What is ‘Cognitive Fitness’?
By: Dr Fiona Beddoes-Jones
Tags: Work, Successful, Relationships, Leadership, Thinking

David Matos on Unsplash

What actually is ‘Cognitive Fitness’?

That’s a great question! I say that because ‘cognitive fitness’ means different things in different countries! Sounds crazy I know but it’s true.

I’m the Founder and CEO of The Cognitive Fitness Consultancy, based in the UK, and we’ve been helping people develop their cognitive fitness for more than 25 years. Here in the UK, we use the term ‘cognitive fitness’ to mean

“Thinking in the right ways at the right time with flexibility, agility and strength”.

But if you’ve grown up in the US for example, this isn’t how you will think about the idea of being cognitively fit. In the US, cognitive fitness is all about the mental exercises we can do to avoid age-related cognitive decline, which in its more extreme conditions is often called dementia or altzheimers.

So just to be clear, I’m talking here about the UK version of ‘cognitive fitness’.

Cognitive Fitness is not about intelligence or ‘book learning’. It’s certainly not about college or university qualifications, and yet it’s one of the most important concepts that you will ever come across — especially at work. After all, it’s only the quality of your thinking that sets you apart from your colleagues.

Your Cognitve Fitness is your USP! It’s your ‘unique selling point’ and what sets you apart from everyone else!

We usually apply the idea of cognitive fitness to people at work, after all, it’s the quality and effectiveness of our thinking that leads to success in the workplace isn’t it? Things such as delivering on great projects, being creative and innovative, paying attention to critical details and somehow ‘being on the same page’ as clients to name just a few ways that our thinking skills and strategies influence our lives every day.

We spend our whole lives thinking and yet it’s probably not something that most of us give much thought to … we just kind of do it and learn as we go along.

Well that’s not a great strategy for learning to drive a car and it’s not a great strategy for developing your cognitive fitness either!

So as a starting point how can you become more cognitively fit?

Cognitive Fitness is really all about strategies. What kinds of things do we need to do if we want to think more effectively; with Flexibility, Agility and Strength?

Flexibility involves using a variety of different strategies and kinds of thinking to achieve your outcomes; whatever they might be. One of the best exercises in flexibility is to take a multiple perspectives approach and look at a situation through the eyes of its various stakeholders. This is super valuable when you’re working with a team or a client and absolutely critical in any conflict situation. You need to become Flexible enough to get to the stage where you’re able to hold different people’s perspectives in your head easily. This isn’t easy. It means not being wedded to a particular approach or outcome and being able to incorporate new ideas into your thinking.

Agility is about your responsiveness. It involves self-awareness and understanding how other people think as well as being good at alternative scenario planning and thinking through contingencies and different options. Agility asks how quickly you can switch your approach and use these different strategies effectively? For example, being able to change your mental state so that your head is always in the best place emotionally and cognitively. Again, it’s not always easy!

Strength and courage go together. The American writer Clare Boothe Luce said that “Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount”. Having the courage to be generous towards yourself and others whilst also being decisive and mentally tough, sometimes vulnerable yet always open and forgiving will make you become stronger and more resilient over time. It will make you a more valuable colleague and team member and a role model to others.

Developing your thinking skills and becoming more cognitively fit (UK style) will make you more likely to be promoted, more likely to be head-hunted and less likely to be made redundant. It’s worth doing!

And if you want to become more Cognitively Fit US style, that’s absolutely worth doing too! Mental puzzles, soduku, cross-words, learning something new, engaging in a hobby you are passionate about … all of these will help to delay cognitive decline and keep you young at heart and young in mind :-)