired to enhance your mental capacity. Try to do some Mentalrobics every single day!
Mentalrobics Articles
Daily exercises and tips for improving memory, creativity, vocabulary and stress management.
Flash Cards
When you are trying to memorize something, flash cards can be a very effective way to improve your memory.
Vocab Builder
This vocabulary test is loaded with over 3000 of the most common words found on the SAT and GRE standardized tests.
Mentalrobics Articles
Word of the Day : Inveigle
in-vei-gle
verb :: To lead astray as if blind; to persuade by deceptive arts or flattery; to entice; to insnare; to seduce; to wheedle.
"He had led his mother there, step by step, and now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther." --London, Jack
External Aids
External aids are things like notebooks, PDAs, lists, alarms and strings around your finger. Some external aids (like notebooks) are intended to remind you of what to remember. These are very effective because your notebook cannot forget. As long as you remember where your notebook is kept, you will always have a backup of information contained in it to refresh your unreliable memory. These types of external aids are particularly useful when you are very busy, easily distracted or don't have time to properly learn the material. In these situations, an external aid acts like temporary storage until you can get the information into your head.
External aids can take other useful forms. For example, you may place the movie rental near the door as a reminder to return it to the store. If you think of something as you are falling asleep, you can put something out of place to remember it in the morning. You can tie a string around your finger to remind you to do something. These types of aids only remind you that there is something to remember. Usually, this is enough to jog your memory. If you can't remember why a string is around your finger, then you might need to use the first type of external aid.
If having a string around your finger is too annoying, you can try putting other things out of place. You could put a rubber band around your wrist, move a ring to a different finger, put your watch on the other wrist, put your wallet in a different pocket, etc. You can even use multiple simultaneous aids to remember multiple things. For example, your wallet in the wrong pocket could be a reminder to go to the bank and a ring on the wrong finger could be a reminder to pay your bills.
When Something is Going Wrong
When something is already going wrong, worrying about it reduces our ability to concentrate on the task at hand. This causes the situation to get worse. When we are worried, our mind jumps all over the place and we lose the ability to make good decisions. We can only improve a bad situation if we can focus 100% of our attention on the task, which means not worrying about the outcome. Here are some steps you can take to do this.
Determine the Worst-Case Scenario
Knowing the worst possible outcome will help put things in perspective. Are you going make your boss disappointed or lose your job? Are you going to get a B- on a project or flunk out of school?
Accept It
Once you have determined the worst-case scenario, you need to mentally accept it. Assume that it is going to happen. If you are resigned to the fact that the worst outcome is going to come true, then you can stop worrying about that possibility. After you accept the situation, you can move on to the next step.
Improve the Worst-Case Scenario
Now that you are free from worrying about the outcome, you can devote your full attention toward improving it. Try to find ways to reduce the negative effects of the outcome. You may not be able to turn a losing situation into a winning situation, but you might be able to make it neutral or at the very least, less bad.
Concentration
The ability to concentrate is an important skill for a creative thinker. Without concentration you will be unable to dig past the trivial things on the surface and get to the interesting stuff the lies beneath the surface.
If you are having difficulty concentrating on a task, try pretending that you are not having trouble. Ask yourself what it would feel like if you were able to concentrate. How would you be sitting? What would you be thinking? Try to think back to a time when you were able to concentrate. How did you feel then? What is different from how you feel now? You can often trick yourself into concentrating if you think about what it would feel like to be doing it.
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