Launching a Better Brain

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Our education systems and workplaces plunge us into deep mental ruts. They reward competencies that are self-reinforcing, not diversifying, and they encourage people to acquire domain expertise rather than to ask stupid questions and learn new things. We need to find our way out of these ruts and rekindle the creativity that many of us left behind in childhood. O As a kid, I loved playing with Legos. Now I build and launch model rockets. (In 2003, when I was browsing the local hobby shop for something fun to do with my son, I saw some rocket kits on the wall. My childhood was rediscovered!) Besides being flat-out fun, rocketry helps preserve my childlike mind, which continually learns and grows through play and discovery.

Human cognitive development peaks in the teen years, plateaus into our late thirties, and then begins a gradual descent that lasts until death. Rarely can people orchestrate their lives to provide regular mental pursuits capable of combating that decline.

The common wisdom is that after childhood we have a fixed number of neurons, which gradually die off during our lives, and that these neurons are organized in a fixed architecture. Not true: New neurons are born throughout life, and synaptic connections are being formed and erased all the time. This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity. Cognitive exercise — or the lack of it — can dial the rate of rewiring up or down.

This explains, in part, why — besides having fun — I would want to shoot off rockets in the desert. To be sure, my business life is engaging and demanding. But its rhythms are familiar and often predictable. So I’ve learned to seek out unaccustomed inputs. I keep challenging my mind by mastering new skills. (Last year I learned how to fiberglass and how to take a rocket supersonic.)

My work, which involves evaluating start-up businesses and their leaders, benefits from this. I am comfortable in the midst of new ideas and approaches, from nanotechnology to synthetic biology. And I’m not an odd man out in this regard — my firm’s experience shows that a playful culture bears fruit.

Rocketry may not be for everyone. But I can’t imagine a single business leader who wouldn’t benefit from engaging in some pursuit — novel writing, wood carving, Civil War reenactment, whatever — that transcends the routine world and challenges the brain. Cognitive exercise will keep you agile, adaptive, and fit for life, in business and beyond.

Steve Jurvetson is a managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm.

Additional resources on these topics are available from Harvard Business Review at hbr.org.