Carlos Rodriguez, CogniFit CTO explains how packing is an easy to assess brain performance. On the Spanish radio show “Hoy por hoy” on Cadena Ser, Rodriguez explains how simple tasks, such as packing a suitcase, can tell us a lot more than just if we have too many clothes or not. Listen to the interview.
While going through the mundane tasks of folding clothes, making sure everything fits, keeping the liquids away from our favorite shirt (just in case), some more important cognitive skills can be assessed. Hand-eye coordination, visual perception, and even planning also play a part while we’re planning for our cruise, trip to the mountains, or headed to the work conference.
You may be wondering how exactly these skills can be measured while packing. While picking up clothes, folding them, and placing them in the desired area of the suitcase you would be able to assess your hand-eye coordination skills. If for example, you want to grab the blue shirt but reach instead for the red one, it may be a sign of deficient hand-eye coordination. Visual perception comes into play when looking at the size of the suitcase and sizes of the clothing. Let’s say we are going to Northern Canada in the winter. In this case, we would want to pack as many thick layers as possible. However, by using our visual perception we can tell that we won’t be able to take all three down-jackets, and we will have to choose only one. Planning is also used while packing, as we must think about the duration of our trip, the temperature, the events that we will be attending, etc. For example, if we are going to the Caribbean, our suitcase is likely be made up of bathing suits, shorts, and a few nice dresses. However, we wouldn’t want to dedicate too much space to the nice clothes, as the majority of the time we will (hopefully) be in our bathing suit.
Working these important skills are necessary to live a long, full life. So, what’s the take-away? Take more trips! You could also practice packing, just for fun…but I wouldn’t recommend that as highly. Or, you could practice brain training exercises, like CogniFit, while you travel, a two-for-one.