With time being limited, I wonder if using a second language, playing an instrument, solving puzzles, physical activity, or some other activity is "better" brain stimulus.
My father was 76 and started to forget things, basic things like what he did yesterday, who we met the week before (family from overseas who we haven’t seen in years)…
This is when I realised it was getting serious. But he’s a Norwegian born in the 40s, so talking about his mental health and opening up to him is near impossible.
I did call him out on these massive lapses in memory, but jokingly though.
However, without formally addressing anything, he started out of no where and never, ever before doing it my entire life: sudoku.
1-2 hours a day, then more, all the time.
He’s now in his mid 80s and as sharp as ever.
I know he went and saw a GP, and they prescribed sodoku.
But the effectiveness of it, taken seriously, is absolutely incredible.
I forgot who said it but they had the theory that the way to stay sharp is to take on new mental tasks that create new though patterns.
You know when you are learning something and you get to that point where it is kind of a strain. That feeling that is kind of tense, exhausting but intriguing, all because you are about to get that thing. It is the transition from something being purely cognitive and moving into behavior intuition, like playing an instrument.
That is the thing that, in part, is keeping you sharp.
I say in part because don't forget your physical health, diet and social health. They all contribute.
I started learning Japanese after age 30 (currently around CEFR B1; JLPT N2), but I did it by moving to Japan. I don't know if the "language study", per se, provided the benefit, but the act of moving there so radically transformed my daily life that it was like being 20 years younger.
David Sedaris did a long interview on learning French (he also became proficient late in life) where he said something like: when you first start learning a language, everything is new and interesting. Eventually you become fluent, you get into a pattern, and 'living in a foreign country' is just 'living'. (heavily paraphrased -- I'll try to find the original).
Anyway, my point is that I think "learning a language" is probably as good as anything else when it comes to "brain stimulation", but in my opinion, the real value comes from being completely immersed in a new culture and kicked forcefully out of any sense of routine.
I've lived in Japan for a while and got N1 a decade ago
and I still love using it every day and don't take it for granted. It's kind of like flying on a plane. It always seems amazing to me, that I am doing this. I started as 28 and always thought it would be impossible.
It is funny that at the start literally everyone is interesting, even the most boring conversations. I was more of a blank slate and more likeable too. That's gone away, but the things I enjoy are more enjoyable in a deeper way, and the scope of things I can do is larger. Goes both ways imo.
> It is funny that at the start literally everyone is interesting, even the most boring conversations. I was more of a blank slate and more likeable too.
Yes! I've found the same thing.
> That's gone away
Also noticing this -- I knew that it would happen, but was surprised that it didn't take very much fluency before the natural human tendency to judge people re-appeared.
> ...but the things I enjoy are more enjoyable in a deeper way, and the scope of things I can do is larger. Goes both ways imo.
That's good to hear. I'm about to come back for another extended round, so I worry about the other stuff fading over time.
For things like this I don't think you can view it as a destination, but rather a journey.
Your mind, body, and any skill will deteriorate over time if not regularly trained, so it must become a part of your life.
And because of this, the answer is easy - do what is permanently and realistically sustainable for yourself. It doesn't matter what's best when you're only going to really keep with things that are personally satisfying for yourself.
Would any effect be limited once you achieve mastery (or close to it)? After 25 years playing my instrument when I play it my brain just switches off. No thinking at all. Doesn't matter whether I'm looking at sheet music playing something new, improvising, or playing something I know well. It's all easy. I imagine it's similar with a second language if you fully immerse yourself in it for a long time.
When did this transition happen? I have tried to play but found that even after four or five years it was difficult, required a lot of concentration, and gave me little pleasure.
The only physical skill I have that might be comparable is typing, but (as a programmer) even after typing for over 40 years, while I can type without "thinking" about where the keys are, I can usually type only three or four words without needing to make a correction.
Probably not until the 12 year mark. Maybe a little before that. I would say that it was a combination of time + actively learning certain skills. There were periods where I rested on my laurels for a few years so I probably could have reduced the time by a few years (if that was the aim). I would say 7 years is around where it got really enjoyable though and I knew enough that it wasn't too much effort to learn new songs and skills.
Worth mentioning I started when I was a kid. Learning something when you're young is so much easier due to the available time and the ability to obsess (this was also pre-internet mostly). When I try learning new instruments these days it takes much longer because I have responsibilities.
I try to play guitar. For simple songs, I can play them without thinking about it. My fingers just find the next chord, almost like driving a car and not remembering the last minute of driving. For more complex things, I have to think.
So may it really is about the journey, and any learning is good learning.
Physical activity is the clear winner just from an overall impact perspective, but you don't need much to reap the benefits, so there's plenty of time for other stuff.
Beyond that, I'd say learning an instrument is probably a better investment than learning a language unless you need to learn the second language to live somewhere. This is because:
- language learning takes a LOT of time investment to show utility compared to using a translate app, while a lot of instruments are fun to play stuff on even when you suck
- Music is also a language, but it's a language of tonal relationships and how they map to emotion, and the emotional phrases they can form, which is more distinct than another spoken language.
- Learning an instrument also forces heavy bidirectional communication between brain hemispheres. Normally humans are very "one half brain then the other" so this encourages more plasticity.
Puzzles have been shown to be poor for cognitive development unless they closely model the cognitive task being measured, so don't bother unless you just really like puzzles.
I am quite familiar with various languages, have learned an instrument, and engage in regular physical activity and I am probably the stupidest person on Earth. I don't think any of those things are universally beneficial to people's mental capacity. At least physical activity has the benefit of improving quality of life in one's later years, so that should probably be the go-to.
Ok, let's see...
Mantis fist practitioner living in Belgium. Daily driving GNU/Linux since 2012. Interested in C, Scheme, Lisp, Perl, and Java.
This does not sound like the stupidest person on earth, at all. Were you concussed when you wrote this maybe?
Do things that you enjoy doing. If learning languages is something you enjoy, do more of that. If not, do something else. I learned English as a side effect of doing things I really wanted to do. Programming, reading books, watching movies, etc. I moved abroad and have not picked up any other language like I picked up English. My native language is Dutch; I barely use it on a daily basis and have not lived in my home country for 20 years now. Most days, English is what I use even though I never lived anywhere where that is the native language.
I lived in Sweden for two years, in Finland for three, and for the last sixteen years I've been living in Germany. I learned a bit of Swedish via a beginners course. No Finnish whatsoever (it's a hard language, there was no need, and Swedish is an official language). When I moved to Germany, I refreshed what little German I knew in high school. So, I can mumble my way through a phone conversation, order food, and sit in meetings understanding maybe 80% of what is being discussed. The language is similar enough to Dutch that I can usually pick it apart if people don't mumble too much. I butcher the grammar and have the vocabulary of a five year old. And this does not bother me too much.
Undeniably, improving my German would be useful to me. But the thing is, people don't appreciate how much of a time commitment it is to learn a language properly. And the simple fact is that this is not an enjoyable activity to me. And we're talking many thousands of hours! I usually have more fun, useful, interesting, etc. things to do and am not exactly bored. And I need my downtime as well. Also, learning in your downtime doesn't work in any case. I know two languages well. Adding a third is not a priority to me. Certainly not getting that third language anywhere close to the level of the first two. So, not happening and I'm OK with that.
These days with LLMs and machine translations you don't need to speak any language other than your own. We're not that far away from being able to have direct conversations with anyone on this planet. Real time translations are not quite there yet but are starting to get usable. Native speakers of whatever will lose their home advantage. They'll no longer be needed as intermediaries. I find this very interesting. I think it will affect the status of English as the world's favorite second language.
