Editor’s note:  This is a guest post from freelance writer Heather Johnson. 

If you are starting to feel your age it might be because your memory is slipping at the most inopportune times.  Or, maybe you already have a decent memory and would just like to improve it so you can beat your buddies at Trivial Pursuit.  Think of your mind as a series of disorganized file cabinets.  The information is already there.  If you follow the 10 steps below, you can access any file you want at a much quicker pace.

1. Read a Book Every Week – In order to keep your mind active you need to always be learning.  No, you don’t need to settle in with some Carl Sagan and a thesaurus every night.  Believe it or not, even some light “beach reading” will get your neurons firing more rapidly than whatever you have saved on your DVR.
2. Streamline Your Daily Tasks – Multitasking to the point of exhaustion is a memory killer.  Hone your ability to delegate tasks that are cluttering your work life and/or home life.  If you can get away with a little procrastination by pushing the less important tasks back, that will work also.  Over scheduling your life will induce major brain drain.
3. Find a Quiet Spot – If you would like to study, read, balance the checkbook, etc. you need to have a quiet spot where you can concentrate and soak up as much information as possible.   Just like multi-tasking, a loud and distracting environment will tire your brain.
4. Sleep Eight Hours Every Night – Uninterrupted sleep may be an impossibility for surgeons or parents of small children, but you really should aim for those eight hours each night.  Many of us have the opportunity to get a full night’s rest, yet opt to watch some television or catch up with something else.  You absolutely cannot sacrifice sleep and expect to have a good memory the next day.
5. Tap Into Your Creativity – If you’re not exercising your creativity there are areas of your brain that go wasted every day.  Take up a creative hobby or, at the very least, pick up a pencil on occasion and doodle.
6. Start a Journal or Blog – This might sound like a chore, but you don’t have to write a journal or blog entry every day.  Write when the mood strikes or when you actually have something interesting to say.  Documenting your life is one of the best ways to preserve your memory.
7. Take a Daily Multivitamin – Make sure you take the best vitamin for your gender and age.  Even if you can’t eat like a health nut all the time, at least you’ll get most of your necessary vitamins with the help of a supplement.
8. Drink Plenty of Water – Water does wonders for your mind and body.  Most people don’t realize that they walk around slightly dehydrated all the time.  Dehydration can be the source of a lot of problems.
9. Keep Your Home Tidy – Maybe you don’t subscribe to Feng Shui, but disorganized people often have a worse memory than those who keep their house clean.  An organized environment encourages clear thinking.
10. Don’t Smoke – If you do smoke, you now have one more reason to put those cigarettes down.  Studies have shown an increase in memory loss amongst regular smokers. 

At the very least, these 10 steps should help you attain and maintain a more healthy memory.

About the author:  Heather Johnson is a freelance business, finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor at Business Credit Cards, a site for tracking the best business credit card offers.  Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address [email protected].

I’ve been working out at least 4 days a week since I was a freshman in high school.  I’m now 26, so I feel like I have a solid understanding of how to stay consistently motivated and dedicated to an exercise regimen.  I’ve read numerous articles with widely varying tips on how to accomplish this.  These tips range from the simple act of getting a gym membership all the way to the intricacies of documenting a well defined set of fitness goals and personal rewards for accomplishing these goals.  I’ve even read that getting dressed in gym clothes or making a commitment to walking the dog is enough to get the average person motivated.

While I don’t doubt the legitimacy in some of the suggested methods I’ve read, I don’t really think that they hold the key to long term exercise motivation and commitment.  A regular exercise routine can be extremely redundant.  The redundancy will eventually bore the average person out of their right mind.  So even tough joining a gym, finding a workout buddy, and documenting fitness goals is a good start, it won’t exactly keep a person motivated 6 months down the road.  In time, most people will start thinking hard about all the enjoyable things they would rather be doing instead… at which point the battle is lost.

So, what’s the key to long term exercise motivation?  There are actually 2 keys, 2 very simple keys, music and variance.  Motivation is usually driven by the desire to accomplish something, but it is kept intact on a moment to moment basis by continuously stimulating the mind.  If the mind isn’t stimulated, it will rapidly lose desire for the original goal.   In order to create a desire for exercise, you have to stimulate your mind by making exercise an enjoyable and adventurous experience, which is exactly what music and variance add to a long term exercise routine.

• Music – Music makes us think, it gets us going, and it sets our stream of consciousness on a positive course.  Both fast beat and slow beat music have the same stimulating effect on the mind, so alternate between the two while you exercise.  Also, discovering new music that you like is one of the most rewarding experiences.  Once you overplay all your favorite artists, start plugging their names into the various Web 2.0 music recommendation sites.  These sites will assist you in discovering new bands and artists based on similarities to music you already like.  Use your exercise time to rediscover your favorite artists, discover new ones, and build a massive collection of music that you will enjoy for the rest of your life.  It won’t be long before you realize that music makes exercise fun.
• Variance – No matter how wonderful an activity is at first, if it is performed in repetition over the course of several weeks it will ultimately become a dreadfully boring experience.  Keep things fresh!  Do a variety of different exercises each week.  Your gym has numerous exercise machines, free weights, and pieces of cardio equipment.  Ask a trainer for help if you need to, or just be adventurous and figure it out for yourself.  Watch other people and learn.  Just make sure you always start off with very light weight or speed settings when you are unfamiliar with an exercise.  Once you have all the exercises down, start randomly alternating through them on a weekly basis.  Do 3 or 4 sets of 3 or 4 exercises 3 or 4 times a week.  Never do the same exact exercises in the same exact order 2 weeks in a row.