So What, Who Cares (volume 1, issue 15) Why we should all walk a little more
Welcome to a new week. This is a milestone issue of So What, Who Cares?, because there are now 100 of you subscribed to this newsletter. All of you have impeccable taste.
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If you want to fix what's ailing your head, take a walk. A study published in Preventative Medicine concludes that commuters who switch from a driving or transit-only commute to one that is more "active" (i.e. walking) report a greater sense of well-being than their carpool lane-trapped brethren. The study's authors are focusing on the notion of "well being" as a mental state that correlates to work-related traits like problem solving and completing tasks, so the supposed takeaway here is that a productive workforce is the one that laces up its Reeboks and glides to the office on a wave of Carly Simon power-pop.
Pedestrianism is having its moment -- to be expected, since it's the lo-fi version of the treadmill desk trend of '13 -- and the New Yorker is on the beat, with one piece speaking of the brief, golden age of modern walking (bracketed by the Walkman on one end, the iPhone on the other) and the other exhibiting some actual reporting and explaining the subtle and undeniable ways that our thoughts change in response to the physiological phenomena that spring up during a stroll. To wit:
Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.
The piece also goes on to point out that walking can give our brains a break by letting them basically bliss out for a while. Since attention is finite, giving that part of your brain a rest while the remainder of it works on those juicy new connections is a win-win.
So what? For those of us lucky enough to live in walkable neighborhoods (or to work in walkable places), we have a cheap and easy way to jump-start our brains and our moods.
Who cares? The mall-walkers of America, who suddenly have congestion during that critical food court turnaround? Actually, this is good news for folks who live or work in areas where they're unlikely to be creamed by a car if they take a stroll.
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And other cheap way to boost your brain power: Doodle. Researchers say doodling is good for learning, because your brain is engaging its cerebral cortex even when "outside stimuli are absent," i.e. you're bored, and because your brain is still chugging along, you're more likely to retain information. Perhaps more crucially, a doodle can serve as a memory prompt to recall information and it can also prompt you to think about or apply information in a new way. The doodle discovery is one more piece of evidence suggesting a strong link between fine motor skills and literary learning, as researchers also found that children learn to read more quickly, retain more information and generate more ideas if they learned to write by hand first. Psychologists have also found that college students who wrote their notes by hand were better able to understand and recall their lectures, because the process of writing forced the students to process a lecture’s contents and reframe it.
So what? If you struggle with information retention and recall, taking notes like you're back in elementary school -- complete with art in the margins -- could boost your brainpower.
Who cares? I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm typing this.
Seriously: Parents and other educational professionals may want to see what role handwriting plays in the curriculum compared to computing technology. And grown-ups may want to take notes the old-fashioned way -- or ask themselves how they can mimic the process of cerebral engagement and information-reframing via the computer.
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Also, it's entirely possible that knitting will make you a crack app programmer.
So what? Knitting's nomenclature lends itself well to picking up regular expressions, which are vital to defining and processing pattern recognition in any programming language. On another level, the knitting-to-coding connection offers further proof that picking up a tactile skill can enhance cognitive processing.
Who cares? The legions of craft mavens who could easily yarn bomb a brogrammer-heavy startup, then rework their code. Alternately, this is another piece of news that benefits parents looking for ways to help their kids feel productive and proficient -- and want help making hand-crafted holiday gifts.
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Now, let's meet back here in a month and you can tell me whether we've all become supergeniuses whose hand knit socks barely fit over our newly sculpted calves. Hit me up via email or Twitter and let me know what you think about So What, Who Cares? If you really like it, tell a friend to subscribe.