Converting down time to alive time

Short on time, I skim read this article today and it has not left me. There are so many times when we are idle - traffic, queues, airports, evenings.

Don't get me wrong, rest is important and should not be underestimated. Our brains need time to be bored. But not idle. Boredom is fundamental to creativity. It is only when the brain is quiet that we think of new things - inventions, new ways of doing something old or obtain a new perspective.

But in the days of smart phones, where every minute of our day our brains are bombarded with short bursts of (useless) information we are training our minds to be reactive. We are not coaching ourselves or our children into deep thought. We are actively discouraging the attention required to read a book. An actual book. Words on a page with the flipping of textured paper beneath our fingers and static print on a solid medium.

Instead, we flick through Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat (or whatever the latest craze is) with frantic thirst for 'information' in its loosest form - gossip. Celebrity gossip has been replaced by family and friend gossip - who's doing what (or eating/drinking what) with whom and where. While I actually love social media for it's ability to connect people who are geographically isolated, I hate it for removing us from the ones who are right in front of our faces.

If our smart phones and tablets only had social media on them it might not be too bad but there are endless other possibilities presented by the App Store or Google Play or whatever medium you have to download stimulation to your handheld device. Very little of this stimulation actually activates our brains though. It occupies it instead. We are not encouraging thought we are activating neurons. And, no, it is not the same thing. The way neurons fire in response to electronic signals is fundamentally different to how they behave when reading or drawing.

There are much smarter people than me out there - take their word for it. Neuroscientists around the world (Europe, India, Saudi Arabia and the US). Psychologists are getting in on the act too.

So, how do we, in the digital age, change the way we work to ensure our brains don't deteriorate? The answer is simple - read. Buy books (actual real books not e-books for your e-reader) and read them.

There is so much information out there. Read it. Soak it up. Dedicate time each day to retrain your brain.

*Toddles off to read The Sleep Revolution.....