I Combined Brain-Games and Meditation For Ninety Days

The results just blew my mind

Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash

Meditation improves your focus. Alright, I know that and you know that too. You have probably heard that like a million times.

But what does it really mean?

How do you know your concentration levels have improved or your mental agility has indeed increased? These changes aren’t always obvious.

So, I did a little experiment — actually in all honesty — it was accidental. I combined my long-standing love for playing brain games with my newfound love for meditation

Being in the corporate for long screws your brain — you want to see data and trends to draw conclusions. When you have metrics, it becomes easier to understand the improvement in your performance.

Brain games are fun, non-addictive, and helps to keep your brain sharp. Let me warn you though — the last statement is controversial to some extent. I did some research and most of it wasn’t conclusive — most studies tend to show significant differences for people who are older or have any existing cognitive disabilities. For others, the research is mixed.

Nevertheless, it didn’t matter to me in my experiment — for my hypothesis I was keen to understand if meditation improves my score for these brain games than the other way round.

A bit into my journey so far

I have been playing this for a year now — there’s a set of six games that the app curates each day for you. It’s like a customized workout routine for your brains. It takes less than twenty minutes and offers the right level of challenge to develop your cognitive skills — so I was happy to invest that time in jogging those muscles.

In the last few months during the lockdown, I also started meditating regularly — a long-time goal that never got prioritized before. Usually, I’d do a quick five-minute meditation session after a tough physical workout session. But that’s it. I realized soon five minutes has no impact except maybe lowering down the heart rate to some extent. As my fondness for meditation grew, the time I spent practicing went up as well.