How does one work on mental fitness?

Logic is the art of recoding – finding an ordinarily sequence for disparate elements.

The following exercise/activities will awaken the inherently logical being inside you.

Don’t use a list when shopping. Instead, invent a system to take the place of the list. Use memory aids, such as formatting a complete word or one that can be completed by adding a certain vowel or constant from the first letters of the words for the things you need to buy. Or, you can classify foods into raw and cooked. Or, use any other system that works for you.

All games involve logical activities. Card games such as pinochle and bridge or board games of strategy such as chess or checkers are good choices. So are crossword puzzles, anagrams and other word games. Avoid playing the same games all the time. Chess players might switch to solitaire, while bridge players might play whist or hearts.

Playing the same game all the time leads to routine, which is the opposite of activation. The same cerebral circuits and neuronal regions are constantly used and everything else remains unused. Fine new to you and find new playing-partners for old and new games and activates.

What Makes Good cue for remembering events?

One of the most interesting areas of research in the study of event memory is a small set of diary studies. In one such study, a Dutch psychologist, Willem Wagener, recorded his day’s events everyday for six years, noting down:

      Who was involved?

      What yes event was?

      Where it occurred?

      When it occurred?

Wagener was hoping to discover which of these different bits of information the best retrieval cues were. At the conclusion of his study he reported that ‘what’ was the least effective (have you ever tried to remember an event on the basis of its approximate date?).

There is nothing particularly special about these types of information, however. Later, wirehair reanalyzed his data and found that most of the difference in the memo ability of these cues was due to their relative distinctiveness. Thus, the nature of the event is usually the most distinctive aspect of the event and the people involved and the location are usually more distinctive bits of information than the date or time of occurrence.

Self Assessment Questionnaire

This questionnaire on employee motivation focuses on the role of leaders in empowering employees and
improving motivation. Answer/tick any of these 20 questions honestly to score your motivational capability.

• I arrive at the office on time and do not leave early.
• I expect the same levels of accuracy in my own work as my employees’.
• I do not blame others. I take responsibility for my part in mistakes.
• I encourage a 'no blame' culture where staff is able to admit mistakes and learn from them.
• I do not keep secrets from my employees.
• I do not encourage gossip or rumour.
• I set high ethical standards for my behaviour towards employees and hold myself to those standards.
• I ensure that staff has the training they require.
• I participate in training to improve my own skills and competencies.
• Employees have an active role in developing objectives for themselves, their team and the company as a whole.

• I regularly check that objectives between different parts of the team or company are congruent.
• Everyone pulls together for the same end rather than competing for different results.
• I have a clear system for handling employee discontent.
• Employees are aware of the system for handling discontent and feel encouraged to use it to address problems.
• Members of my team do not ask me simple questions. Significant matters are brought to my attention.
• But smaller challenges are considered and resolved by those responsible. I am not bothered by minor matters.
• I do not build rapport with my team by sharing my weaknesses and fears. I am honest but professional.
• Employees are encouraged to make mistakes.
• Employees tell me when mistakes have been made, how they have been rectified and what the key learnings are from such mistakes.
• I have a coach or mentor who keeps me focused and motivated about my work.
• I do not teach. Instead I lead, share, encourage and stimulate team members to grow, develop and learn.

 
Total score …………….


Interpretation/Calculation:


15 to 20: Well done. You are walking the talk. Of those statements you were unable to tick, which ones would
you like to work on?
10-14: The basics are there. Now you need to upgrade. What would need to change for you to score 15 or
more?
5-9: You need to raise your standards. Some essential systems are missing in terms of empowerment
motivation for employees. Commit to raising your score to 15 in the next 3 months.
0-4: You can probably see the results of your lack of integrity in your team. Take three simple steps to improve


Employee motivation immediately. Commit to raising your score to 15 in the next 6 months.

Types of memories

Experts have classified memory into two major kinds:

      Knowledge Memory

      Personal Memory

Knowledge memory contains information about the world while personal memory consists of information about you.

Within knowledge memory, separate domains may exist for numbers, for music, for language and for stories. These are all types of information, which appear to be dealt with in different ways.

Personal memory also comprises different kinds of domain like autobiographical memory, social memory (remembering names and faces of people), skill memory and planning memory.

      Autobiographical memory contains information about you and about personal experiences.

      Emotions, the “facts” that describe you and make you unique, the facts of your life and the experiences you have had, are all contained in separate domains and processed differently.

      Your memory for emotions can help you modify your moods.

      Specific events you have experienced are only memorable to the extent that they include details special to that specific occasion.

Most events in our lives are routine and are merged in memory into one generic memory containing the common element of the experience.

The most common memory problems faced by people occur in four key areas

1. 1.       Knowledge Memory
2. 2.       Identity or Personal Memory
3. 3.       Event Memory
4. 4.       Planning Memory

Within each of these zones of memory, there are specific details in which people have problems. Let us have a look at the type of things one forgets.

Knowledge Memory:

•       Remembering information you have studied.
•       Remembering words.
•       Remembering data.
•       Remembering visuals.

Identity Memory

•       Trying to put a name to a face.
•       Trying to put a face to a name.
•       Trying to remember who someone is.
•       Wanting to remember someone’s personal details.

Event Memory

•       Remembering whether you’ve done something.
•       Remembering where you’ve put something.
•       Remembering when/where something happened.
•       Remembering important dates.

Planning Memory

•       Remembering to do something at a particular time
•       Knowledge there’s something you need to remember but you can’t think what it is.

How brain fitness works

Just as physical exercise maintains body tone, strength and endurance, mental exercising has positive conditioning effects for people of all ages. We will cover the essentials that constitute “mental workout” – daily exercises for the brain.

The goal of brain fitness is to revive certain mental abilities before they slow down. In le poncin’s own words, “our team does not claim to work miracles. We simply develop the previously unknown fertility of land that had been lying fallow”. The exercises are simple and fun to do. And, by repeating the exercises over several weeks time, real progress can be seen in a relatively short time.

Although these exercises have been especially created for the people of advancing age, anyone can do them in order to keep the mental faculties functioning properly. 

How to get the most out of your practice

While practice is the key, there are some actions we can take to ensure we get the most value out of our practice:

      Learn from specific examples rather than abstract rules.

      Provide feedback while the action is active in memory (i.e. immediately). Try again while the feedback is active in memory.

      Practice a skill with subtle variations (such as varying the force of your pitch, or the distance you are throwing) rather than trying to repeat your action exactly.

      Space your practice (math, textbooks, for example, trend to put similar exercises together, but in fact they would be better spaced out).

      Allow for interference with similar skills: if a new skill contains steps that are antagonistic to steps contained in an already mastered skill, the new skill will be much harder to learn (e.g., when I changed keyboards, the buttons for page up, page down, insert etc., had been put in different order – the conflict between the old habit and the new pattern made learning the new pattern harder than it would have been if I had never had a keyboard before). The existing skill may also be badly affected.

      If a skill can be broken down in to independent sub-skills, break it down into its components are dependent, learn the skill as a whole (e.g. computer programming can be broken into independent sub-skills, but learning to play the piano is best learned as a whole). 

Problem Solving Flowchart