12 Ways to Build a Better Brain (and Why Most Poor Souls Don’t Even Try)
Tuesday, October 28, 2025. I wrote this for Marly and Ben. And for George too.
When I was ten, Burke’s Law taught me that paying attention solves most mysteries. 60 years later, neuroscience agrees.
Three pounds of living lightning hums behind your eyes, making executive decisions about everything from your coffee order to your stance on existential dread.
It’s the most complex object in the known universe — and yet most of us treat it like an appliance we forget to clean every once in a while.
The human brain isn’t fixed; it’s a living, ongoing construction site.
Every conversation, meal, and emotion lays down new scaffolding. Neuroscientists call this neuroplasticity — the brain’s lifelong ability to reshape itself through experience.
So yes, you can build a better brain.
But as Burke’s Law once promised, “People are predictable — if you know what to look for.”
The same is true of neurons. They’ll tell you what they want, if you’re listening.
Here are 12 science-based ways to give them what they’re asking for — each punctuated by a Daniel’s Law, my nod to Burke, Boston, and the ongoing comedy of being human.
1. Move Like You Mean It
Because neurons hate stagnation.
In a famous study, adults who walked briskly three times a week grew larger hippocampi — the brain’s memory center. Exercise releases BDNF, a kind of fertilizer for neurons. Even short walks improve focus and mood.
Daniel’s Law #1: If you can still complain, keep walking.
2. Sleep Like It’s Sacred
Because it is.
During deep sleep, cerebrospinal fluid rinses away the day’s metabolic junk — including beta-amyloid, the protein tied to Alzheimer’s (Xie et al., 2013, Science).
Lose sleep and your amygdala — that emotional alarm bell — becomes 60% more reactive. Yikes! (Yoo et al., 2007).
Daniel’s Law #2: The brain writes its memoirs at night — let the editor work.
3. Learn Something That Makes You Feel Inept
Discomfort is neuroplastic gold.
When adults learned to juggle for six weeks, their brains literally added gray matter (Draganski et al., 2004, Nature). Stop practicing and it melts away.
Your neurons crave novelty — they grow on failure and curiosity.
Daniel’s Law #3: If you don’t feel dumb once in a while, your neurons are probably bored.
4. Invest in People, Not Platforms
Loneliness ages the brain faster than your birthdays.
Social isolation inflames the body and dulls cognition (Cacioppo et al., 2014).
Strong friendships enlarge and connect your brain’s emotion-regulating regions (Bickart et al., 2011).
Conversation — real, in-person, unscripted — is a full-brain workout.
Daniel’s Law #4: Texting with a loved one is a vitamin supplement; friendship is a full-on nutritious meal.
5. Eat Like You Plan to Remember Dinner
Your neurons eat what you eat.
The MIND diet — olive oil, greens, nuts, berries, beans, fish — can cut Alzheimer’s risk by half (Morris et al., 2015).
It’s not fancy; it’s consistent.
Daniel’s Law #5: If your meal has a mascot, your neurons are not amused.
6. Meditate (or Just Stop Interrupting Yourself)
Mindfulness isn’t mystical. It’s maintenance.
Eight weeks of daily meditation thickened cortical areas tied to attention and memory (Hölzel et al., 2011).
It also quiets the default-mode network — the brain’s endless narrator.
Daniel’s Law #6: Stillness is the only kind of multitasking that works.
7. Stand Up Before Your Thoughts Fall Asleep
Sitting kills curiosity.
Long sedentary stretches thin your memory centers (Siddarth et al., 2018).
Stand, stretch, wander, repeat. Do it again. Get real turning round and round.
Daniel’s Law #7: If your chair knows your shape, so does your brain scan.
8. Let Yourself Be Bored
Stillness is when your brain writes its best drafts.
Daydreaming activates the default-mode network — where the mind organizes memories and connects ideas.
Without pauses, creativity starves.
Daniel’s Law #8: Boredom is the brain’s quiet conference call with itself.
9. Protect the Hardware
Brains are soft. Gravity isn’t.
Head injuries double your dementia risk (Fann et al., 2018).
Wear the helmet. Check your blood pressure. Moderate your whiskey. Don’t feel free to hold up the heavy end.
Daniel’s Law #9: Gravity is un-fucking defeated. Wear the damn helmet.
10. Seek Out Novelty
Routine is not always comfort; for most folks, novelty is fertilizer.
Exploration sparks dopamine and rewires connections (Güell et al., 2021).
It doesn’t always have to be a grand adventure. Buy a new painting, replace that old smelly sofa. Try a new café, a new author, or drive a different way home. Notice your relationship to novelty and the unknown.
Daniel’s Law #10: Predictability is for clocks, not people.
11. Music & Movement: The Original Brain Gym
Rhythm rewires reality.
Playing or even listening to music lights up all your motor, auditory, and emotional networks. Yippee! (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012).
Dance when you can, and hum when you can’t.
Daniel’s Law #11: If it makes you move, it’s therapy.
12. Emotional Regulation: The Hidden Olympic Event
Calm isn’t passive. It’s precision work.
Each time you pause before reacting, your prefrontal cortex strengthens its leash on your amygdala (Etkin et al., 2015).
Therapy, journaling, mindfulness — all are reps in the gym of restraint. Nowadays, we all need some fucking restraint. It’s a good thing.
Daniel’s Law #12: Patience is just profound emotional power in low gear.
The Detective, the Brain, and a Boy from Dorchester
If you grew up in Boston in the 1960s, you might remember the tv series, Burke’s Law.
Gene Barry played Amos Burke — a millionaire detective in a Rolls-Royce who solved murders with charm, logic, and an occasional pithy aphorism. Each episode ended with a quip in a sultry female voice: “It’s Burke’s Law.”
I was ten, sitting cross-legged on the rug of a narrow living room that smelled faintly of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Kools, and boiled kielbasa.
I didn’t care about the damn car; I cared about Burke himself — calm, unflappable, politely amused by the chaos around him.
He noticed everything. He solved his cases through bestowed attention.
That sorta stayed with me.
Years later, in therapy sessions, I sometimes feel like that same detective — not solving crimes, exactly, but always trying to decode clean-hearted misunderstandings. The clues are in tone, gesture, and silence.
The evidence is often more than emotional. And the verdict, more often than not, is mercy.
That’s where Daniel’s Laws come from — pithy truths about brains, behavior, and the mysterious predictability of we frail humans.
Burke’s Rolls-Royce may have been replaced by a self-driving BYD, but the casework hasn’t changed: we’re still investigating what makes us human, and what best practices might save us from ourselves.
Final Thoughts
The good news is that we humans are built to change continuously.
Neuroplasticity isn’t motivational jargon; it’s biology’s quiet faith in giving us second chances. Over and over again. Neuroplasticity is a biological bias toward grace and the enduring promise of our best selves.
Every walk, every laugh, every sober night, each thoughtful pause, all have the robust potential to rewire us toward something saner over time.
Building a better brain isn’t about optimization; it’s about our bestowed attention — to our thoughts, our relationships, to the pulse of our own values and preferences.
Our otherwise dumb as a rock nervous system listens closely to how we live. And with care, it can, and does lean in the direction of your best bestowed attention.
Whatever you focus on expands. “As above, So below,” as my son Dan often gently reminded me.
So take the case.
Study your clues: the habits that drain you, the ones that restore you.
Apply Daniel’s Laws when you can, forgive yourself when you forget, and — as Burke would remind us — try to enjoy the mystery.
If you’ve read this far, and would like to explore how this same science applies to love, trust, and conflict in your lives, please let me know.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
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