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44 Thoughts That Will Snap Your Mind in Half

Funny, thought-provoking questions to stretch your brain

Niklas Göke
4 min readDec 1, 2020
Photo by Michelen Studios on Unsplash

On any given day, your brain is either growing or deteriorating. There is no such thing as “maintaining” your mind.

When you don’t challenge your brain, that day, your mind will shrink a little. When you solve a problem or entertain a new idea, your mental ability will grow.

If you do the crossword every day, at first, it’ll make your brain sweat. Eventually, you’ll have memorized all the coded prompts, and it’ll only be a rote memory exercise. So how can you keep stretching your mind?

The answer is not to read a book a day or work crazy hours. Your brain would soon overload and demand a long break. Neither complete stagnation nor excessive learning is the answer.

What you can and should find time for, however, is five minutes a day to engage with new ideas. That’s enough to get new combinations of neurons to fire together, and that’s what mental growth is all about.

Ryan Lombard can help you do just that. Ryan has a series he calls “Thoughts That Will Snap Your Mind in Half.” So far, he’s made eight parts, totaling 44 ideas and questions.

Some made me think deeply, some just made me laugh, and some I didn’t understand at all (yet). I’m sure a few of them will send your mind in new directions.

Here are Ryan Lombard’s 44 “Thoughts That Will Snap Your Mind in Half.”

  1. If you weigh 99 lbs and eat a pound of nachos, are you 1% nacho?
  2. If you drop soap on the floor, is the floor clean, or is the soap dirty?
  3. Which orange came first — the color, or the fruit?
  4. If two vegans are arguing, is it still considered beef?
  5. If you were born deaf, what language would you think in?
  6. If you get out of the shower clean, how does your towel get dirty?
  7. If Apple made a car, would it still have windows?
  8. When we yawn, do deaf people think we’re screaming?
  9. If you’re waiting for the waiter, aren’t you the waiter?
  10. How do you throw away a garbage can?

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Niklas Göke
Niklas Göke

Written by Niklas Göke

I write for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. Read my daily blog here: https://nik.art/

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