Thursday, May 12, 2022

Play These Games To Sharpen Your Brain

I found that I have a lot of free time since quitting my job. Sure, I have a house to run (daily house chores to do!) but these are routines that hardly require any thinking. Sometimes I miss all the decision making processes that comes with a corporate role - planning, budgeting, analyzing data, negotiation etc. Those activities although taxing on my brain but at the same time, they made my brain cells worked hard.  Nowadays, I have to find ways to exercise my brains regularly because an idle brain leads to declining cognitive ability and long-term damage to my cognitive skills.

Anyway, I keep myself occupied nowadays with brain games to exercise my brains. There are a few games that according to Rebecca Marcus, LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist in New York who specializes in mindfulness:

• They can help to increase focus, concentration, and memory.
• They can help us to be more present in day-to-day activities.
• While it doesn’t appear that brain games can prevent age-related cognitive decline and dementia, growing research indicates that they may slow or delay them.

(Source: healthline.com )

Nowadays it's very easy to find online games that are free and fun to exercise your brains. You can go to solitaire.org among other sites that offer plenty of online games according to your interest. Here are some of my go-to games to sharpen my brains:

Games that can help to increase focus, concentration, and memory

1. Hidden object games

A seemingly simple game where you need to find hidden objects within a certain allocated time. This game require concentration and focus to search for the hidden objects as well as a sharp eye to spot objects that are cleverly blended in within the scenery. There are a few sets of hidden object games on this site. The easiest one is 'The Garden' while 'Princess' games require a higher level of concentration and focus to spot multiple similar objects and numbers that hide in the picture.

2. Sudoku

I'm a huge fan of Sudoku since I was in school. I even bought Sudoku puzzle books to pass the time while waiting for my flight / bus. The game is straightforward but tricky at the same time - all you need to do is arrange the numbers 1-9 vertically / horizontally / in each block without repeating the number. For example, number 1 can only appear once vertically / horizontally / in each block. It took me hours at first to arrange the numbers as I have to think hard before placing a number in a box, but once I got the hang of it, it only took me minutes to solve a Sudoku puzzle.

3. Word Search

Word Search is another variation of finding games that train your brain to look for the words forward, backward or across the jumbled letters. Sometimes I play this game with my kids to help them learn new words and also to train their eyes to spot the words.

Games that help us to be more present in day-to-day activities

Minesweeper:

This game helps me to be alert of the surrounding because I have to be careful not to click on a tile with a hidden bomb underneath it. The tile with the number on it gives a clue of how many bombs are placed on its surrounding - the tile with the number 2 has two bombs around it, etc.

I like to think that this games improve my awareness of the present surrounding in daily life because my brain has been trained to do so.

Yeay, made it to safety!

The good thing about Solitaire.org is it comes with description of how to play the game which I found helpful when playing unfamiliar / new games. These games may not appeal to the younger generation who are more into social / combat gaming but for folks like me who enjoy solitary games to up my brain games, I do find the games enjoyable and fun.

Source: solitaire.org