Holistic wellbeing isn’t just about building emotional resilience or physical strength. Training your brain is just as important.That’s why we are so excited to announce Yudoku – a fun brain game that’s being added to the roster of daily challenges YuLifers can take on to earn YuCoin. Here’s how it works. What is “Yudoku”? Yudoku is YuLife’s version of Sudoku – a brand new challenge made to improve mental wellbeing through a daily puzzle that stimulates and trains the brain.The aim of Yudoku is to fill a 9x9 grid with numbers 1 to 9, with each number appearing only once in each row, column and each 3x3 block. The game successfully ends when you have completed the table, with no more than three mistakes. Each game is timed, giving YuLifers a chance to work towards beating their personal best time, or competing against their colleagues for a spot on the leaderboard!The science behind “training your brain”?A puzzle a day keeps the brain fog away. Doing regular, small puzzles helps to boost your employees brain power and keep their minds healthy and sharp. Regular brain training has also been proven to improve key tenets of mental wellbeing. There’s solid evidence proving that daily brain training, including Sudoku, was associated with improved cognitive function and better mental well-being in older adults (International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry). It was even found to reduce depression and anxiety.Overall, it helps to: Spark focusImprove memory Help with wider problem-solving All while reducing anxiety and stress. What’s more, a systematic review of the literature on brain training published in the journal PLOS One found that regular brain training can lead to significant long-term improvements in cognitive function, including attention, working memory, and processing speed.Continued cognitive stimulation can even reduce your likelihood of developing a degenerate disease such as Alzheimer's (Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience).As of now, there are over 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK, and this number is expected to rise to over 1 million by 2025 (The Alzheimer's Society). Mental health is no minor problem. It’s the leading cause of long-term sickness absence in the UK, with over 15 million working days lost each year due to work-related stress, depression, or anxiety. These conditions can also affect insurance premiums and eligibility. (Sources: Alzheimer's Society, Health and Safety Executive)But if employees take conscious, everyday steps to improve their mental wellbeing, it will in turn help prevent absenteeism, and drive a more productive, healthier and happier workforce.What else is in it for employees? We hope that this will be a great addition to help: Open up a friendly competition with The Yudoku leaderboard Activate another form of wellness through mental stimulationMake your wellbeing journey even more fun and bring daily joy to your life. “We try to help users think about wellbeing holistically - and with Yudoku, we focus on an oft-neglected, but has a growing body of research that supports how important brain health is to one’s overall mental wellbeing. We also believe in building small, easy, every day steps to holistic wellbeing – and we’re happy to support that with easy, everyday Yudoku challenges” - Josh Hart, CTOAs HR, why should you encourage your team to try Yudoku?Beyond all the aforementioned benefits, Yudoku can help to increase employee engagement with the YuLife app.How?According to Josh Hart, our CTO, “What I love about Yudoku is how it provides an inclusive way to earn YuCoin, one that can engage a different demographic of users who previously may not have been able to participate in wellbeing challenges within the app. It’s something all employees can participate in – even those with limited mobility, disability or an impairment by providing an alternative challenge.”Interestingly, employees who participate in Yudoku might see an uplift in overall engagement with other wellbeing activities within the YuLife app.We launched Yudoku with an internal test group within YuLife and tracked their results, and this is what we found:Among the 32% who completed a Yudoku challenge every day:Their total daily challenge completion increased by 25%, streak completion increased by 43% – with 32% completing a Yudoku challenge every day! YuLifers can head to their YuLife app to get rewarded for your daily dose of brain training today.