a few years ago I became very interested in solving puzzles after playing a game on tend ODS called Professor Layton and the Curious Village this is a pretty old game I think it came out over like 10years ago or something but what it did was it sparked my interest in puzzles and problem solving a few years after that I wanted to learn how to solve Rubik's Cube I used to see one at my grandparents house just lying around in the basement no one would ever really use it but as you can see here Ieventually picked up one of my own and mine is kind of old a lot of the colored stickers are peeling off at the corner sit's also very stiff and doesn't really turn that well so I decided to dust  off my old Rubik's Cube and to see if I still remember it how to solve it[Music]lately I've had a lot of time to think about my channel and how its progressed I'm not entirely sure how myself-improvement journey has led me to aRubik's Cube maybe it's just a smaller piece of a bigger puzzle I have yet to solve and even if I arrive at the solution what then these are the questions which cloud my mindam I really growing and improving as a person is this making me smarter or is this just another form of procrastination a game designer once said fun from games arises out of mastery it arises out of comprehension it is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun in other words with games learning is the drug and as long as I'm learning then maybe I'm still improving even if it is just matching colors[Music]all right so it's not too bad I can still remember how to solve one of these things even though I am really slow that probably took around like two minutes or so but my brain still remember the really simple algorithms I use to solve this and it's kind of just like muscle memory after doing the certain movement sover and over and over your body just kind of goes on autopilot and know  how to solve it it sort of reminds me how you never really forget how to ride a bike it's been a couple years since I last practice solving a Rubik's Cube and at that time there have been some interesting variations of the cube come up specifically this mile cube or whatever a month totally sure what it's called either way I decide to purchase one of these so called speed cubes with the intention of challenging myself cognitively I want to see how fast my brain can relearn an old skill and just kind of have fun with it now this got me thinking can solving puzzles like the Rubik's Cube make you smarter the way I thought about this in my mind was there are two elementary things going on here I like to call them direct learning and indirect learning now I don't know if these are actual real terms I'm kind of just making them up so don't quote me on this it's probably but this i sthe best description which makes sense to me to put this in context smarter can mean a lot of different things fromperson to person does solving a Rubik's Cube mean you can name all the countriesin Europe or make you better at doingyour taxes of course not there is nodirect correlation between those thingssolving a Rubik's Cube makes you smarterat exactly that solving the Rubik's Cubethis is what it meant when I said directlearning learning how to play chessmakes you better at chess painting makesyou better at painting writing makes youbetter at writing whatever you arelearning something you're getting betterand smarter at that specific thingI think the true value here is what youare indirectly learning from theseexperiences by learning how to solve aRubik's Cube you are indirectlyimproving your memory patternrecognition and problem-solving skillsthe best way I can put this is when Ibought my first Rubik's Cube I had noidea how to solve it or where to evenstart I was completely overwhelmed in mymind and I was trying to figure out howto go from this to this without evenconsidering the steps it takes inbetween to get there and whenever youapproach a problem with just theperspective of the end goal in mind youare more than likely to fail thisreminds me of all those people thatwatch videos on YouTube on how to lose20 pounds in one week or drink thismagical fat-burning tea that burns yourbelly fat in five days which iscompletely ridiculous but human beingshave this horrible flaw of only focusingit on the end result and we looked forquick solutions to our problems Iremember one of the first videos onrubik's cubes that watch was learn howto solve the Rubik's Cube in fiveminutes or something like that whichagain is really stupid but it's kind offunny because I ended up getting trolledby watching the video the video was ofthis guy showing you how to break offthe pieces of the cube and then puttingit back together in the solve stateeventually I did take the time to learnthe Rubik's Cube and I kind of broke thepuzzle down into smaller steps insteadof focusing in on the end result myfirst goal was to just simply completeone of the first layers and thenprogressed from there now this is what Ibelieve the Rubik's Cube can make yousmarter at instead of viewing problemsin a singular mannerI now approach them like layers of thecube taking small steps to solve abigger problem instead of tackling themall at once if for example I were tolearn a language I would start with themost frequently used words in thelanguage not whole sentences or if Iwere to write an essay and the first fewdays would be spent up on writing thethesis and just the intro so yes I dobelieve that learning how to solve theRubik's Cube in some aspects can makeyou smarter but like all things in lifeyou need to have balance if you spenteight hours per day solving puzzles orplaying brain training games you willinherently end up with less time tospend on the actual thing you want toget good at now I know that this isn'tmy usual style of video as rubik's cubesdon't really have much to do with self improvement or filmmaking at all butwith this whole Quarantine stuff i havekind of been stuck in this weird funk oflacking creativity and new ideas andit's probably because like i can't getoutside and actually go and shoot andlike you know do fun things or do interesting things or meet new people or talk to people and try to learn new experiences and it sucks and we're allkind of just like stuck in this lull oflacking creative ideas right now so Ijust wanted to mix it up do somethingfun just do something I don't know thatI kind of enjoyed just to mix it up fornow and hopefully we can all get out ofthis creative funk and things can get back to normal so till next time thanks