Make sense

Most of us are fairly logical beings – trying to make sense of everything that goes on around us. Yet, at times, we lose that capacity for logical thought. Here’s what you do to sharpen up: Memorize your shopping list. It sounds fairly easy, but whenever I’ve tried to do it, I’ve left out some vital grocery item that I’ve had to run back to the store to get. A memory aide that I’ve found helpful in doing this has been to take the first letter of each item and make an acronym or sentence out of it. Remember how we learned the planets in our solar system in school?

 Or the colors of the rainbow? Well, apply the same technique here and memorize your shopping list. Word games, chess, crosswords, sudoku, card games like rummy – all use our strategic skills. Play them with friends or play a game of spider solitaire to get those skills up and running. But don’t stick to one game. Switch games every week. Learn a new game. Play strategy video games. Do simple calculations yourself instead of using a calculator.