inc.com Want a Better Brain? A Massive New Study Says It All Comes Down to Just 1 Unexpected Habit Bill Murphy Jr. ~4 minutes

The habit works like this: I finish a project, or put the finishing touches on an article, and I tell myself I’ve earned a game or two.

It’s become my reward system — a small signal that one thing is done and I can shift gears before the next thing starts.

For a long time, I assumed there was a brain-health bonus baked into all this. Strategic thinking, pattern recognition, the kind of mental exercise that’s supposed to keep you sharp.

Lately, though, I’ve had to admit that my rating hasn’t really moved all that much, which sort of undercuts that assumption.

Partly, I admit, I’m often playing while doing something else. But also, when I lose, I find I’m often making the same blunders over and over.

So am I actually training anything? Or have I just built a very durable habit around something that happens to be fun? ‘Defined by possibility’

A new study gave me a useful way to think about that — and it points to a single habit that mattered more than anything else they measured.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas’s Center for BrainHealth followed nearly 4,000 adults, ages 19 to 94, over three years, and published their findings in May in the journal Scientific Reports.

Participants spent 5 to 15 minutes a day on brain-training activities. The researchers assessed them every six months on a composite measure covering cognitive function, emotional balance, and sense of purpose.

The headline finding was that people improved across the entire age range — including people in their 80s.

“Our brain is not defined by age — it is defined by possibility,” said Sandra Bond Chapman, the study’s senior author.

Instead, the strongest predictor of improvement was engagement. Not bad, but maybe not as good

So to bring it back to my chess habit:

I assumed that because I was showing up every single day, I was getting some kind of cumulative benefit — the way a daily walk or a daily stretch adds up over time, almost regardless of how distracted you are during it.

But while simply playing over and over might not be a bad habit, it’s probably not as good—in terms of brain development anyway—as making a constant effort to be present and focused.

As corresponding author Lori Cook put it: “Every brain is as unique as a fingerprint and has potential for growth,” but the data suggests your potential only gets realized if you’re actually engaging—not just going through the motions.

Caveats worth noting: The center that ran the study also developed the tool used to measure brain health. Also, the sample skewed white, educated, and female. Day 375

I’m not giving up my online chess habit, of course. I like it too much, and breaking a 374-day streak at this point would bother me more than it should.

But I might start paying closer attention to the games I lose — actually looking at what went wrong instead of clicking “new game” and moving on—playing fewer games, more carefully, instead of more games, half-distracted.

Or maybe not. A reward you’ve earned isn’t much of a reward if it comes with homework attached.

Either way, I just finished this article. So, I’m off to start my 375th consecutive day.

By my own rules, that means I’ve earned it.