Extreme immersion into some narrow skill or mode of thought. For instance, doing nothing other than playing chess or tetris or minecraft during all waking time for a month. This seems like it would have big cognitive effects. I’m not sure whether the effects would be good or bad, but it’s certainly worth trying.
Rewiring / relearning procedural skills or sense data interpretation. For instance, wearing goggles that flip your vision upside down for a month, or that invert all colours. Even something as simple as learning a new keyboard layout or learning to be ambidextrous. There’s evidence that juggling and playing tetris increase white matter.
Doing weird stuff. Driving different routes to work just because you’ve never tried them before, or thinking in patterns you never have before. Trying to have each day differ significantly from all previous days.
Extreme immersion into some narrow skill or mode of thought. For instance, doing nothing other than playing chess or tetris or minecraft during all waking time for a month. This seems like it would have big cognitive effects. I’m not sure whether the effects would be good or bad, but it’s certainly worth trying.
In my experience, doing stuff like that screws up my cognition in far less than a month—even after two days of doing the same thing “during all waking time” I start to feel I’m (temporarily) losing my ability to think in a normal way. YMMV.
There’s evidence that juggling and playing tetris increase white matter.
For some reason I found learning to shoot a hockey puck with either hand as the dominant one much easier than trying to do the same for either hitting or throwing a baseball. Throwing a football left handed is even more difficult than the baseball motor skills. Catching a baseball with the right hand was easiest of all to learn (as I learned to catch with my non-dominant hand, as Americans tend to be trained).
There may be a universal hierarchy of the difficulty of these skills, with some easier to start with.
A few more ideas:
Extreme immersion into some narrow skill or mode of thought. For instance, doing nothing other than playing chess or tetris or minecraft during all waking time for a month. This seems like it would have big cognitive effects. I’m not sure whether the effects would be good or bad, but it’s certainly worth trying.
Rewiring / relearning procedural skills or sense data interpretation. For instance, wearing goggles that flip your vision upside down for a month, or that invert all colours. Even something as simple as learning a new keyboard layout or learning to be ambidextrous. There’s evidence that juggling and playing tetris increase white matter.
Saccading a lot.
Doing weird stuff. Driving different routes to work just because you’ve never tried them before, or thinking in patterns you never have before. Trying to have each day differ significantly from all previous days.
In my experience, doing stuff like that screws up my cognition in far less than a month—even after two days of doing the same thing “during all waking time” I start to feel I’m (temporarily) losing my ability to think in a normal way. YMMV.
For some reason I found learning to shoot a hockey puck with either hand as the dominant one much easier than trying to do the same for either hitting or throwing a baseball. Throwing a football left handed is even more difficult than the baseball motor skills. Catching a baseball with the right hand was easiest of all to learn (as I learned to catch with my non-dominant hand, as Americans tend to be trained).
There may be a universal hierarchy of the difficulty of these skills, with some easier to start with.