Gentlemen, your mind is the greatest “weapon” you possess.  You’ve heard it all before and you know as well as anyone that everything you accomplish, everything you hope to achieve and everything that you are comes from the critical mass in your noggin.  So, wouldn’t you think it’s important to keep it well-maintained?

The Riddler © DC Comics

I don’t like to admit it, but I would say that once or twice a week, I have issues remembering certain things.  Luckily for me, it’s usually nothing of significance; like the name of a certain 80′s band or what I ate at a particular restaurant the last time I was there.  Items of both useful and useless knowledge are things I had no problems remembering ten years ago.  I’ve also noticed that the number of things I write down now are far greater than when I used to knock out multiple items on a mental list.

It’s a well-known fact that memory degrades with age.  I believe that we lose a lot of our mind’s memory, ability and efficiency from a lack of activity.  It makes sense, for example, that I probably couldn’t algebra my way out of a cardboard box at this moment because I haven’t used algebra since high school/college (not that I was awesome at it back then).

Today, we live in a world where so much is already done for us.  Everything is easier to read, calculate or figure out by digital means.  There’s nothing wrong with technology making our lives more efficient, but it can also make it very easy for our minds to become lazy.  I find irony in that, seeing that in the same world, people make decisions every day that require focus, skill and sharpness.

Lately, I’ve been spending 15-20 minutes a day on puzzle games (sorry guys, Angry Birds does not count), reading magazine articles on topics I normally wouldn’t read and looking up, immediately, things that I can’t remember.  I also found a great article on cnn.com via the Mayo Clinic about keeping your mind sharp: http://tinyurl.com/6jpv6

The poet James Stephens once said, “A sword, a spade and a thought should never be allowed to rust.”  It’s time to flip the script, gentlemen and realize that intelligence and mental sharpness are cool again.