1.And what they found is that comprehension on devices in particular smartphones is much poorer, much worse than it is when one reads on actual paper.

Reading on our smartphone, seems to suppress physiological sigh. People aren't aware that it's happening, but it's happening. Some people have talked about so-called email apnea, which is the fact that people hold their breath while they email or while they text.

2.One is that you remind yourself to engage in deep breathing and in particular, physiological sighs every five minutes or so, while reading anything or texting on your smartphone,

the other would be, again, if there's material that you really need to learn for sake of regurgitation later, or for something particularly important, try and read that from either a larger screen or even better would be from printed materials or books.

3.So if you want to learn things, widen that visual window and even better print things out,

pick up a book or read on a tablet even, but try to make that tablet larger than a smartphone screen size.

4.So if someone ever looks at you and they tilt their head a little bit and they raise their eyebrows and they maybe smile a little bit, they're looking at you playfully, that's the universal human exchange of, I want to play.

5.State of playfulness is actually what allows you to perform best because the state of playfulness offers you the opportunity to engage in novel types of behaviors and interactions that you would not otherwise be able to access if you are so focused on the outcome.

6.So if you're somebody that typically plays one-on-one with somebody, try to expand into playing as a team. If you're somebody who only plays alone, then try to expand into playing in perhaps one-on-one first and in groups, this is the way that your brain learns and evolves and changes and gets better.

7. And I raised this because another one of the top 10 questions I get is how can I keep my brain young? How can I continue to learn?

How can I get better in school and sport in life and relationships, et cetera, emotionally, cognitively, and on and on and on. And yes, there are supplements that can support neuroplasticity.

Yes, there are brain games and apps that can support neuroplasticity. But if you really want to engage neuroplasticity at any age what you need to do is return to the same sorts of practices and tools that your nervous system naturally used throughout development.

So play is powerful. And we could even say that play is the most powerful portal

to plasticity. The reason for that is that yes, this high opioid, low epinephrine or adrenaline state is what opens up play.

Put differently, animals that only play for a very small fraction of their entire life

have very rigid brains that don't learn new things, whereas animals that play for a long period throughout their life have very plastic brains.

8. We can't do that. We can't do the new movement. We can't do the golf swing. We can't learn math. We try, we try, we try, we try, we sleep a few nights.

And then all of a sudden we can do it, right, because the rewiring actually occurs during deep rest or naps, but mostly during deep sleep.

9.And that all makes good sense, but what should I play?

What should I do? Well, we've already established that you want to keep your adrenaline low. You have to keep the stakes slow enough that you're not going to get totally consumed by the outcome. Now, for some people who are highly competitive, that's going to be challenging. And yet I don't want to make it seem as if you can't be competitive during play.