In the online age, it’s easy to get distracted. You just wanted to check your email and suddenly you’re four pages deep on a “Breaking Bad” forum – then you re-watch the final season. Time well spent.

Don’t let your online wanderings get the better of you. Make a list of your priorities. Tackle them in order of importance. Put time into your projects but when you hit a brick wall, don’t get out the hammer. Instead, relax and take a break.

Devote time to disconnect from work. With your phone locked to your hip around the clock, your co-workers and boss will try to contact you.

Does reading make you smarter? Yes, regardless of content, reading increases your intelligence. A paper by Anne E. Cunningham claims that children who read turn into smart adults. Interestingly, Cunningham suggests that the actual reading material plays little role in the result. Instead, the act of reading produces increased intelligence.

Reading creates an atmosphere for reflection and analytical thought. You pause and consider what you read. The practice of reading demands attention. Simply by concentrating, you stimulate your mind and increase your brainpower.

Once you learn a piece of information, review it. You can’t learn if you don’t remember. Memory functions through repetition. When you repeat a fact, you set the wheels of memory in motion again.

The process of cumulatively reviewing information helps your knowledge to stick. Experiences linger on the outer cortex of the brain before transforming into memories housed in the hippocampus.

Unfortunately, they often dislodge in the hodge-podge of information coming through. Like dropping your keys in a crowded nightclub, memories disappear in the chaos of thought.

Easier said than done, but learning a language represents one of the top things that make you smarter. Studying a language proves challenging for most people. It takes years of work to gain fluency in a foreign tongue. Lucky for you, mastering a language isn’t the point. Like a kung-fu student carrying buckets of water up a steep staircase, you gain strength through the task.

They might not beat your game console, but brain games claim to sharpen your cognitive ability. Many apps promise to boost your IQ through fun and simple games. These companies suggest that by playing games developed by neuroscientists, you’ll reap the benefits of their research.

People like brain games. Whether they work or not, these programs get a lot of attention. The website Lumosity offers a series of brain games used by 50 million brain trainers . Surely they can’t all be wasting their time.

Guys grunting at the gym don’t usually look like Einstein, but daily exercise actually makes you smarter. Including 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise in your daily routine will enhance your mental clarity and intelligence.

An old Roman saying goes “healthy mind, healthy body.” This aphorism surprisingly has scientific backing. Research from Concordia University claims that getting more blood and oxygen to your brain does wonders for cognitive health. Not only does the biological aspect play a role, but multitasking while exercising also stimulates multiple areas of the brain.

Picking up an instrument will not only impress your friends, it will make you smarter. When you play an instrument, you employ a vast area of your brain at once.

Consider the senses. You use your visual, auditory, and physical capacities all while playing an instrument. Your experience of playing music uses tons of cognitive processes simultaneously, for instance:

• analytic capacities to read the music
• visual cues from watching your hands
• maintaining rhythm and tone
• awareness of physical space
• utilizing your motor cortex
• building muscle memory
• engaging in social cues of performance

You need to eat, so why not power your intelligence with brain-booster super foods? Certain foods contain qualities proven to enhance brain power. No need to order any fad food online – the best foods line the shelves of your local grocery store.

The best foods for brain function all contain high levels of fat. Historically, fat has a bad reputation. People generally believe that eating fat makes you fat. Some fats do affect your body negatively, but not all.

Establishing a short, daily meditation practice can beef up your concentration, alertness, creativity, and intelligence. Numerous studies show a direct link between meditation and increased brain activity. Many prominent university researchers claim meditation benefits the brain:

• UCLA produced a study correlating long-term meditation with better preserved grey matter, which resulted in healthier brains for older participants.
• Yale University demonstrated that meditation reduces daydreaming.
• Johns Hopkins found that meditation curbs depression, pain, and anxiety.

*For more details please visit the original sites*