Answer: Do these simple brain-training activities. Work out which ones you feel weak in; practice those again and again until you get good.

1. Write neatly but quickly.
2. Work out how to tell an interesting anecdote in under two minutes.
3. “Do consequences”— predicting possible positive and negative consequences arising from various actions.
4. Spot logical inconsistencies in a statement or someone’s behavior.
5. Follow long, complicated sentences.
6. Make accurate, complicated decisions that involve weighing up several options in your head.
7. Remember complicated instructions.
8. Follow a complicated movie story line.
9. Block out distractions when you’re trying to do something hard.
10. Remember something when distracting new information arrives straight after you receive it.
11. Follow a conversation with lots of background noise.
12. Follow a conversation with someone with a difficult-to-understand accent or poor English.
13. Express complicated ideas that you’ve just read into your own words.
14. Think and talk at the same time.
15. Listen and think at the same time.
16. Eat and listen at the same time.
17. Recognize situations that call for tact before you respond.
18. Silently pronounce hard-to-pronounce words as you read e.g. proprioceptive, neurotrophins, neurobics.
19. Pronounce  hard-to-pronounce words out loud.
20. Think up effective strategies for solving problems.
21. See through a plan to completion.
22. Reflect what you’ve said and done and spotting better ways of doing things next time.
23. Set plans and goals.
24. Spot the main point--the central thesis– of what someone has said or what’s happening.
25. Consider all the relevant information and not getting swayed by just a few bits of information.
26. Deep-learn the meaning of new words.
27. “See” by touching–practicing doing simple activities with your eyes shut.

    Brain Exercise-which ones are neurobic?

28. Recognize objects by feel.
29. Play “what’s that sound?” games.
30. Identify ambiguous pictures.
31. Identify familiar faces when hair and other non-facial cues are removed.
32. Say tongue-twisters.When even just reading tongue-twisters silently, the brain has to work extra-hard and extra bits of the brain light up, as shown in this research:
    Brain imaging of tongue-twister sentence comprehension: Twisting the tongue and the brain

    Visit this site that lists over 400 English tongue twisters to compile your own list of especially tricky ones. It turns out I have trouble saying “cricket critics” and “bed-bugs’ black  blood” and “sniff sesh!” and ” “click, clap, pluck” and lots of others!  But I can say them better now!

33. Articulate the words quickly and clearly when singing.
34. Read a map.
35. Flip shapes in your head.
36. Identify a shape when it’s been flipped.
37. Visualize a couple of moves ahead in strategy games like chess and checkers.
38. Sort items into categories. (I should sort these 50 items into categories!)
39. Anticipate where the ball will go in  ball games  such as tennis.
40. Vividly imagine different sounds and images and tastes and smells.
41. Do complicated imagery such as rearranging the room furniture in your head.
42. Vividly imagine all the different emotions e.g. feeling determined, ecstatic, discouraged, alert, etc.
43. Reproduce/recognizing  complicated geometrical figures from memory.
44. Coordinate a complicated cooking task involving preparing several dishes at once.
45. Do challenging sums in your head.
46. Process your listener’s non-verbal behavior.
47. Accurately identify other people’s non-verbal behavior.
48. Accurately read other people’s facial expressions.
49. Accurately pick up other people’s feelings (i.e. showing accurate felt empathy).
50. Use your non-dominant hand to do simple tasks.

Wow! That’s a lot of basic brain skills to master! But, apparently it’s do-able, so it’s worth exploring!

We wouldn’t be weak in all these things — just on a few of them. We need to find out what we’re weak at, and to find exercises to strengthen those weaknesses. I am hopeless at spatial stuff and recognising faces and thinking while talking!

Free, fun,challenging skill-building materials for most of these activities already exist. I’ll add in the links later.