Showing posts with label problem-solving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label problem-solving. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Make Your Brain Happy -- Braintenance

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When your brain is absorbed in a problem-solving task which requires a great deal of visualization, imagination and innovation, it is operating on "all of its cylinders." But if you can consciously convince your brain {which behaves like a small child sometimes) that the tasks which it is undertaking are games (the "gamification of problem-solving"), your brain will be even further stimulated as it perceives challenges without consequences for failure. When your game plays games, it is not being nudged by your subconscious mind about past failures or the possibility of additional failures.

There is a wonderful website which I'd like to share with you in order to assist you in getting your brain to light up with sheer pleasure. My suggestion is to play games from this site (you might wish to bookmark it or make it a favorite) whenever you are faced with an uncooperative, exhausted mind. It just might be the tonic that you need to reboot your brain into production mode.

The site is located at http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/ and I would strongly advise all of you Braintenancers to use it whenever you seem to be stuck.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Thank you, as always, for reading me, and for reading The Braintenance Blog.



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Braintenance contains articles, resources, exercises, games and specially-designed protocols to improve the power of your brain and your mind in every significant aspect, including memory, cognition, IQ, plasticity, creativity and problem-solving ability.

Key Terms: brain, mind, cognitive enhancement, memory, brain gym exercises, IQ, plasticity, mind expansion, creativity, meditation, altered states, perception, self-hypnosis, self-growth, neuron, artificial intelligence, learning, somatic intellect, mathematics, language, dissonance, individualism, herd mentality, puns and word games, linguistics, genius, emotion, subconscious, unconscious, intuition, instinct, psychedelic, reality, learning curve, probability, collective consciousness


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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Brainstorming Techniques: Top Proven Methods

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BRAINSTORMING TECHNIQUES: TOP PROVEN METHODS
Utilize Brainstorming To Unleash The Power Of Your Mind



Your mind is an endlessly powerful, multi-dimensional multipurpose tool. Regardless of its incredible power, too much conscious focus on attaining a particular goal or on solving a specific, perplexing problem eventually causes a sort of “burnout,” where creative methods and solutions become increasingly elusive as you become increasingly fatigued.

It is at times like these, when the indirect subconscious approach, i.e., solo brainstorming, can provide us with a renewed perspective. While most people talk about brainstorming in groups (“let's toss some ideas around and see what we come up with...”), in this article we'll find ways of brainstorming alone using a combination of techniques and approaches.

At its best, brainstorming is a means of combining the power of the subconscious with the power of the collective consciousness – where your subconscious (without your conscious interference) picks up signals from the ever-growing pool of wisdom on tap in the universe [you may not believe in this notion of collective consciousness, but there is an increasing body of evidence, albeit anecdotal, which makes the case and lends credence to its existence].

At its worst, what we refer to as “brainstorming” simply provides a means of cooling the consious mind down and allowing it to reboot when it is ready [assuming, of course, that your subconscious knows how to signal your conscious mind into renewed wakefulness on demand].

Here are some steps, simply outlined, that you can use to get your mind properly attuned to brainstorming and into the process of brainstorming:

===+ Firstly, relax your conscious mind and let it drift away. You can accomplish this by simple meditation (listening to meditative music) or viewing a hypnotic visual pattern for ten or fifteen minutes. Get your mind ready to brainstorm. If you need some meditative audio and visual, YouTube is an excellent source. I sometimes simply use hypnotic patterns, as they provide some good meditative material. You might try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iewSUmShL2g for a ten-minute mind prep for brainstorming. Relax your mind and body and simply focus on the audio and the visual. Get lost in the flow of patterns of vision and sound.



===+ Choose a brainstorming approach from the list below, and put it into play (since life is an experiment and the world is your laboratory, try each of these techniques at least once and find which works best for you – be an adventurer):

Technique 1: Take out a yellow lined pad, and write in five words or less a description of the problem you are trying to solve or the result which you are trying to achieve. Then, under each word, taking one word at a time, write the next word which comes to mind through free association. You'll wind up with several very long columns of words, and a pile of ideas as to how to advance your mental task to the next step. It works.

Technique 2: Take the initial steps outlined in Technique 1, create your sentence, look at it for one minute, then close your eyes (this works best while you're sitting in a comfortable chair), and let your mind form pictures using either the brief sentence, a word from the sentence, or a few letters from a single word or words. Ideas will emerge from your internal narration of each of the pictures. Your creativity will be running wild, and that's precisely what you want.

Technique 3: Take out a dictionary, start with any letter you'd like, and read each word once aloud, and follow it with a single simple thought about how that word directly or remotely relates (it doesn't matter how remote the association is) to the problem that you are trying to solve or the objective that you're trying to achieve. After a brief while, new ideas will pop into your head, framed in a new perspective.

Each of the above techniques is associative, distracting, invites daydreaming and does not permit you to address the probem or goal in a conventional, linear approach. The above three “out of the box” brainstorming approaches will help you to be far more creative than you would otherwise be if you just kept thinking and efforting head-on.

Labels, Tags, Keywords, Categories And Search Terms For This Article:
brainstorming, creativity, meditation, problem-solving, free association, distraction, subconscious, collective consciousness, Douglas E. Castle, The Braintenance Blog, goal achievement, GEI Consulting, Global Edge International

As always, thank you for reading me.

Douglas E. Castle

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Braintenance contains articles, resources, exercises, games and specially-designed protocols to improve the power of your brain and your mind in every significant aspect, including memory, cognition, IQ, plasticity, creativity and problem-solving ability.

Key Terms: brain, mind, cognitive enhancement, memory, brain gym exercises, IQ, plasticity, mind expansion, creativity, meditation, altered states, perception, self-hypnosis, self-growth, neuron, artificial intelligence, learning, somatic intellect, mathematics, language, dissonance, individualism, herd mentality, puns and word games, linguistics, genius, emotion, subconscious, unconscious, intuition, instinct, psychedelic, reality, learning curve, probability, collective consciousness


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Monday, February 16, 2015

Exercise More Of Your Brain - Braintenance - Douglas E. Castle

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The statement above captures the essence of a form of Braintenance "cross-training" and "confusion training," wherein your brain is forced to break through its ordinary routines and to coordinate different tasks in a different matter. These exercises are very simple, but yield tremendous benefits in terms of your ability to focus and to be creative. Following is a sampling of exercises which may prove challenging enough to 'wake up your mind' and to capture your brain's attention. When dealing with the brain, more exercise, and greater diversity of cerebral tasks is always better. Try these:

1) If you are right-handed, try doing as many things as possible with your left hand, and vice versa;

2) Stir beverages, soups, and the like in a clockwise fashion, instead of in the traditional and popular counter-clockwise fashion;

3) Read a page of text from the bottom up, with the last sentences first;

4) Try working backwards for a while (be careful, and avoid those steps or the kids' Legos!); and

5) Do some simple multiplication and division problems in your head, with your eyes wide open.

These simple changes of pace will prove awkward at first, and will challenge your mind, as the central conscious coordinator of these voluntary actions. The skills required to make these changes are some of the most important in improving your spontaneous associative thinking, your creativity and your adaptability in problem-solving situations. Try these exercises; in fact, think of a few of your own and practice those as well as part of your cerebral cross-training workout. As we've noted before, doing things in an extraordinary fashion, forces your brain to do extraordinary things. Intellectual flexibility and neural plasticity are easily built by feeding the mind exceptions to the established routines.

Now, let's get to it, Fellow Braintenancers!




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Labels, Tags, Categories, Keywords And Search Terms For This Article:
Braintenance, neural plasticity, creativity, brain exercise, problem-solving, self-growth, mind power, intelligence hacks, Douglas E. Castle, cross-training, confusion training




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BRAIN TEASERS,
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BRAINTENANCE: Train, Strain And Improve Your Brain. Expand Your Mind.

http://braintenance.blogspot.com

Braintenance contains articles, resources, exercises, games and specially-designed protocols to improve the power of your brain and your mind in every significant aspect, including memory, cognition, IQ, plasticity, creativity and problem-solving ability.

Key Terms: brain, mind, cognitive enhancement, memory, brain gym exercises, IQ, plasticity, mind expansion, creativity, meditation, altered states, perception, self-hypnosis, self-growth, neuron, artificial intelligence, learning, somatic intellect, mathematics, language, dissonance, individualism, herd mentality, puns and word games, linguistics, genius, emotion, subconscious, unconscious, intuition, instinct, psychedelic, reality, learning curve, probability, collective consciousness

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Enhance Creativity With Novelty And Challenge

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Note: We are currently in contractual negotiations with the bluebird to get him to be the spokesbird for THE BRAINTENANCE BLOG -- "The Bluebird Of Braintenance."


Two of the greatest variables which enhance creativity (which happens to be a close cousin of problem-solving) are novelty and challenge.

Novelty is simply doing something which is a departure or disruption from your usual routine, thought patterns or subject matter which consumes a great deal of your time ordinarily. By the way, novelty can be a departure from physical routine as well as psychological or intellectual routines.

Challenge is the exercise of pushing your psychological, intellectual or physical envelope or self-imposed 'comfy cube'

Where novelty forces you to focus on those different skill sets or muscle groups, challenge has to do with applying and exercising them. By analogy, novelty is like exercising a new and formerly neglected muscle group (i.e., exercising your triceps where you've been only exercising your biceps for years), and challenge is actually doing more repetitions, more sets and using increased weights as you integrate this whole new regimen into your routine.

The following twelve somewhat zany but very effective exercises were created by Dorothea Brande, and were mentioned by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project:


1. Spend an hour each day without saying anything except in answer to direct questions, in the midst of the usual group, without creating the impression that you’re sulking or ill. Be as ordinary as possible. But do not volunteer remarks or try to draw out information.

2. Think for 30 minutes a day about one subject exclusively. Start with five minutes.

3. Write a letter without using the words I, me, mine, my.

4. Talk for 15 minutes a day without using I, me, my, mine.

5. Write a letter in a “successful” or placid tone. No misstatements, no lying. Look for aspects or activities that can be honestly reported that way.

6. Pause on the threshold of any crowded room and size it up.

7. Keep a new acquaintance talking about himself or herself without allowing him to become conscious of it. Turn back any courteous reciprocal questions in a way that your auditor doesn’t feel rebuffed.

8. Talk exclusively about yourself and your interests without complaining, boasting, or boring your companions.

9. Cut “I mean” or “As a matter of fact” or any other verbal mannerism out of your conversation.

10. Plan two hours of a day and stick to the plan.

11. Set yourself twelve tasks at random: e.g., go twenty miles from home using ordinary conveyance; go 12 hours without food; go eat a meal in the most unlikely place you can find; say nothing all day except in answer to questions; stay up all night and work.

12. From time to time, give yourself a day when you answer “yes” to any reasonable request.

These are actually tremendous novelties paired with potentially enormous challenges for most of us. I would suggest that you review the whole list before embarking upon any of its proposals. How often have you ever actually done any one of them? How often has anybody whom you may know done of any of them -- or at least to the extent that you noticed?

When you've finished evaluating the list and thinking "Come On... Does that snooty Douglas E. Castle really expect me to do these things?" My answer is "Yes. Do every single one. Also, don't call me snooty."

p.s. If you enjoy Braintenance, please follow us on Twitter at @Braintenance. For a whole selection of other Twitter feeds regarding an amazingly diverse list of topics, you'll find a whole bunch truly worth keeping up with at The Twitterlinks Hubspot Blog.




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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Mazes: Build Intelligence.Stay Sharp.

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Solving problems involving mazes builds intelligence, keeps you sharp, wards off dementia, clears (broadens) old neural pathways and paves new ones, greatly expands your possibility thinking abilities, decision making abilities and your ability to visualize using your imagination. As an added bonus, working through mazes is a meditative-type exercise and actually helps discipline your ability to focus without 'wandering off' [like your eccentric Uncle Ned at a family barbecue].

Mazes are actually pictorially analogous to the structure of the physical brain. Navigating a maze might just be similar (on a very small and simplified scale) to navigating neuronal corridors of the mind...

Another amazing (pun intended) by-product of the repeated exercise of escaping (i.e., running through or navigating) mazes is that despite the element of trial and error which may necessarily be involved  -- you find a way that doesn't work, go back to the point where you believe that you might have taken a fateful wrong turn, and go in a different direction -- many maze champions are very good at somehow "anticipating" the tricks and techniques used by certain maze designers. This is a fascinating phenomenon.

If you look at a maze from a vantage point, reasonably high above it, so that you can view the entire layout, it will be mush easier to navigate when it comes time to actually run it. This is a dramatic example of perspective, and how it influences the way people think. If you are just thrown into a maze that you have never scanned from above in totality, the whole exercise becomes less a study in memory and navigation than a test of trial and error, learning curves and intuition.

You can find a variety of mazes with which to test yourself with at these sites:

http://www.mazes.org.uk/

http://www.clickmazes.com/

Now have some fun.

Douglas E Castle for The Braintenance Blog

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Braintenance - Unusual Mathematical Properties...

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Take the darn thing out of storage and use it! There's a picture below, so you'll recognize it --



Legal Notice: The colors in the above diagram are for the purposes of clarification and emphasis only. Brains, generally speaking, are hardly this colorful. They are mostly a very plain oatmeal gray color, and have a "jello-like" consistency. I hope that this news does not disappoint you.

Braintenance - Unusual Mathematical Properties...

Note: This article was written by author Douglas Castle (http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/) for the official, award-winning and critically-acclaimed BRAINTENANCE blog -- the place to go to train and maintain your brain. Give your cerebral agility a jolt. Sharpen your cognitive capabilities. Your brain is a muscle, and it will thank you for giving it some vigorous exercise every day. This last part about your brain saying "thank you" was merely a figure of speech and should not be taken literally. If you hear a voice, seemingly coming from inside of your cranial vault saying "thank you," you should seek psychiatric treatment. If you wish to see more blogs, widgets and other materials from this self-important, pompous author, please click on http://www.douglascastleblogosphere.com/ .



Dear Cognitive Colleagues (and Eddie, from Bayside, Queens):

Some numbers have unusual and unique properties. Following is a list of questions for you to answer. Some of these are substantially more challenging than otheres -- but then again, the challenging ones make the easy ones seem even easier. This is just a quick practical observation about subjective measurement (i.e., we can only appreciate the size or difficulty of one thing by comparing it with the size or difficulty of another -- the comparison gives us a frame of reference).

If you can answer all of these questions, I'll try to get scholar and author Yossi Feigenson to buy you a cup of coffee...although I cannot guarantee this:

A)  What number, multiplied by itself or added to itself will yield the same answer in either case?

B)  What number, when divided into any other number will equal infinity?

C)  What number, when multiplied by any second number will always equal that second number?

D)  What three numbers, when either added together or multiplied by each other will yield the same answer?

E)  If infinity is divided into infinity, what will the correct answer be?

F)  What is the next number in this sequence?  2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ___.

G)  What is the next number in this sequence?  2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, ___.

H)  What is the next number in this sequence?  3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28 ____.

I)  What is the next number in this sequence?  2, 6, 12, 20, 30, 42, ____.

J)  What is the next number in this sequence?  1, 10, 101, 1010, 10101, _____.

K) What is the next number in this sequence?  2345, 3452, _____.

L) What is the next number in this sequence?  8765, 7654, ____ .


Enjoy these, and come back again for the correct answers.

See you soon,

Douglas Castle

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