At this time of year many of us are preparing our bodies for the rigours of the summer season : getting into last year’s beachware, increasing stamina for all that air travel, looking good in public.

We sometimes neglect our minds though, forgetful that they need a bit of routine maintenance and TLC as well as the physical envelope.

Here’s an excellent checklist of how we might go about it :

1. Choose your direction
2. Make it happen
3. Slow down
4. Lose the negativity
5. Break your routine
6. Play to your strengths
7. Get out of your comfort zone
8. Surround yourself with inspiring people
9. Take control
10. Keep it fresh.

Number 8 might also include reading inspiring authors, watching inspiring films etcetera.

The list was compiled by Lizz Brocklesbury of www.themindgym.com

We’ve known for a long time that a short afternoon nap can make a major difference to our work performance, especially if we’re involved in mental work.

Now, a new book by Harvard University sleep expert Dr Sara Mednick, Take a Nap! Change Your Life, describes the simple process of taking a nap as a “lifesaving habit”. She claims that snoozers make fewer mistakes and have boosted brainpower. One of her experiments involved one group taking a nap, another group drinking a mug of coffee (200mg of caffeine), and a control group taking a placebo.

They were then given a series of tasks, including typing and spatial skill tests. The coffee drinkers performed much worse than the placebo takers, while the nappers performed best of all. So the common assumption that coffee will keep us going through the day has probably been fed to us by the coffee industry.

Dr Mednick, a psychologist and research scientist, has accumulated a lot of evidence that a simple siesta in the afternoon is the best medicine for a happier, healthier life. People who sleep for 30 minutes at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower chance of a heart attack, according to a lead researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health.

In another study, recently published in Nature Neuroscience journal, the good doctor put 30 well-rested people through the same set of tasks four times in the course of a day, starting at 9am through to 7pm.

Performance dropped by 50 percent in those who stayed awake all day. However, the volunteers who took an afternoon nap kept up their performance throughout the day.

NASA has also made a contribution. Tests conducted by them show that astronauts who took a brief snooze doubled their alertness even if they were not tired before the nap. They also increased their work productivity by at least 13 percent.

The ideal time to nap apparently is between 1pm and 3pm which enables the most restful kind of sleep pattern for boosting performance.

I suggest you hedge your bets and take a nap now.

Do you have difficulty making decisions? Do you make decisions that you later regret or lead to worsening life situations?

The ability to make good decisions may be more important than intelligence in producing better life outcomes according to a study being done by Carnegie Mellon University and the RAND Corp.

The results of the study imply that teaching people decision-making skills could improve their quality of life.

“Intelligence doesn’t explain everything. Our results suggest that people with good decision-making skills obtain better real-life outcomes, even after controlling for cognitive ability, socio-economic status and other factors,” said Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a researcher in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and the lead author of the study. “That is good news, because decision-making skills may be taught.”

Carnegie Mellon has a short version of the test online that you can take yourself to see how you score in comparison with other participants. The test takes about 15 minutes and is confidential but you do need to leave an email address for them to mail the test results back to you.

Read the article Good Decision-Makers May Be Made,
Not Born, Says Carnegie Mellon Study and take the test.