Focus on Feet

During my balancing on one leg exercise, I've noticed how hard the tiny muscles in my feet are working to maintain my balance. It's not the muscles in my upper or lower legs that are responsible. After all:

... the feet have more bones than any other single part of the body, with each foot containing 26 bones, totaling 52 bones for both feet, which is over a quarter (about 25%) of the 206 bones in the entire human body, making them complex structures vital for movement, balance, and shock absorption. 

I got Gemini to do deep research on the issue of foot health and strength and here is a link to the report that it came up with. There's a lot of text unfortunately and no pictures and so I got NotebookLM to generate an infographic (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: generated by NotebookLM

It's all just common sense really. Any repeated motion that strengthens or increases the flexibility of the muscles connecting the 26 bones in each foot is good for you. As with all exercise however, start slowly and build up the number of repetitions. I need to incorporate this into my daily exercise regime. Figure 2 shows a good image of the bones of the foot:

Figure 2: source

Brain Workouts for Better Memory

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows an infographic produced from the following text-based information extracted from an article with this URL:

Based on the article, here are the 10 brain workouts and habits recommended to sharpen memory:

• Learn a new skill: Engage in activities like learning a new language, playing an instrument, dancing, or coding to create new neural connections and improve flexibility.
  
  
• Do a daily puzzle circuit: Spend 10–15 minutes rotating through crosswords, Sudoku, word games, or logic puzzles to practice holding information under light pressure.
  
  
• Walk briskly most days: Perform regular aerobic exercise (like brisk walking or cycling) to boost blood flow to the hippocampus, which is crucial for memory storage.
  
  
• Practice "list recall": Memorize a shopping or to-do list, hide it, and try to recall the items to strengthen working memory and attention.
  
  
• Train names and faces: When meeting new people, repeat their names, ask questions, and mentally link their names to a specific feature or image.
  
  
• Use your non-dominant hand: Perform daily tasks like brushing teeth or using a mouse with your opposite hand to activate less-used brain circuits and improve coordination.
  
  
• Do short, focused meditation: Practice 5–10 minutes of breath-based meditation to reduce mental clutter and improve the brain's ability to encode memories.
  
  
• Teach or summarize what you learn: Explain a book, podcast, or concept to someone else to force yourself to organize information and strengthen memory traces.
  
  
• Enrich experiences with all senses: Actively notice colors, textures, sounds, and smells during daily activities to create more mental "hooks" for memory retrieval.
  
  
• Quality sleep: Maintain consistent sleep patterns to allow the brain to consolidate new information and support long-term cognitive health.

Here is an audio recording generated by NotebookLM and based on the above content.

It's useful to reflect on how well I'm carrying out some or all of these mental workout suggestions. Let's go through them one by one.

• Learn a new skill: Engage in activities like learning a new language, playing an instrument, dancing, or coding to create new neural connections and improve flexibility.
  
  
  I keep trying to improve my Indonesian and make sporadic efforts but I still need to do something on a daily basis in order to make any real progress. There are other activities that I carry out a daily basis like completing Wordle for the day, doing my exercise routine and analying the number associated with my diurnal age number etc. This is something that's important to me and I really need to find a way of making language practice a daily habit. 
  
  
  Keeping up with developments in AI, mainly within the Google ecosystem, is challenging and certainly helps forge new neural connections. 
  
  
• Do a daily puzzle circuit: Spend 10–15 minutes rotating through crosswords, Sudoku, word games, or logic puzzles to practice holding information under light pressure.
  
  
  I regularly play WordMaster on my iPhone, usually late at night before going to sleep. I also try to complete the Wordle challenge of the day. Lately I've been playing a couple of games of online chess most days.
  
  
• Walk briskly most days: Perform regular aerobic exercise (like brisk walking or cycling) to boost blood flow to the hippocampus, which is crucial for memory storage.
  
  
  I do walk somewhere most days and walk at a reasonably brisk pace.
  
  
• Practice "list recall": Memorize a shopping or to-do list, hide it, and try to recall the items to strengthen working memory and attention.
  
  
  Lately, I started counting from 2 to 229 instead of 1 to 50 when doing exercise repetitions. This reinforces my recall of the first 50 primes and helps me focus more on my exercise, reducing distracting thoughts. I've written about memory training techniques and I really do need to revisit these blog posts and kick start putting these techniques into practice again.
  
  
• Train names and faces: When meeting new people, repeat their names, ask questions, and mentally link their names to a specific feature or image.
  
  
  I've always struggled remembering people's names. I don't meet many new people these days but I could practice with actors and this would be just as useful. Let's put this into practice.
  
  
• Use your non-dominant hand: Perform daily tasks like brushing teeth or using a mouse with your opposite hand to activate less-used brain circuits and improve coordination.
  
  
  I have tried doing this with brushing my teeth but not consistently. I should make it a daily practice. I am very right-sided and any activity that helps strengthen my left side is worthwhile.
  
  
• Do short, focused meditation: Practice 5–10 minutes of breath-based meditation to reduce mental clutter and improve the brain's ability to encode memories.
  
  
  This is something that I don't do and perhaps I should. This might be especially useful before playing online chess. I often just jump in and my mental focus is often not what it should be. The result is mistakes. I should make short, focused meditation a precondition for starting an online chess game.
  
  
• Teach or summarize what you learn: Explain a book, podcast, or concept to someone else to force yourself to organize information and strengthen memory traces.
  
  
  I'm using NotebookLM to translate my blog posts into visual (infographic), audio and video format. While NotebookLM is doing most of the work here, there is the opportunity to edit these formats and shape them in a personalised way.
  
  
• Enrich experiences with all senses: Actively notice colors, textures, sounds, and smells during daily activities to create more mental "hooks" for memory retrieval.
  
  
  I tend to exist in a largely visual and mental world and so gardening is a way of exercising my tactile senses while playing guitar is both tactile and auditory. My sense of smell is very poor and I don't know what I can do to strengthen that. 
  
  
• Quality sleep: Maintain consistent sleep patterns to allow the brain to consolidate new information and support long-term cognitive health.
  
  
  This is often something that I struggle with but lately I've settled into a reasonable 1am to 8am rhythm. Let's hope that continues.