Guitar vs. Sudoku

As I progress through my sixth decade, I’ve become quite concerned over the potential of losing…my…mind. Not in the sense of going crazy, that condition is a given, but rather losing the mental capacity to focus, remember, and apply my mind to complex problems.

I’ve been encouraged to take up Sudoku by several people, since it’s a demanding way to exercise the brain and, presumably, retard the retarding process. Problem is, I don’t really like games so much—that whole subset of Sudoku, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles—just puzzles in general don’t excite me.

So I play guitar. As mentioned in a previous post, I’m not a natural musician and playing guitar is an avocation that I do purely as a challenge and a form of relaxation. And playing guitar, especially classical pieces, exercises a variety of muscles. It develops hand, wrist, and finger strength, not to mention overall digital dexterity. And if you hold the guitar correctly, it helps develop good posture.

But it also builds your mind. Classical guitar requires the ability to read music and translate music on the page to the fret board and strings of your instrument. Not only must you figure out the structure of the passages being notated, you have to determine finger positions on the fret board and your right hand movements, which can be very challenging since the same note configurations can be played several different ways on the neck. 

All this is results in significant mental exercise, especially when you begin learning a complex piece.

So I’ll take guitar over Sudoku anytime—you get both your physical exercise and brain work in at the same time. 

And sometimes it even results in some sweet music.