This post was sparked by an observation. Science is failing to validate brain-training games. At the same time, science is making meditation seem like the solution for practically every performance goal.

The benefits of meditation range from pain management, to overcoming procrastination, to winning NBA championships.

If you’ve lost faith in brain training games, then what do you make of meditation?

Let me frame it for you. There are three approaches to developing brain performance:

Upgrade brain power. Your brain runs faster, makes more connections, holds more information in working memory. Remove obstructions. Put distracting thoughts, interruptions and poor health in the trash bin. Add skills and strategies. Your brain works smarter, rather than harder — using tricks, frameworks, and habits to do more with less.

Meditation is the ultimate brain training game

Here’s why I think brain training games are failing and meditation is succeeding.

Brain training games tackle raw horsepower. That’s their number one goal. This turns out to be the slowest and least useful approach to developing brain performance.

Even meditation, which has been shown to change the structure of your brain, takes a full eight weeks to get started.

Meanwhile, meditation is able to improve your performance within a single sitting through approaches #2 and #3.

Meditation calms your mind and body, helping lower anxiety and reduce distracting thoughts. That anxiety and those distracting thoughts were obstructing your brain’s performance.

In addition, meditation can be used as a skill. I’ve talked about this other places as the Awareness-Focus Loop. Becoming aware of your subconscious thoughts and feeling is a skill. Practicing this skill lets your rational brain take control from situations that had been controlled by your subconscious.

All of this is to say that you should drop the idea that upgrading your brain is the same as upgrading your computer. You don’t just add RAM, hard drive storage and swap in a new CPU.

Rather, you should consider upgrading your brain like upgrading the software.

You make your computer reach optimal performance by removing bloated software, adware, and unnecessary background processes.

Then, you make your computer more useful by adding better software.

It’s basically the same with your brain.