Many of my clients and my audiences at our time management training seminars express dismay at their inability to remember names and events of the past.  Yet these are all highly functioning, working individuals.  The complaints rise with age although there is no associated disease causing these slips.

Now there is a good reason for people of any age to commit some time to Internet browsing.  A UCLA study of adults aged 55-76 showed that spending time searching the Internet can be more mentally stimulating than even reading.  There was 3 times as much neural activity, but only in those who actually had prior Internet experience.

What seems to be making the difference is that the Internet’s variety of choices requires that we make constant decisions, and this in turn uses important cognitive circuits.

Beware:  This is not an excuse to escape from office work.  You might dedicate 20 minutes in an evening to exploring new sites, but do not let it chip away at your daily productivity.  If you schedule your day effectively, you might have more time in the evening to engage in learning about new topics.

Good scheduling still includes blocking off a chunk of time each day for focused work, ideally up to an hour and a half.  The second part of good scheduling is to group similar activities together, like returning all non-urgent phone calls, then processing email, and other daily or weekly recurring activities.

A great place to start your exploration would be through last week’s post about online productivity tools that could enhance both your business and personal life.