Stuck at home and looking for ways to keep your body and brain busy? Take a look at this helpful guide for how to stay busy and keep your mind and body moving.
A study of over 300 adults ages 50-89 found that busier people had more opportunities to learn, leading to an increase in cognitive performance and memory.
Other studies found that individuals with schedules that are full but not overwhelming tend to be happier.
The data makes it clear that it’s important to keep our bodies and minds active. What hasn’t been studied thoroughly is how to stay busy in a healthy way.
Baragging yourself with too many tasks will only lead to stress and overwhelm. However, maintaining a healthy routine that helps you stay busy with tasks you enjoy has a variety of benefits.
Read our guide to find out how to stay busy at home and learn about the benefits that challenging your mind and body provides.
How to Stay Busy (And Healthy)
There are plenty of things to do to keep busy, but they’re not all created equal. Being busy is good, but only if you’re doing productive activities that you enjoy.
Any activity that helps you learn will improve your brain. This is because mental exercises maintain and increase communication between your brain cells.
The more of your five senses get activated when you perform a task, the more areas of your brain get activated. Try to make sure that however you stay busy, you can see, smell, hear, taste, and feel it.
Volunteering is one of the best ways to keep busy, as it covers several lifestyle areas at once. It’s uplifting, keeps you social and active, often uses all five senses, and exercises your mind.
Remember that there’s a difference between eustress, the excitement you feel when trying a new activity, and distress, the negative feelings you get when you can’t get everything done. Stay busy with activities you enjoy, but avoid getting overwhelmed.
Developing a routine is one of the best ways to hold yourself accountable, prevent overwhelm, and give yourself something to look forward to. Once you’ve found your favorite things to do to stay busy, pick a time and day of the week to perform them.
Productivity is better than being busy because it keeps your mind and body healthy no matter where you are. Read on here for more tips on choosing the best ways to stay busy.
Keeping Your Body Busy
One of the hardest parts of making a plan for how to stay busy at home is incorporating exercise. It can seem almost impossible to stay active if you can’t leave the house and don’t own exercise equipment.
Exercise is an important component of a healthy lifestyle no matter where you are. Even if you have to stay and/or work at home, you shouldn’t miss out on the health benefits it provides. In fact, this could be a great opportunity to finally build your own home gym. 150 minutes of physical activity per week improves mood, memory, critical thinking, and more. Even three to four minutes of light activity like walking or stretching improves your muscle health and blood circulation.
Every exercise program needs five key components; a warmup, cardio, resistance, flexibility exercises, and a cooldown period.
It’s possible to build a routine that incorporates all five components from home. Try stretches to warm up, dancing for cardio, working with resistance bands to build strength, doing yoga to increase flexibility, and going on a light walk to cool down.
It’s important not to overwhelm yourself with physical activity, either. Don’t do more than your body can handle and don’t feel that you have to perform the same routine every day.
If you enjoy your routine, it doesn’t matter where or how you get your exercise as long as you do it consistently.
Keeping Your Mind Busy
The mind deteriorates as we age, and while there’s no way to completely prevent it, there are ways to decrease its speed.
Fighting cognitive decline means making positive lifestyle choices like maintaining a social life and staying active. It’s also important to find ways to keep your mind busy.
Learning and experiencing something new stimulates the brain, and there are plenty of ways to go about it.
Take up a new hobby, learn a new language, or change up your daily routine. Research or take a class online to further understand a topic you’ve always wanted to know more about.
There is also a range of ways to activate all five senses at once.
Try new food and savor the smells and tastes it brings. Engage in practices like aromatherapy that’ll decrease your stress as they activate your senses.
Finding an enjoyable, healthy way to keep your mind busy will help it stay sharp for years to come.
Using Technology to Stay Busy
There’s an endless amount of knowledge and entertainment on the Internet and our electronic devices. Despite their negative reputation for destroying productivity, they can provide healthy ways to stay busy.
The Internet has a mind-boggling number of free online workouts on video platforms like YouTube. You can find anything from tai chi to music to dance to. It’s also a great way to try out a new exercise, and the change will keep your mind busy while you move your body.
The Internet also makes it easier to order anything you may need to improve your exercise routine or stimulate your mind.
Find apps and games that challenge your brain like word games and crossword puzzles. As long as you’re learning something and thinking as you play, you’ll help keep your brain busy.
Keep Busy With a Healthy Routine
We live in a culture that pushes constant activity without teaching us how to stay busy in a healthy way.
Make sure that you experience something new as often as you can. Variety is more than the spice of life; it’s also an essential food for the brain.
Don’t ignore your body, either. Developing a proper exercise routine will give you the energy to stay busy doing the things you love.
Also, remember to regulate your schedule and routine to prevent getting overwhelmed. Don’t get discouraged, as it’s possible to stay busy wherever you are.
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