Solitaire is a game that has been kicking around for some time now, and it’s an accessible way to sharpen one’s cognitive skills and offer plenty of other benefits, such as reducing stress and improving focus.
As a low-pressure, solitary game, this is a gentle mental activity that allows the brain to engage in strategic thinking.
With that being said, here are several ways to incorporate solitaire into your daily routine to boost your focus.
The Morning ‘Brain Coffee’
Whether you’re a coffee drinker or not, there’s a way of giving yourself some brain coffee by playing solitaire. You could start your day with perhaps one or two rounds of solitaire, instead of having to immediately check your email or the day’s news.
Many do the latter, but if you’re starting with a few rounds of solitaire, it acts as a mental warm-up, gradually giving you the ability to wake up your cognitive faculties, improving focus, and setting calm vibes for the day.
Even though it’s something you play on your phone or your laptop, it’s still a good way to give your brain some mental stimulation without overstimulating it through other typical morning routines like checking your emails or doom-scrolling through social media as soon as you wake up.
The Midday Reset Break
It’s good to know that no one can operate at 100% all day, every day. Every day is different, and you may not wake up with the same motivation or get up and go that you did the other day when you were extra productive.
How you manage your day and give yourself that grace that’s often required to reset the brain is influential to how much you get out of your day.
A midday reset break is a good way of boosting your productivity levels. When work or studies become overwhelming, use a quick 5 or 10-minute game to step away. Social media can often leave you more distracted, so it’s best to avoid doing that when you need to take a break from work.
Solitaire is good for helping transition your brain away from complex tasks and allows you to reset to improve concentration upon returning to your desk.
The Waiting Room Alternative
When you’re on your way to work via your daily commute, or waiting for appointments and standing in line to be served at your local bar or pub, social media is often the place you land on while you’re waiting.
If you need a little brain boost and an alternative to the above, you could always play a quick game of solitaire on your phone. This can turn dead time into what can be a productive, calming, and cognitively engaging experience.
The Pre-Dinner Decompression
That transition from work mode to home mode is something that you want to be able to decompress.
Transitioning from one to the other can be done with a game before dinner or before you start your evening routine.
The structured and predictable, repetitive nature of moving cards is a good way of helping to lower anxiety and clear your mind of any daily stressors.
When it comes to pre-dinner decompression, solitaire is a quick game to play and is something you can do when making dinner, too, in between frying some onions or air-frying some fries.
The Unwind Bedtime Routine
Unwinding at bedtime is one of those things that you want to be doing with efficiency. You want to be able to wind down without scrolling through your socials and racking up that phone screen time.
A few games of digital solitaire might be just what you need when it comes to that digital meditation you require just before you shut your eyes and turn off the lights in your bedroom.
It’s another great way of winding down and reducing the mental noise that is often present as you’re trying to relax in bed. If you’re someone who struggles with their sleep, then it’s definitely something that can be a great help if you need to switch off your brain from any thoughts of work or your personal life.
The Creative Block Timeout
If you’re creatively stuck, whether that’s something that you’re stumped with at work or you’re perhaps doing as a side hustle from home, that creative block needs a time out. You’re not going to get any further with your progress if you simply persist in trying to make something stick.
Instead, you could have a creative block timeout where you play a short, five-minute game that helps break that cycle and takes away that frustration that’s often felt when you’re in a creative rut.
It also helps to shift your brain away from any unproductive patterns, letting you return to the task with a fresh perspective. Sometimes we need to reset the brain or shift focus off something that we’ve been spending all our time on recently.
The Mindful Minute Pause
Making use of a physical deck of cards, or a digital game of solitaire, can help you focus purely on the present moment. It can be helpful when you’re not always mindful or feeling grounded in yourself.
As solitaire requires close attention to detail through numbers, colors, and patterns, it forces your brain to tune out distractions, acting as a form of meditation in motion.
With these tips, you can make solitaire fit into your daily routine, whilst providing you with the boost you need to productivity and focus in general.
Just getting in one or two games a day can really help to boost your energy levels when it comes to tackling complex work projects and taking the time you need to relax and unwind before you go to bed or as you wake up to start the day.
Solitaire continues to be an incredibly popular game to play both digitally and physically, so make sure you give the game a go, even if you’ve not played it before or for a while. You may find that it easily becomes your new favourite game.ment
