Hello. I am a student of literature and philosophy, have been using Mind Spark for about two months, and am hovering around “n=4.” (Not very impressive perhaps: well, working memory is my big weakness!) The reason I wanted to post was that I have the very specific and apparently, among cognitive-enhancement buffs, highly unusual goal of maximizing my *literary analysis* skills. I am pretty sure that Mind Spark is helping me, but I wonder who out there, if anyone, has a similar obsessesion and can share his sense of how and to what extent Mind Spark’s benefits are for the advanced student of literature, whether there are other exercises/games (on or off the computer) that could help someone with my exact goal, and so forth.
By the way, I like the intensity about mind-improvement on this blog. I’ve hardly ever met anyone who cared whether he was living up to his intellectual potential, and the American education system with its unsystematic mush of a curriculum makes me ill to contemplate. (Cf. E.D. Hirsch on the “unholy trinity” of American educational theory: formalism, naturalism, and determinism. Note that second two contradict each other. But, as usual, I digress and begin to rant…) Mind Evolve bloggers are very refreshing!
Hello, Frank.
Many thanks for this post. A few months ago one of our fellow bloggers asked me what were my training goals – high on my list is the ability to read and digest complex material, and then to be able to formulate and express my own ideas. I’ve found that training with Mind Sparke has helped me enormously in these two areas.
I’ve noticed that my threshold for taking on new ideas and making sense of them has risen substantially. And it takes me far less time to write down what I’m trying to say. What used to take an hour, now takes maybe half an hour, and seems to emerge more fluently.
Best wishes,
Martin