First entry

Hello Everyone:


Thank you for stopping by my blog about honing various mind skills and applying them to everyday life.  My name is Nathan Fields, but I go by Nth BarFields.*  I'm a mnemonist returning to competition, training to be an exponentially better mentathlete than I was in my first foray into mind sports. Other than that, I'm an online tutor and aspiring writer, formerly an autogenics trainer/biofeedback therapist, and I do volunteer work for a missing persons group called Find Me.


I am very much interested in mind sports.  So what exactly are mind sports, you may ask?  Great question.  They are mental skills tests, or games of skill.  We're talking about events like memory competitions and chess tournaments.  My own personal take is that mind sports fall into two categories:


1) Games of strategy.
    Some examples include backgammon, checkers, go, othello, scrabble, and poker.


2) Cognitive skills.
    Some examples include mental calculation, IQ, speed reading, creativity tournaments, and spatial puzzles,
    and word puzzles. 


Undoubtedly there will be some "mind sports" that will in the future blur the lines between the categories, and even between mental and physical sports.  Biofeedback tournaments like the proposed Brainball comes to mind. 


Anywho, as I previously mentioned,  come 2011 I hope to win a multiple number of mind sports events.  This blog will help me to stay focused on this goal. This time around I plan on competing in the following type of tournaments:


01) Backgammon
02) Creativity
03) ESP
04) Memory
05) Mental Calculation
06) Mind Mapping
07) Reasoning & Spatial Puzzles (IQ)
08) Speed Reading
09) Trivia
10) Word Games


If I return to college, then I may also compete in academic competitions like the Rudolf Ortvay International Competition in Physics.I'll likely compete in competitions open to the public, like short story competitions.



I'll post my strategies for how I plan to accomplish champion level scores in these different fields, and how I apply the skills to everyday life.  I gladly appreciate your feedback and additional suggestions.


I have seven months to get ready for the first two mind sporting events on my agenda, the USA Memory Championship and the American Crossword Puzzles Tournament. They are both in March and in New York.  I also plan on making it to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in the same month, for a nice trifecta.  


* My 2009 five minute digit stats were actually 78 numbers, not 5.