Please note: I am not characterizing learning a new skill set, or honing an existing one, as wasting time.

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The baby boomers, long known as master acquirers, are now learning a new skill: getting rid of excess stuff.

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Whether he was learning a new skill, taking decisive action in an emergency, or forging the most innovative and efficient steelmaking company in the world, the commitment to following the judgment of his reasoning mind was the only opportunity he needed.

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Those kinds of studies are more rare than straight correlative studies, but they exist and show strong evidence that learning a new motor skill (such as juggling, for example) leads to changes in the white matter of the motor cortex.

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Learning a skill depends on building new memories, and studies show that we learn new information most efficiently if we spread our practice out rather than trying to cram it all into a short period (like before a test).

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