Chapter 8
Mental Fitness
Like increasing your physical fitness, increasing your mental fitness will improve how you deal with everyday problems and emergencies, and how you feel afterwards. If just trying to sit down and focus on a tax form or a writing assignment for school causes you the mental equivalent of panting and wheezing, these hacks will help you boost your mental strength, flexibility, and endurance.
This chapter is about a broad-based conception of mental fitness, from increasing your intelligence using a computer-based method that has shown results in the lab (Hack 53, “Train Your Fluid Intelligence”) to increasing your fundamental capability to cope with the world, whether it results in measurable increases in intelligence or not (Hack 55, “Take the One-Question IQ Test”). It will help you broaden your tastes and remain agile by continuing to try new things (Hack 50, “Acquire a Taste,” and Hack 51, “Try Something New Daily”), and it will coach you in changing your behavior by using the scientific method (Hack 54, “Think, Try, Learn”).
Your brain needs its trips to the gym as much as your body does if you expect it to stay in top condition and ready to serve you for years to come. Give some of these warm-ups and workouts a whirl and see what they can do for you.
Hack 50: Acquire a Taste
Why be a hater? Acquire a taste for things you don't like, from foods to ideas and art, and thereby stretch your mind to gain a few more degrees of personal freedom. Follow Ron as ...
