Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to change. Brain has the ability to make new connections between neurons. The best driver of neuroplastic change is behaviour; practicing something will result in stronger neural pathways, while stopping practice will result in these pathways being pruned. When we repeatedly practise an activity or access a memory, we make changes in our brain and our neural networks shape themselves accordingly.

Understanding that the brain continues to reorganise itself according to your behaviour, thoughts and emotions is empowering. Knowing that your brain is also shaped by the things that you don't do is equally important. This knowledge can help empower people to actively shape their brain's development by establishing better habits and learning patterns

Increasing Nueroplasticity

There are quite a few ways to increase neuroplasticity. Some that appeal to me are:

Having a good knowledge of neuroplasticity and believing that there is potential for growth.
A good full-night sleep and a power nap in the middle of the day.
Going for a run or doing home-workout whenever possible.
Practising Mindfulness meditation.
Playing video game. I am not much of a gamer, but thinking about including this habit.
Repeated practise makes it perfect. Learnt about HackerRank and LeetCode recently. Planning to sign-up to practice problem-solving (after the intensive 9-week bootcamp at EDA).

Growth Mindset

Growth mindset is the belief that one's abilities can be grown through practise and motivation. This allows them to take on challenges, rather than avoid them. By constantly striving to learn and grow, they are able to increase their skills.

Individuals with a fixed mindset believe that their abilities are static; that these are traits they are born with which cannot be changed.

I have grown-up believing in the "fixed-mindset" mentality: that people are born with some skills, that people have to focus on the natural skills they are born with and not focus on the skills they do not have. This researched-backed new idea is a revelation to me. So my first goal is to constantly remind myself of "Neuroplasticity & growth mind-set" so that it becomes a strong belief in me.

I plan to integrate growth mindset the following ways:

Facing challenges as a opportunity for learning. If the problem is too hard for me, try later and try multiple times, knowing that the subsequent attems is going to make the problem easier.

Trying to solve problems and issues posted by fellow students in the slack channel. Looking at thier style of problem-solving after solving mine, this way i will learn multiple aproach for solving the same problem.

Some articles on this topic I found useful:

Vimal's Blog