I just set a stopwatch timer. When I write something like this, I'm activating my Associative process. My Associative process activates when I'm trying to generate fresh thinking. The context is to bring something fresh to you, gentle reader. You have a curiosity and an interest in ideas that will enter your Associative process. Once there, best outcome is these ideas are seeds for your own fresh thinking. Most of these don't offer you a formula. That is, first do this, then do that, and so forth until you've arrived at a defined outcome.
This paragraph took 9 minutes and 26 seconds to compose. I feel my attention flagging a bit, but I'm going to proceed.
What I'm modeling here is a technique for being more aware, that is, metacognitive, of our duration of force for Associative processing, one of our seven cognitive forces. Generating ideas, matching them to language, staying aware of you and what you need to understand and to engage these ideas, is cognitively taxing.
Thinking is hard work. I'm doing this thinking on a mid-spring day with the sun poking in and out among the clouds, and, strangely even more compelling, the pent up surfeit inside my devices of pasteurized, processed, pre-digested content, packaged compellingly to divert my thinking.
Don't worry your pretty head, say the three devices surrounding me, your brain has been working so hard, let us take over.
20 minutes and 42 seconds since the start. That appears to be me coming up for air about every ten minutes.
Now I'm looking for reasons to distract myself. I've written about stopwatching my attention before. You don't have any fresh insight here, I think. Go outside for a walk.
25 minutes 10 seconds since starting 45 minutes 45 second since starting
I made the decision to take a break. I got his far. I was losing confidence. I've learned when I take a meaningful break, I often come back to fresh insight.
During the break:
First, I left the devices behind. I haven't checked email, texts, newsfeeds, podcasts, social media. All of those could have led me down the rabbit warren of no consequence.
Next, I attended to biological imperatives, changed out of my cycling clothes from earlier this morning, put on sunscreen, checked on the cats, took a short walk outside to give the sunscreen something to do. Until the walk, all took sequential attention; They had rules and processes to follow. There was no need to generate fresh ideas to accomplish those tasks. It was also taxing. I get impatient with how much attention and energy simple tasks require, and how much time these simple tasks take.
Thinking is hard work.
And now I see what I called my break, was actually a shift in my thinking. My Associative process had fatigued. I switched to a surprisingly generative sequential process. I had brief shifts of attention to you and what I could say that would be meaningful to you, but, in fact, I did a straight on 45 minutes of engaged thinking. The walk allowed me to transition from task-driven thinking back to idea generative thinking.
What have I got for you?
Thinking is hard work.
Staying away from the things that would put me in our human-preferred state of reacting over thinking allowed me to keep thinking, just with a different process.
Having measured my attention, makes me aware of how productive I actually was during that time. Staying in the present: my body, the sunshine, the cats; staying out of the devices and their hijacking of this place, kept me calm and energetic, kept me present for you -- even as I shifted energy forces.
For me, the stopwatch timer has supported my present awareness, and the considered deployment of two cognitive forces.
I've got five more to go. My goal is to present my presence with them to you.
1 hour, 18 minutes, 18 seconds.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper