Put your brain into "newbie" mode and it will stop degrading

I recently read an article about how our brain works, how to make it work better and why we degrade. It was very interestng article and I would like to leave some notes about that.

First of all, in that article author describes a situation, where scientist, David Eagleman, tried to compete a 10y.o. boy in a cup game, where you need to build house from cups and collect them back again. Yound boy finished in less than 5s and Eagleman - 43seconds.

Straigth after this he measured the brain activity for both and logically it should show that boy has a very active brain processes and Eagleman not, but it was completely opposite. Boy’s brain was in very calm environment, what we can’t say about Eagleman.

This proves an interesting theory, that if we put brain in ‘newbie’ mode, so we start doing something completely new to us, our brain will work on maximum level, to understand new processes and how it works. At the same time, if we reached the top of understand how it works and how to do it, our brain start to degradate, because it fully knows all the situations and options how to solve it automatically.

But, one important thing is that if you always put your brain in ‘newbie’ mode, then under big pressure your brain can start degrading as well. So you need to find an optimum between learning something new and improving yourself in areas where you almost an expert. In other words you need to find a balance, and that balance can be different for everyone.

I read a lot of cases where people find the best solution not during brainstorm, but during walking in the forest and let brain loop through different solutions.

I am working in a company for 10+ years, and recently company moved to a squad model. I was the only one person from my team moved to a different squad. Last few days I am trying to solve a problem, which put my brain in ‘newbie’ mode completely and I can feel it after work.