Mentally stimulating

Many of us feel that our works are not mentally stimulating. Yet at the same time, we often shun mentally stimulating works.

Most of us like to sing songs. It would be more mentally stimulating to write songs. Yet few of us do that. Why? Mentally stimulating works are strenuous. Most people don’t like hard work.

During school years, we have plenty opportunities to engage in mentally stimulating works. Mathematics is very mentally stimulating. Yet few people choose to work on mathematics. Mathematics, as a mentally stimulating subject, requires high concentration of mind.

In universities, we have plenty of opportunities to choose mentally stimulating majors. Yet most people prefer something else, something less mentally stimulating and less demanding.

For so many years in schools and universities, most people avoid mentally stimulating works. Then they complain their jobs are not mentally stimulating. Why? We have to look at how human psychology was evolved.

Imagine you were fighting against a fierce animal, such as another man. You both were exhausted. If you can be mentally stimulated to engage in further fighting and your opponent can’t, you will survive and your opponent will perish. Since it is so important to survival, our mind assigns great pleasure to mental stimulation.

Mental stimulation is often generated near exhaustion. People will avoid great exertion unless forced by circumstances. That is why affluent life is usually very boring, lack of mental stimulation. Only the poor people get to experience and enjoy genuine mentally stimulating works. In affluent societies, people usually access the state of mental stimulation through the use of drugs. With mental stimulating drugs, people become extremely energetic and extremely excited, until exhaustion. Then the state of withdraw and depression kicks in to protect oneself from further burn out. High level of mental stimulation is often followed by withdraw and depression.

Overall, it is great to have a mentally stimulating job. To get such a job, one needs to engage in mentally stimulating works often. Otherwise, how can you handle such works. Suppose you are asked to solve an engineering problem that has not been solved before. You are given a month to solve this problem. If you don’t have a habit of dealing with difficult and hence mentally stimulating problems, it would be extremely stressful.