FeeFeeAre you feeling tired and uninspired? Have the cogs in your brain grinded to a halt, causing you to doubt your ability to function as a worthwhile member of society? Don’t turn to drugs and alcohol to lift the cloud of listlessness, just try and name as many NFL teams as you can in sixty seconds.

Researchers from Harvard and Princeton have released findings from a study that indicates self-induced periods of “fast thinking” or “racing thoughts” can jump start your mood and mental acuity.

Apparently, the effect is similar to the mania that manic/depressives experience. Many creative individuals who suffer from bipolar disorder produce great amounts of work while in a manic phase. Often eschewing sleep and periods of rest, they spill forth with words, music and visions at such a prodigious rate that they appear to be the vessel of some otherworldly muse. In time, however, the depressive periods take over and the prolificacy ceases.

Most people who don’t suffer from the devastating mental illness have themselves experienced periods of mental mania, those times when the creative juices are flowing and a stream of thoughts come gushing from your grey matter. Now, if these findings are to believed, we can stimulate our brains to achieve a higher level of mental activity simply by engaging in activities that momentarily force us to think more rapidly. 

In tests conducted for the study, participants experienced increases in happiness, self-esteem, and energy simply by reading quickly. It didn’t matter if the content was uplifting or depressing, the very act of reading and processing the words at a quicker-than-normal pace was enough to produce the positive results. Amazing. 

In an article I read about the study, they suggested other ways to get your brain revved up, so I thought I’d offer some of my own. I always thought of these things as time wasters, but apparently I’ve been engaging in some highly advanced neuroscientific experimentation, so I guess I can be excused for missing those deadlines.

The trick here is to think fast, so brain teasers and puzzles that require contemplative thought and deductive reasoning won’t get the gears turning fast enough to produce any mania. But these might, if you do them as quickly as possible:

Name all fifty states

It’s not as easy as you think and you’ll probably get stuck at some point. Try going through the alphabet or travel from coast to coast to find those states that escape instant recall.

Name one country starting with each letter of the alphabet

If you limit to yourself to present-day countries, you won’t be able to name all 26, and O, Q, and Y are doozies.

Name one band from your record collection starting with each letter of the alphabet

This is more challenging if you limit it to bands and don’t include individual artists.

Famous Initials

This one probably isn’t useful for fast thinking, but it’s a good time killer. Find a body of text and randomly pick out two or three words. Write the words vertically, with the letters (all Caps) stacked below each other, like so:

R

E

D

H

A

T

I

N

D

I

C

T

E

D

Next, pick out a couple of more words and write them down next to the first column. Only use as many letters as there are in the first column:

R O

E N

D D

H R

A U

T G

I  C

N H

D A

I R

C G

T E

E S

D I

You’ll see that you’ve made a list of initials. Now pick a profession in which famous people fill the ranks, such as acting, sports, music, literature, or blogging. Can you see to where this is leading? That’s right. You have to name a person for each set of initials.

Let’s say I pick musicians, right there on top is Roy Orbison. And look, there’s Eddy Nelson (a guess, but a good one), followed by Don Dokken, and ol’ Henry Rollins. The next one is pretty tough, but if I put down Alf Uberstelv (dec.), bassist who played on ABBA’s Voulez-Vous album, are you going to fact-check me? I didn’t think so, not when I follow it up right away with The Go-Gos. And on it goes.

Anyway, I thought the whole thing was incredibly interesting so I thought I’d share. Go forth and be brain dead no more.