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For Baby Boomers: Top Ten Tips to Keep Your Accounting Brain Young
Your Most Important Asset
By: Sandi Smith, CPA
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The field of brain science has made miraculous discoveries in the last 15 years, just in time for accounting professionals who are Baby Boomers to benefit. We now know for certain that there are several solid activities each of us can do to not only keep our brains young but to actually raise IQ. Here are ten tips that will keep your brain sharp:
1. Exercise.
The hands-down, number one activity to sharpen your brain is exercise. The brain loves oxygen, and its three pounds of matter uses 20 percent of the body's supply. Feed it more oxygen through cardio and anything that gets your heart rate up, and your brain will be alert and quick.
There is one caveat: exercise that also includes hitting your head (soccer) or even the risk of hitting your head (football, racquetball) should be avoided at all costs.
2. Reduce your stress.
To put it bluntly, stress makes us stupid. The chemicals released during a stress response, commonly known as flight or fight, actually kill brain cells. To counteract the stress from your high-powered accounting job, take up any or all of these stress-reducing activities:
- Yoga
- Meditation
- Anger management
- Sufficient sleep
- Biofeedback, where you learn to control your autonomic system (breathing, heart rate, and body temperature)
Exercise will also relieve stress levels.
3. Stay positive.
Believe it or not, being happy buys you 7.5 extra years of life compared to being unhappy. Frankly, this isn't an easy one for many accounting professionals. We spend all day getting paid to be critical and find mistakes in QuickBooks files and tax forms so that negative behavior is often reinforced.
The studies are clear on this point: you make better decisions (and more income) when you're in an upbeat mood. Although you can't force happiness (until it is or becomes a character trait), you can practice happiness-boosting activities such as socializing with friends, practicing gratitude, setting goals, controlling negative emotions, learning genuine optimism, and increasing resilience, to name a few.
4. Learn something new, and benefit from the miracle of plasticity.
To stimulate new brain growth (also known as neuroplasticity), learn something brand new.
If you remember reading once that the brain stops growing at age 25, that myth was overturned in 1998 with a definitive landmark experiment in Switzerland that proved plasticity beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Here are the great examples of learning something new:
- Learn a new language. If you know English and Spanish, add Portuguese or Mandarin.
- Practice playing a musical instrument. If you know the piano, try the guitar.
- Renew your education. Take a class or get a late-in-life degree that's completely different from what you have already studied. I finished my masters in neuroscience in 2007. And yes, it really stretched my brain! CPE (continuing professional education) is good as long as you study new areas and not the same old ones.
- Travel somewhere new. Travel to somewhere you haven't been before lets you experience new surroundings, foods, and accommodations, all of which keep your brain alert and curious.
A fun German experiment taught subjects aged 50 to 67 to juggle three balls for the first time in their lives, which increased the visual motion area of their brains. They did not become expert jugglers, but the learning limitations were due more to arthritis and bifocals than their brains! Those who didn't keep practicing lost the new brain growth after three months. [Note 1]
Plasticity is miraculous. Even stroke victims have been able to recover parts of their brain after four years. [Note 2]
When your brain gets used to the task you've learned, you'll need to stimulate additional growth with a whole new task. About every three months, you'll want to take up something new, or take your lessons to a more difficult level.
You can do this in your business as well. Take up a new industry, a new version of QuickBooks (perhaps the Enterprise line), a new tax specialty, or a new type of client.
5. Dance.
Dancing is great for the brain! [Note 3] It combines exercise, music, motor coordination, and planning and thinking about the dance steps, all great for your brain. Ladies, perhaps now you have the right excuse to get your partner out on the dance floor.
6. Play chess and solve math problems.
Playing chess reaps huge rewards for improving your mind. The task of planning several moves in advance in your head expands working memory capacity (and therefore IQ), the most of all of the skills mentioned.
You can also benefit from practicing advanced math calculations or reading complex texts. Although I don't know of any direct studies on accounting or QuickBooks, certainly the number-crunching and complex problem-solving that accounting professionals do in their daily work improves their brain functions. When QuickBooks comes out with additional versions and enhancements that we need to learn, these changes keep our brain engaged while learning the new features.
Most computer work is also excellent for our brains. If you find yourself deeply concentrating on a new problem to solve, then that's the best kind of brain work.
Many people ask me whether video games are good for your brain. The studies conflict each other a great deal in this area. My opinion is to avoid video games. Although they might be good for eye-hand coordination and problem-solving, they have two very negative side effects: they require shifts in attention too quickly so that a short attention span is developed, and they affect the addictive center of our brains. Twitter and some social media applications are like this too. If you've spent too much time on video games yourself, meditation will reverse the effects.
7. Eat blueberries and other foods rich in antioxidants.
Antioxidants help to restore what stress, aging, and lack of exercise have destroyed. Berries are the most well-known antioxidant food. Surprisingly, beans (specifically red, kidney, pinto and black beans), artichokes, prunes, apples, pecans, and potatoes are also high in antioxidants.
8. Stop saying you have a bad memory.
To make great strides with your brain, cut out your "inner critic" or that negative self-talk we all have. It's simply a myth that every cognitive skill we have declines with age. In fact, although the average person's reaction times on memory and attention decline, several abilities improve with age:
- Vocabulary
- Language skills
- Expert know-how
- Emotional stability
- Performance on complex, fast-paced tasks [Note 4]
You can do many things to improve memory. The best way to strengthen your attention "muscle" is by sitting for 20 minutes a day meditating on your breath. Don't think you are wasting your time by "doing nothing." You are training your brain to focus on the simplest of things -- your breath -- and you will find after only a few short weeks that your attention and focus are greatly improved.
9. Avoid alcohol.
Alcohol kills brain cells. Ditto with cigarettes and illegal drugs. Enough said.
10. Play and be curious.
Being curious opens up the brain to seeing things from a new angle, which stimulates learning. Let yourself go, and play once in a while.
More on Brain Health
See also How to Sharpen Your Brain for Success at the Start of Your Accounting Career. For tips on how to avoid getting stale in your current occupation, see Keeping Your Job Fresh.
- "Juggling Boosts the Brain," Nature Review Neuroscience (V:3), March 2004, 170.
- A.R. Luft, R.F. Macko, L.W. Forrester, et al. "Treadmill Exercise Activates Subcortical Neural Networks and Improves Walking After Stroke. A Randomized Controlled Trial," Stroke: Journal of American Heart Association, August 28, 2008.
- J. Verghese, R.B. Lipton, M.J. Katz, et al., "The Einstein Aging Study: Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly," New England Journal of Medicine (348), 2003, 2508-2516.
- Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 120.
Sandi Smith, CPA, coaches CPAs to succeed in business. She is a frequent contributor to Intuit® ProConnection®. Her website is www.BrainWaysTraining.com.
Last Updated: 09/04/2009
