Comment by Phoenixism on How to test your mental performance at the moment? · 2009-11-24T03:55:58.191Z · LW · GW

Reminds me of an experiment I read about in which subjects were given a pencil and a piece of paper and asked to strike the paper with the lead as much as they possibly could in a set amount of time. I believe this gave the experimenters a baseline upon which they could judge the participants' ongoing performance. If I remember correctly, they discovered that on days when the subjects' pencil strikes fell well below their average, they were more prone to accidents, injury, other physical mishaps.

Seems to me the exercise the test subjects participated in was a good measure of physical and mental prowess. These 2 facets of our physical state are obviously conjoined and do not commonly act independently of each other.

I lift weights 3 days a week and I keep a log which I write in during the workout. I jot weights, reps, sets, etc. I encounter days in which I add the weight incorrectly, forget to put a plate on the bar, write the wrong figures...a host of mental mistakes which always seem to go hand-in-hand with terrible work outs in which my muscles seem just as sluggish as my brain.