Why You Should Sharpen Your Brain

After I bought an iPhone last year, one of the first things I did was download BeJeweled, a game that robbed me of countless hours in college. Countless mindless hours, mind you.

Now that I've remastered BeJeweled, I've decided if I'm going to spend an hour at a time playing a game on my phone, by golly it better be good for me. And that's why I'm proud to say I'm currently hooked on Wurdle, which challenges me to spell as many words as I possibly can in under two minutes with a set of letters they give me. Thanks to Wurdle, my lexicon now includes words like "limm" and "quay"—words I'm sure are going to come in handy any minute now. But more important, I've been as sharp as a whip lately, and I think I have Wurdle to thank.

At least, that's what the founders of Vibrant Brains would tell me. Open since 2007, the San Francisco-based business is a gym for your brain. You can read all about it—and its purported effects—in this Wall Street Journal article.

I'm a strong believer of challenging our brains to do the things it did every day in school. I'm no scientist, but I think an occasional brain workout probably translates into better performance at work, higher productivity and more creative ideas. If that's the case, why wouldn't it be worth a try? Wouldn't you like to be more productive and have better ideas?

You don't need to run to the nearest brain gym, either (unless you really wanted to). Things like doing a crossword puzzle, playing along with Jeopardy and getting brain games for your phone (Wurdle cost me 99 cents) will do the trick.