6 Routines That Boost Your Intelligence Every Day ~ Julius Shedrack

Unlocking our brain's full potential requires everyday behaviors that foster intellect. Because of brain plasticity, intellectual stimulation and lifelong learning can help us maintain or even improve our cognitive abilities far into old age. 

Anyone can gradually increase their intelligence over time and enjoy the benefits of better memory, more creativity, and enhanced brain function by adopting a few useful practices each day.

This article explores eight straightforward yet highly effective daily habits/Routines for boosting mental abilities. Adopting just a couple of these habits can rapidly accelerate intellectual growth thanks to compound gains. Implementing all 6 habits in a balanced way, along with ample persistence, can result in a remarkable transformation in intelligence and quality of life over weeks, months, and years.

1. Engage in meditation and mindfulness practices:

Focus and memory are significantly improved by mindfulness and meditation. People can strengthen their working memory capacity, attention span, visual-spatial abilities, and executive function by practicing these skills on a regular basis. Deeply affecting the nervous system, mindfulness and meditation raise cerebral gyrification, which enhances general cognitive function.

Set aside 15 minutes in the morning and evening for mindfulness and meditation. Try seated breathing exercises to sharpen concentration as you follow the inhalation and exhalation. Or practice walking meditation outside while paying close attention to the sensations in your body as you slowly pace to build awareness and reduce distractions. Yoga also cultivates powerful mindfulness.

2. Maintain A Healthy Diet:

Nutrition powerfully impacts brain structure and performance because nutrients influence molecular systems critical for growing neurons and powering electrochemical signaling. What you regularly eat contributes to building your brain capabilities construct by construct. Generating billions of neuronal impulses daily, your brain depends on ample glucose, healthy fats, and vitamins and minerals from food.

In your regular diet, you emphasize brain-boosting foods like leafy greens, berries, avocados, nuts, seeds, eggs, fish, soybeans, beans, whole grains, and dark chocolate. Stay hydrated and minimize consuming saturated fats, highly processed carbohydrates, and foods high in added sugars. Making smarter dietary choices fuels better learning capacity in the long run.

3. Engage In Brain Training Activities:

Exercising your cognitive skills directly keeps your brain agile and flexible like strength training builds physical muscles. Brain training activities speed up electrical signaling between neurons. With continuous training, more neuron networks activate simultaneously, amplifying your ability to think, reason, and remember. Quite simply, practicing mental effort expands your intelligence.

Choose brain training activities you enjoy enough to practice daily, such as strategic games like chess or bridge, working on jigsaw puzzles, completing number games or logic puzzles, studying calligraphy, or learning to code. The beneficial mental stimulation increases to enhance fluid intelligence and problem-solving performance over time.

4. Set And Review Goals:

Working toward well-defined goals fuels motivation and gives your brain a positive purpose. As you methodically track progress, your brain maps feedback about what works versus not, literally improving your metacognition or ability to organize information successfully. Achieving even small goals releases dopamine, reinforcing helpful behaviors to build knowledge and skills steadily while realizing ambitions.

Each Sunday, define 2 to 3 goals over the coming week – perhaps mastering Italian verb tenses, composing a new song, or tightening logical thinking through daily sudoku. Check back on Friday to review and appreciate progress while planning the next steps. Yearly and 5-year goals guide longer-term objective setting, too.

5. Exercise Frequently:

Frequent aerobic activity improves oxygen supply and blood flow, which improves brain function. Running, swimming, and cycling are examples of aerobic exercises that promote the formation of new brain cells in regions of the brain essential for memory and processing speed. Moreover, exercise increases the synthesis of BDNF, a protein that improves learning and fortifies brain connections.

Aim for 30 to 45 minutes of vigorous exercise thrice weekly for optimal cognition. This can be a daily jog, frequent hiking, strenuous gardening, or even leisurely tennis games with friends. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts are beneficial for boosting mental stamina alongside physical endurance.

6. Learn New Skills:

Mastering challenging new skills is rewarding mentally since it activates your brain’s problem-solving and decision-making centers. 

Each fresh skill expands your neurological capacity through new dendrite branches and synaptic formations between neurons. Plus, the sense of achievement and confidence from acquiring talents can motivate you to keep learning and growing your abilities.

Dedicate weekly time to building expertise in a new area, like playing a musical instrument, studying a foreign language, exploring visual arts, tinkering with electronics, or experimenting with programming. Then, keep adding to your repertoire of skills. Learning together with a teacher or group not only aids motivation but also forges helpful new social connections.