When I was 4 years old, I played with Lego Duplo all day.
First I built houses. Then, I built trains. My Dad and I made the locomotive pull the wagons from one room to the next, then go in circles. We sometimes even put candy in them and sent it from room to room.
Choo-choo!
When I was 6 years old, I played with these red, plastic letters all day.
First, I looked at their shapes. Which ones look similar? Which ones are weird? How do they sound? Then, I put them in lines. Test, change, rearrange.
Eureka! Nik can read! Okay, time to go to school.
When I was 8, I played Pokémon all day.
Nintendo dominated my life in 2nd grade. I’d been given a Nintendo 64 for my 8th birthday, so Super Mario, Mario Kart and Mario Party filled entire evenings, afternoons and mornings.
But when Pokémon steamrolled our school in 3rd grade, I really hit my stride. We all played on our Gameboys, all the time. We traded. We battled. We learned.
I have no idea how that little genius did it, but at one point, Sascha from my class even managed to download an emulated PC version of Pokémon Gold, wayyyy before it came out in Germany.
So we all played Pokémon Gold in Japanese, no biggie.
When I was 10, I played PC games all day.
My Dad wasn’t a pioneer when it comes to personal computers – but a very early adopter for sure. He continued to bring home all kinds of adventure and exploration games and showed me how to install and play them. Like this really strange game called MindGym…
…or Chemicus, where you learned about alchemy and chemistry…
…or Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis…
…which you had to install with floppy disks. Floppy! Remember those?
When I was 12, I played with the internet all day.
We didn’t go straight to DSL and flat rate fees where we lived. Instead, we were stuck on a dial-up connection forever. I remember when we dialed in the modem sounded like it was trying to connect to the ISS.
As soon as you were online, this green timer started counting. Off we go at light speed!
“You have one hour Nik. One hour!”
So I surfed around. What can I find today? Cheats for games? New games? Forums? Learn, see, click, repeat!
I was never worried about getting smarter. I’m still not. But whenever I’m curious about something, I follow that gut feeling.
Don’t worry about your IQ so much.
Worry about letting it sit there, idling and not using it at all.
Don’t worry about what’s down the rabbit hole.
Worry about what happens if you don’t venture down there.
Don’t worry about how you make your brain sweat.
Worry about showing up to the mind gym every day, that’s what counts.
