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15 ways to keep your brain active during self-solation

It can be easy to get bored when days start to blend into one, so here are some suggestions for keeping your brain active when not a lot is changing day to day.

  1. Do some crosswords! There are plenty online
  2. Go on a tour of museums. Click here for a list of some
  3. Check out e-books or audiobooks from your library. For Chicago, I know you can use Hoopla and Libby
  4. Read or listen to things in the public domain. For reading, you can find a lot by googling, but Project Gutenberg also has a lot on it. Librivox also has a ton of free audiobooks from the public domain
  5. Record a book in the public domain. I'm doing this for fun right now and adding in commentary, but Librivox also needs readers
  6. Take an online course. There are tons you can pay for, but you can also find a ton of free ones on edX
  7. Do a game of exquisite corpse. Set up a group of people to pass one sentence along to. Once the chain is complete, you can put it all together and see what story you made
  8. Do some doodling. Doodling can definitely keep your brain active and people will love to see what you're creating
  9. Learn a new language. There are online courses, but you can also do things like HelloTalk where you're partnered up with someone trying to learn your language
  10. Do puzzles. You can buy puzzles online to be shipped to you or you may already own some or you can find apps for these as well
  11. Start a new craft. Everyone has some amount of supplies that they can turn into something and now you also probably have more time to try your hand at something that you didn't think you could before. Got a box and some markers? Make a little castle. Got glue and paper? See what kind of textured art you can make. Got scissors and stuff you need to recycle? See if you can make paper snowflakes
  12. Learn how to do your hair and/or makeup better. Now is the time to try all of the beauty trends you are not sure you can pull off. Who's gonna see? Who's gonna judge?
  13. Create riddles for your friends to solve. This will exercise your brain and theirs
  14. Create a treasure hunt. This can be in your house (especially if you have kids and/or a partner) or you can make it online (e.g. go to the wiki of Harry Potter and find the year he was born. Then find five important events that took place that year). You can definitely make this a competition
  15. Make lists of ways to help yourself and others during self-isolation (too meta?)
(Prompt by me)

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