New mental exercise

I think I may have developed a new mental exercise. A new aspect of IQ previously ignored revealed itself, the ability to "learn" new material. I wonder if the habit of understanding new material can also be cultivated and strengthed. It seems as if children develop the habit of understanding new material when they are constantly challenged to do so and as we grow into adults we are challenged less and less hence this habit falls by the wayside.

So the new mental exercise will be to "understand" or "learn" a new idea, technique, or event everyday. This is a little vague because how do we know if the thing is new? I'm thinking that this new idea should be something unrelated to our daily ideas or thought processes. For instance if we study physics all day then a good canidate for learning a new idea should come from art or music. If the day before our new idea came from art or music then the new idea for the next day should come from politics and so on.

We should try to "learn" as many ideas from as many different fields so that our minds will be in habit of understanding and learning new things. We can even specialize in one field, we can challenge ourselves to ask deep questions from that field that haven't been addressed.

John G.