As a founder, giving your brain a break from work is a must. Overloading yourself with work isn’t always helpful for your productivity and can even lead to more negative outcomes like panic attacks or burn-out. 

One way to deal with the stress of working long hours in a startup while keeping your mind stimulated? Brain games! 

A huge advantage to integrating brain games into your wellness routine is that they help take your mind off of work but still keep your brain active, allowing you to be engaged and improve skills that can translate positively into the work side of life. 

Below, we’ve provided you with a list of 9 brain games startup founders can incorporate into their relaxation routine. 

Scrabble 

Scrabble is one of the most popular board games of all time. Not only is this game fun to play among friends, but it’s also great for the mind which makes it one of the best brain games for startup founders. In addition to it improving your vocabulary, it enhances your analytical thinking skills. So even though you’re trying to take your mind off of business, you’re still stimulating your brain and generating new skills that’ll translate to how you run your startup.

Bananagrams

Although Bananagrams derives from Scrabble, they’re pretty different games. Scrabble requires a game board and is slow-paced, whereas Bananagrams uses any flat surface and is fast-paced. Similar to Scrabble, this game will increase vocabulary skills. However, it’s also excellent for improving quick-thinking skills and which can translate to how fast you adapt to any changes or crises your startup may face.

Minecraft

We know what you’re thinking, but Minecraft isn’t just a kids’ game. Even though it seems like any other video game, playing Minecraft comes with benefits for startup founders. The “game with no rules” provides an open concept to explore and build without explicit objectives or guidance. Two main takeaways from this game: it promotes teamwork and fosters creativity. 

In whatever business you’re running, collaboration is essential for any startup to operate successfully. In addition, as a founder, improving your creativity will allow you to come up with new ideas and improvements to grow your startup.

Personal Zen

With the pressure of running a startup, you carry a lot of stress on your shoulders. Personal Zen is an app specifically designed for stress and anxiety relief. It uses science-based brain training exercises to help users focus their attention on positives instead of negatives.

Elevate

With the help of research-based games, Elevate, a brain training app, helps improve focus, speaking abilities, memory, and many other cognitive skills that the app claims can boost productivity, earning power, and self-confidence — all of which are needed to be a successful founder. On top of benefiting over 40 million users, Elevate won Apple’s App of Year award in 2014. 

Uno

Overall, card games are a great way to improve your memory and quick thinking skills. However, when specifically talking about Uno, the social aspect of this game is what’s important. Socialization and interaction amongst other people not only improves brain health but emotional well-being as well. 

Dominos

Although this game is quite simple to get the hang of, one takeaway is that it enhances multiple cognitive skills, such as visual scanning and planning. If playing a challenging game isn’t at the top of your list in your free time, Dominos is perfect  for those looking for something less complicated but are still searching for games that promote brain stimulation. 

Eidetic

As a founder, being able to retain information such as data and names is crucial. Luckily, there’s a game that helps with just that. Eidetic uses a spaced repetition technique specially created to improve the memorization of phone numbers and interesting facts. You can play eidetic games through mobile apps or educational services.

Peak 

Another brain training app, Peak, customizes games specifically for the user’s needs. The app claims that with short, intense workouts, the user’s ability to problem solve, focus, and memorize will enhance. As your cognitive skills improve, the functionality and performance of everyday tasks that you would usually overlook become similar and more efficient.

About Michelle Vernaza: Michelle is a Business Development Associate Intern for Swyft, which is a tech PR firm in Austin and Houston and a top digital marketing and PR agency in Denver since its founding in 2011. Swyft also has a small satellite office where it offers tech PR in San Francisco. Swyft has been listed as one of the top tech PR agencies in Texas for two years running by the B2B services review site, Clutch.co.