Give Your Brain a Boost—Learn A New Skill in 2019!

Although I seldom write resolutions these days, every January I start thinking about some less restrictive goals for myself—you know, the type of goals that don’t hamstring a person with guilt and self-recrimination every day for weeks (which unfortunately, are the side-effects of most New Years’ resolutions!)

This year, instead, I have a strong desire to learn a new skill. And, drumroll please—it’s practically guaranteed to be good for my brain!

Now this isn’t entirely my own idea. Lois, from DigiDame gave me a nudge last week in her December 30 post, Never Stop Learning. It got me thinking along some more constructive lines that go beyond the small and insignificant, and would actually enhance and even extend my life.

What are these benefits?

So what could learning something new do for me? A quick search of Google brought up this short explanation:

“The white matter in your brain is called myelin, and it helps improve performance on a number of tasks. The more people practice a new skill they are learning, the more dense the myelin in their brains becomes, which helps them learn even better. Learning a new skill helps you learn things faster over time.”

I chuckle, because whether by necessity or design, I have been learning new things all of my life. Financial need has kept me on my toes, and in order to make my way, and provide for two teenagers, I had to accumulate a couple of degrees in order to qualify for a job in teaching special education. Well, that was a few years ago, and now I have to ask myself, “What have I done lately for my myelin?”

In other words, “is my brain dense enough, or not?” (hint: dense is better, as incongruous as that may seem!)

But we all know it’s not a laughing matter. According to Natalie Sisson, learning a new skill is not only fun and beneficial, it influences the way you do things day to day and it will make your tasks simpler and easier, saving time, energy and stress. These new experiences, she says, get us access to new and different opportunities and the chance to try new experiences that might be the best ones you have ever tried.

Some scientific evidence

And it’s even more than that: an article written by CCSU Continuing Education titled The Top 7 Benefits of Learning a New Skill outlines the physical benefits awaiting those who open themselves to new learning:

Your brain chemistry changes.

“The white matter in your brain is called myelin, and it helps improve performance on a number of tasks. The more people practice a new skill they are learning, the more dense the myelin in their brains becomes, which helps them learn even better.”

Your learning speed increases.

Learning a new skill actually stimulates neurons in the brain, prompting more and more neural pathways to form. With this process, electrical impulses travel faster across them as you attempt to process new information. The more pathways that are formed, the faster impulses can travel.

You could stave off dementia.

According to CCSU, people who learn a new skill are less likely to develop dementia, which has been linked to demyelination (loss of myelin) of your brain. By actively learning new skills, they don’t give their brains a chance to demyelinate, and their neural pathways are ready for new impulses to travel along them.

It seems to work like a well-traveled highway, not allowing grass to grow over it. So keeping your brain active and well used, is a ready-made recipe for better brain health for older people!

Which brings me finally to the nub of this post—what new skill have I chosen?

Here’s my plan

I intend to organize and save several years’ worth of digital photos—and just to make it official, I have already begun!

It doesn’t have as much of a ‘wow’ factor as learning to play a musical instrument, and it’s not as impressive as learning physics, but it includes a variety of challenges such as learning some new technology, honing my organizational skills such as critiquing and categorizing. The bonus is, it will satisfy a long-held objective to finish a job I started years ago.

I know I am late arriving at this task—many of you have done this years ago, but it has always seemed so formidable to me. I have hundreds, and possibly thousands of photos on my PC hard drive, and many more on my laptop. And furthermore, I love them all, and will now have to make some decisions to scrap some of them—even though breaking up is so hard to do!

I really don’t have any idea about how I’ll proceed, or what resources I’ll need, but I think I’ll explore it first, and purchase the materials as I work through it. I think I’ll need some USB flash drives and CDs on which to store the pictures, but technology is changing so fast that there may be other avenues to take. Possibly you, my readers, will give me some ideas.

I’m not hopeful that it will be easy—in fact, I’m quite sure it will be difficult and very time-consuming, if my first foray into it is any indication—yesterday I spent two hours on one file, and was able to trim only two photos from it!

But there it is, my new skill for 2019. With any luck I’ll have fewer photos on my computers, and more myelin in my brain!