M2M Day 15: Forcing myself to take a break
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For November, my goal is to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than 2 minutes.
Over the past few days, I’ve been practicing a lot (including Sunday’s excitingly successful memorization on video), and my brain is starting to get tired again. So, I’m taking the day off today.
Memorizing cards requires rest days
In the beginning of Month to Master, I categorized this challenge as intellectual, while categorizing other challenges as creative (Draw a photorealistic self-portrait) or physical (Complete 50 consecutive pull-ups).
However, this challenge is surprisingly behaving a lot more like a physical challenge, where I can tire my body out and perform worse if I don’t take breaks.
The hard part about this challenge, unlike explicitly physical challenges, is I don’t know when my memorization muscles are sore.
If I perform badly, is that because I’m not making good progress, or because I’m just tired? There’s no way for me to really know the answer, which makes this challenge frustratingly difficult, at times.
Nevertheless, I’m forcing myself to take a day off today, in hopes that a well-rested brain will perform much better tomorrow.
I hate taking the day off, but am optimistic that it will help.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
