Unfortunately, there are a lot of habits that we get into that aren’t efficient or helpful for our brains or IQ. We might not realise it as it is happening, but there are indeed lots of things we do every day and every week that have a negative impact on our brains and how we use them.
But don’t feel too bad about this.
The first step to changing anything is recognising and acknowledging the patterns of what is going on.
And this blog is here to help you with that.
It doesn’t exist to shame you, only to help you understand what you are doing and how it might be affecting you, so that you may choose more positive habits going forward.
Here are some ways that you might be decreasing your IQ right now.
Mindlessly scrolling
A habit that far too many of us are prone to right now is mindlessly scrolling for hours on our phones.
Our phones have more information on them than ever before and it seems that they are designed in a way that makes the scrolling possibilities infinite. There very often are no ends to the content we read. As such, many of us spend far too much of our time simply scrolling on our phones, reading everything and nothing all at once.
This habit is very numbing for our brains and it has a negative impact on our attention spans.
We aren’t learning anything new, most of the time, and it is training our brains to want constant microdoses of information. Then, when we go to read, study, work, or concentrate for a period of time, it is much more difficult to switch back into a longer attention span.
It is ok to use our phones, in fact, we can use our phones in a way that helps us increase our IQs and helps us learn new content from all across the world.
What we mainly need to avoid is mindless, dissociative scrolling.
If there is no point in your time on your phone, cut it short. The last thing your brain needs is any activity that is numbing and mindless.
Watching too much TV
TV is a staple activity in most of our homes, and that isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. We can connect with each other, enjoy ourselves, and learn new things while watching TV in a moderate way.
However, when we watch a lot of TV every day and/or for long periods of time, this has a negative impact on our brains and their functioning.
It is another dissociative activity that many of us use to “switch off”. Again, this is ok now and again but when we engage with it on a regular basis, it becomes damaging to our attention spans and concentration levels. Teaching our brains to consistently switch off isn’t a good thing and it definitely doesn’t have a good impact on our IQ.
The best way to watch TV is in short bursts and with purpose. If you want to watch an episode of something, just watch that episode and then switch off.
Everything is usually ok in moderation but when it becomes a repetitive, dissociative habit, that is when we need to make some changes.
