Fourteen

Learning

Practices quiz item #14:

This is your brain on books

Your energy level isn’t entirely dependent on your physical condition, or even your emotional and psychological health. One of the biggest energy stealers is a lack of mental and intellectual stimulation. There’s a good reason an exciting book can tempt you to read well past your bedtime, while a boring book will put you to sleep (which is why I’m hoping you’re not sawing logs right about now). The same dull environment, experienced the same way every day for months on end, can bore you to tears.

Take a look at yourself. Is your life the same every single day? Do you feel like a robot, just going through the motions? If you feel like you’re wasting your energy because you’re unchallenged and uninspired, then you’re probably right. There’s a good reason the saying “Grow or die” is something of a cliché, because it verbalizes a deep-rooted truth about human nature: that you need to keep growing intellectually all the days of your life.

I’m not just talking about education here, at least in terms of getting a degree so that you’ll be more employable (although that’s great too); there’s much more to it than that. If you want your brain to continue to serve you well into old age, you have to keep it active. A long-term study of a population of nuns in Mankato, Minnesota, has revealed that the ones who keep themselves mentally active not only live longer but also suffer the lowest levels of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other ailments of the brain and memory that commonly strike in old age.¹

In this chapter, you’ll be encouraged to challenge yourself every day and learn continuously. I’ll throw out a bunch of ideas about learning new things, growing intellectually, doing puzzles, reading new genres, taking classes, and getting back into life again. Mental stimulation is exercise for the brain, and if it’s lacking, you’ll end up with the mental equivalent of flab.

ENERGY BANDIT #1 | A lack of challenges

Think back to the days when you first learned to drive. You were nervous but alert while under instruction, and your first few solo drives were probably fraught with moments of sheer terror. You certainly weren’t bored. For months, you focused pretty tightly on the matter at hand, and even if you had a passenger, you probably paid more attention to the road than to that person.

Flash forward to today. You pretty much get into your car, fasten your seatbelt, start the engine, and away you go. Everything is so familiar and rote that it all becomes automatic. Concentration is no longer a concern, and unless some idiot does something stupid in front of you, it becomes boring. Ever heard of highway hypnosis? That’s when the task of driving becomes so simple, and the environment so predictable, that you’re bored out of your skull. You’re watching the road, and your body is doing everything it’s supposed to when it’s supposed to do it, but your mind is elsewhere—and suddenly you’ve gone fifty miles and don’t remember how you got there.

A recent survey by Korn/Ferry International, a leading executive recruitment firm, cited “lack of challenges” as a prime reason why business executives changed jobs. In fact, it topped the list at 33 percent, well ahead of the 20 percent who cited “ineffective leadership” as their exit reason.²

ENERGY BOOSTER | Challenge yourself to learn something new every day

How can you be anything but bored if you don’t learn something new occasionally? Human knowledge is so vast and complex that there’s always something new to be learned. Most physicians and scientists become specialists in order to really understand a specific corner of their field, and to potentially make contributions there.

Learning is great for your brain. A report in the journal American Scientist explained that when the brain discovers something—and says “aha”—it receives a dose of what equates to natural opium. When you learn something new, your brain is washed by a cascade of biochemicals.³ Make sure you learn something new every day. For example, you could learn a new word every day. Will you ever really need to know what onomatopoeia means? Maybe not, but you never know. Just learning the word stretches a mental muscle or two.

You don’t have to take on something too difficult—like a foreign language or a new programming code—too quickly, or you may feel anxious due to your lack of ability and shut down. You want to learn in the range of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago described as “flow,” where your ability to perform and concentrate is greatly enhanced.⁴ Csikszentmihalyi describes the “competency zone,” where your abilities and the task are in alignment. Below that zone, you’re bored. Too far outside that zone, you become less effective due to your inability to perform and the subsequent energy drain. The trick with learning something new is to push yourself a little bit outside the zone, so you learn, but not far enough that you despair and give up.

ENERGY BANDIT #2 | Few creative outlets in your life

There’s a reason that the zeal to create is often referred to as “creative energy.” Channeling some of your time into creating something—whether it’s a meal, a watercolor, or a poem—can help you unwind.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Exercise your creativity

You don’t have to be a James Beard to enjoy cooking, or a Renoir to enjoy painting. You could write novels or look for rare bugs or learn to blow glass in your spare time. You might find that you’re a whiz at building ships in a bottle or drawing cartoons, or singing Guns N’ Roses songs. Even if you’re not, you can have a lot of fun trying.

In 2006, my hometown of Denver, Colorado, experienced a giant blizzard two days before Christmas and another the week after Christmas. The storms closed the airport repeatedly and spoiled the holiday plans of thousands. With all the snow, the city was forced to slow (and shut) down. The people who weren’t stuck in the airport unexpectedly spent several days holed up with their families. My sons love to build Bionicle, Lego, and Exo-Force kits. I’d never tried assembling these kits before—all the little pieces and detailed instructions seemed so complicated—but I had lots of time to figure it out. So I gave it a shot…and discovered I really enjoyed it. It was real quality time with my sons doing an activity they love. Now we display the completed figures in their bedroom bookcases and enjoy looking at them and talking about the experience we had building them together.

ENERGY BANDIT #3 | Feeling like your life is a treadmill: not going anywhere

If your day-to-day routine seems mind-numbingly dull, it’s because, well, it is. You’ve had so much practice at what you’re doing that you’re really good at it; suddenly, everything is too easy. As with the driving example earlier, if there’s no surprise left, and little more that you can accomplish, you’re going to lose interest—and you’ll find it difficult to devote any energy at all to those little tasks that keep you on track.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Make a drastic change in your life

Sometimes it takes a major shift in the landscape of your life to revive your interest in the world to the point where it’s worth the trouble to get out of bed. If, after a long look at your career, you find that your work doesn’t make good use of your abilities, consider changing jobs. We’ve all experienced the extreme focus and sense of concentration that comes with starting a new job: you’re energetic and more aware of everything around you, because you’re concerned with making a good impression and doing well in your new environment. This goes back to the whole concept of learning new things. You don’t need to change your career completely, but the combination of a new setting and new, unfamiliar challenges will probably have you buzzing along with a level of energy that you probably thought was lost to you.

You could also go back to school full-time and get a degree. Most professors enjoy dealing with older students, because they realize (1) that they’re serious about learning; and (2) that they’re mature enough not to complain about their assignments all the time. It’s hard to fall into a lackluster rut when you’re attending full-time college classes because the scenery changes with every new semester. Not only are you undertaking new and different tasks with every individual class, but you’ll find yourself moving on to something more advanced every few months (ideally, anyway). Constant learning can’t help but stretch your mental abilities on a continual basis, and what you’ve learned can always be applied later in your career. It’s never too late to go back to school, especially in these days of longer life spans; in fact, older adults are doing it more than ever before. Despite the cost and other drawbacks, it’s a great way to keep your mind healthy.

Another big change to try is moving, which is an extreme way to break out of a rut, but it will definitely expand your mental-energy horizons. Like changing jobs, picking up and moving your residence can shake you up enough to restart your interest in life and, in so doing, revivify you energetically. You needn’t go far. Even if you don’t change towns or jobs, dealing with all the details of finding a new place, getting everything packed, moving, unpacking, and learning the ins and outs of your new neighborhood can’t help but perk you up, at least for a while. Such a radical change may prove stressful, of course, but you have to consider the options: would you rather be sunk in boredom or depression, or would you rather be alert, energetic, and slightly stressed? It’s your call.

ENERGY BANDIT #4 | Never cracking open a book

Even if you’re not learning a single new thing, reading offers a variety of benefits that can help you discharge any negative energy and recharge with the good kind. Among other things, reading gives you the following:

• An escape from your daily routine

• General relaxation

• Stress relief

• Stimulation for the right side of your brain (the analytical side)

• Entertainment

• Enjoyment

• Mental and physical rejuvenation⁵

ENERGY BOOSTER | Challenge yourself to read more

Reading will take you to places you’ve never been, letting you vicariously (and safely) experience things you may never get to do in real life. In our culture, reading is a necessary life skill, and that’s more than most forms of entertainment can offer. It may be a passive exercise as far as physical activity goes, but it is a vigorous mental exercise. The most predictable potboiler can keep your emotions engaged and your mind active, and can serve as a distraction from your workaday worries. It can also expand your horizons and contribute significantly to your education.

If you’re already a devoted reader and you’re still down in the dumps, try adding different genres to your repertoire. If you’re a sci-fi junkie, for example, read a mystery or two, or even a western. Even if you happen to pick a novel that most readers in the genre would find old hat, it will probably be new to you. If you’re bored with fiction in general, try nonfiction. A nonfiction blockbuster like Mark Kurlansky’s Cod (which really is about cod) can be as fascinating as a well-researched mystery; Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm grips just as tightly as a Ludlum thriller; Donald and Petie Kladstrup’s Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure describes the French’s daring, dangerous acts of Nazi resistance, and is sure to send your heart racing.

ENERGY BANDIT #5 | Lack of mental stimulation and training

Fortunately, in our modern world, you won’t have much of a problem finding something to stimulate your intellectual capacity. If you can’t keep yourself mentally active in the ordinary course of your tasks, then find something to stretch the boundaries of your mind whenever you can. It may do more than save your job—it may help you live longer. Remember the nuns of Mankato? Not only do they have fewer brain problems as they age, but they have greater longevity than most people; reaching the age of ninety is not unusual for them, and some make it into their hundreds. According to those who study them, it’s because they spurn an idle mind as the devil’s plaything, and spend their time quizzing each other, debating various issues, doing puzzles, and writing in journals. Those who earn college degrees and teach also tend to live longer. More than one hundred of the Mankato nuns have donated their brains to science upon their deaths, and the researchers who have examined them claim that the brains of the more active nuns display more interconnections between neural cells, so that they had bigger “backup systems” available in the event that some of their neural pathways failed.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Do puzzles to sharpen your mind

Just as reading can kick-start your intellectual energy level, so can puzzles. I’m not just talking about jigsaw puzzles here, although those can aid with concentration, topographical skills, and associational abilities. Verbal and written puzzles also come highly recommended. They’re often known as brainteasers, and for good reason—they stretch the imagination, make us rethink assumptions, and often help us connect disparate facts we might not otherwise have considered related.

Try your hand at different types of puzzles, until you find one that suits you:

• The flowering of literacy over the past few centuries has made possible a new type of puzzle: the word puzzle, exemplified by the crossword and the acrostic. These puzzles require a fairly extensive level of cultural and literary knowledge, and in the right hands can be extremely complex and difficult (New York Times crosswords are notoriously hard). You can try them on your computer at www.bestcrosswords.com.

• Sudoku (my absolute favorite) is a numerical puzzle that has gained popularity in America. I keep a book of Sudoku puzzles in my briefcase. When I’m flying, I have a ritual of working on a puzzle until we take off, at which time I switch to real work on my computer. Sudoku was invented in America years ago but first hit it big in Japan before sloshing back across the pond to ring cash registers here. Like chess, the rules are simple; you can learn them in a few minutes, but it’ll take awhile to master this kind of puzzle—they can be wickedly hard. If you’d like to sharpen your mind against the whetstone of Sudoku, you can start at www.websudoku.com. Good luck!

• If you get good at Sudoku, you can try your luck against the harder Kakuro, which is like Sudoku on steroids. This is my father’s favorite addiction; he will sit in a chair for hours completing a puzzle. He says he gets so engaged and absorbed that time seems to fly.

ENERGY BANDIT #6 | Not pushing yourself to grow and learn

You’ve been there, done that. Gone around the block a few times. Been in your job for many years and can do it with your eyes closed. Sometimes we get a little apathetic and jaded, thinking that we don’t have much to learn. In most aspects of life, you can’t afford apathy. This is especially the case in your job, because you want to be perceived as a team player who cares about your own fate and the fate of the company. This is less of a problem if you’re the boss, but you do have to care enough to keep coming to work every day and doing the things you need to do to make your business a success.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Get a mentor

For many of us, developing new personal relationships is a great way to go to the next level. Consider acquiring a mentor to help you with what you’re going through. Several years ago, I approached Dianna Booher, CSP, CPAE, whom I’d been watching for many years at National Speakers Association conferences, and asked her to be my mentor—well, I guess I didn’t exactly ask, I just kept requesting thirty minutes to speak with her once a month until it became a ritual. Working with Dianna has helped me grow my business and avoid the pitfalls that come with my particular career of speaking and authorship. She has guided me around some big potholes and time wasters on my road to success. Find someone who is where you want to be in ten years. I had read many of her books (she has written more than forty-five to date) and sat in her educational breakout sessions (www.booher.com). I admired her so much and wanted to emulate her in my career. There’s more to achievement than just barreling up the ladder of advancement, and a good mentor will provide you with the tips and guidance you need. Your mentor may also know tricks to help you revive your interest in your career or life. Our relationship has turned into a wonderful friendship as well, and I think of her as my second mom in many ways. Be sure to show appreciation for your mentor every time you receive the gift of time from that person. Thank-you notes, expressions of gratitude, and small gifts are especially appropriate.

ENERGY BANDIT #7 | Not contributing to the greater good

Work, home, sleep. Work, home, sleep. Does this cycle seem to repeat itself day in and day out? Most of us like having some structure to our lives, but too much quickly becomes dull. Having to deal with the same old same old every single day can really drag you down. If you’re feeling lethargic and trapped in a cycle of inactivity, perhaps you need to do something bigger than yourself.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Get involved in a worthy cause

Another way to break out of your everyday routine is to give your time to a worthy cause. Volunteering is a great way to help make the world a better place. Depending on what you’re interested in volunteering for, it can also help you realize how good you’ve got it in life. These questions can help you decide how to contribute:

• What issues are you interested in? Reading to children at the library? Making audio recordings of the daily newspaper for the blind? Helping a local environmental group with water-quality monitoring? Feeding the hungry? Finding homes for abandoned animals? Being a volunteer firefighter?

• Look at your schedule to see how often you can volunteer. A couple of hours a week? A couple of hours a month? All day every Monday?

There are literally hundreds of such causes out there, so you can easily match at least one to your interests. If you like building things, consider Habitat for Humanity, where you’ll be in good company—former president Jimmy Carter participates. If you like kids, consider becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister. If you like cooking, volunteer at a soup kitchen. The possibilities are endless, and despite the fact that you’re volunteering, you’ll still get paid—not in money but in good feeling, which will permeate and brighten all aspects of your life. What a great way to inject more energy into your day.

If you’re raring to volunteer, but you’re having trouble choosing a cause to volunteer for, here’s a great matching service to try: http://www.volunteermatch.org/.

ENERGY BANDIT #8 | Staying inside your comfort zone

Do you make time to develop friendships in your neighborhood? Or do you drive down the street, hit the garage-door opener, drive in, and close it behind you—never to actually interact with any of your neighbors?

ENERGY BOOSTER | Make new friends

I remember the old Girl Scout saying “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.” There’s no need to snub your old friends, but a few new faces in your personal circle can add a bit of needed spice to your life. Extending yourself can be a little bit difficult for the introverted among us, but it’s a relatively simple way to recharge your life. Humans are social animals; we need to relate with other people on a continual basis to avoid the boring void of anomie. This becomes especially important as you age; every new friend (however informal) means a new link in your personal network, a new tie to keep you anchored to reality and all its exciting potential.⁶

You don’t have to hang out in bars to meet new friends (unless, of course, that’s your style). You can also join a writer’s group, a reading circle, a hobby club, a church, or what have you. Play bridge once a week with a group of friends. Join a quilting circle. Go for daily walks with a friend. Go out to eat with a group of friends once a week. Talk to your best friend on the phone once a day. You can keep in touch several times a week via e-mail too. But don’t let e-mail replace telephone contact; you need to hear another live human voice to prevent loneliness from creeping in.