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BRAINSTORMING TECHNIQUES: TOP PROVEN METHODS By: Douglas E. Castle Of GEI Consulting For The Braintenance Blog Utilize Brainstorming To Unleash The Power Of Your Mind Your mind is an endlessly powerful, multi-dimensional multipurpose tool. Regardless of its incredible power, too much conscious focus on attaining a particular goal or on solving a specific, perplexing problem eventually causes a sort of “burnout,” where creative methods and solutions become increasingly elusive as you become increasingly fatigued. It is at times like these, when the indirect subconscious approach, i.e., solo brainstorming, can provide us with a renewed perspective. While most people talk about brainstorming in groups (“let's toss some ideas around and see what we come up with...”), in this article we'll find ways of brainstorming alone using a combination of techniques and approaches. At its best, brainstorming is a means of combining the power of the subconscious with the power of the colle...

 ? In Braintenance, confusion is the magic which creates new neurological pathways, greater plasticity, and enhanced creative skills. The brain and mind are strengthened in the same fashion as the bodybuilder builds and defines new muscle -- by changing the workout regimen to "shock" the body into over-compensation. The mental exercises which follow are gearing toward forcing you to think (and problem-solve) in a different manner than you usually do by changing the entire problem-solving scenario. Want to strengthen your mind? of course you do. Simply find the missing numbers or letters in each of the following sequences. You'll notice that you are not trying to find the next number or letter in each sequence (as you are accustomed to doing) -- you are being asked to think interpolatively instead of extrapolatively: 1)   A C _ D C E D _ E G 2)   _ 4 9 _ 25 _ 49 3)   2 4 _ _ 10 _ 14 4)   P_S_ENG_RS  O_  A  T_AIN 5)   _...

The statement above captures the essence of a form of Braintenance "cross-training" and "confusion training," wherein your brain is forced to break through its ordinary routines and to coordinate different tasks in a different matter. These exercises are very simple, but yield tremendous benefits in terms of your ability to focus and to be creative. Following is a sampling of exercises which may prove challenging enough to 'wake up your mind' and to capture your brain's attention. When dealing with the brain, more exercise, and greater diversity of cerebral tasks is always better. Try these: 1) If you are right-handed, try doing as many things as possible with your left hand, and vice versa; 2) Stir beverages, soups, and the like in a clockwise fashion, instead of in the traditional and popular counter-clockwise fashion; 3) Read a page of text from the bottom up, with the last sentences first; 4) Try working backwards for a while (be careful, and avoid t...

We tend to dream in metaphors about things in our lives which are unsettled and frustrating. This is quite the opposite of what we tend to say about dreams , which tends to be positive in the sense of "you're in my dreams," "I can dream about it if I can't have it," or "I was just daydreaming." In fact, the dreams we tend to remember as adults are very often the ones which are closest to nightmares. The more plagued we are with the stressful components of our lives and either our point of view or our actual environment (the two are never quite the same), the more we dream, and the greater the percentage of our dreams which are perceived as nightmares. In curious contrast, when our conscious minds are at rest after struggling at a perplexing problem for some time, our subconscious, operating through metaphor and unbridled free association, continues to work on these problems in our dreaming states and occasionally solves them. Much of our " Br...

One splendid braintenance trick to expand your analytic intelligence (reasoning and problem-solving ability) and your creativity (the ability to envision something in your mind without having seen it with your open eyes) is [believe it or not] doing algebraic word problems in your head. No pens. No pencils. No computers or mobile devices . This absolutely requires that you keep information filed in various parts of your mind while looking at new information, and then ultimately going back to those files and fitting these "saved" pieces together to find the solution. Your intellectual curiosity and perhaps your oversized ego demand that you meet this little challenge. It involves two brothers from Poland named Mario and Lorenzo (their parents had a particularly bizarre sense of humor ): Mario is currently three years older than his bother (this is a Freudian Slip inserted in the interest of making this exercise a bit more challenging) -- er, brother; The sum of the two di...

The above is unrealistic - If you are truly paying attention, you can focus your full awareness upon only one object or task at a time. Braintenancers - You've seen advertisements and advertorials on TV about "tricking" and "confusing" your body's muscles into growth and clearer definition. This confusion theory is absolutely true and is genuinely effective. The mind responds the same way to confusion and the need for resolution, or to alternating between one type of thinking task and another. I have an interesting exercise which will force your brain to shift gears -- this initiates, creativity, imagination, cognition, memory and many other wonderful brain benefits. The exercise is very simple, but is time-consuming, so please do it in the evening, when you have a clear hour- long block of time and nothing to interfere with your exercise and experience -- it only requires the following steps: 1 ) Listen to a binaural/subliminal entrainment audio rec...