Stupid training 🧠 Maintaining neuroplasticity by intentionally doing stuff you suck at

I lived in Los Angeles for a year back in the early ’00s, and my dad came down for a visit for a few days. I took a day off from my corporate copywriting job for a web hosting company so that my father and I could go for a long, late morning walk up the Venice Beach boardwalk.

On our walk, we were passed by dozens of middle-aged LA ladies out for their mid-day exercise, with their taut faces and augmented breasts not moving as they jogged past.

“Daughter,” my father began, “There are many methods of maintaining one’s youthfulness. What we’re witnessing today are some of the least effective.”

“Ok, dad,” I rolled my eyes at him. “I get it. You don’t like plastic surgery.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s just that the external methods of maintaining youthfulness just don’t work very well. The internal methods are much more effective.”

There in my mid-20s, I used his comment as justification for my potty humor and coarse language. Talking like a surly teenager was an internal method of maintaining youthfulness, right?

Now that I’m the same age of many of the ladies who were jogging past us, I understand my father’s comment in a different way. If you want to…