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Hello, me. It's been a while

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Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#21

Post by usef- »

simonw wrote: post #13

Reigniting a blog after 14 years should be more common! A trick I used when I restarted my blog in 2017 after stopping publishing in 2010 was to backfill it with a bunch of content imported from other places - mostly my answers to questions on Quora and Ask MetaFilter. That's the great thing about having a self-hosted blog: it's your site, you make the rules.

I have a lot of dead blogs in my RSS reader I don't remove for this reason. Maybe they'll start writing again. They've survived many opml exports/imports between different readers over the years.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#22

Post by andsoitis »

aselimov3 wrote: post #2

Yea this is a good one but it can be so hard. Seems obvious that constant information streaming outside of silencing your own thoughts also makes the moments where you do have to sit in silence lower quality. I recently listened to the Hammock Driven Development talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc ) and it raises the very interesting point that it's not really the concious mind that makes big breakthro…

> for some reason our brain loves filling the silence with junk

Natural selection might pick for this trait because if you can gather and evaluate and otherwise process a large volume of information you might be able to better find food, avoid getting eaten, and finding a mate to mate with.

executive function and intuition filter, but you need a bunch of data to feed on.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#23

Post by andsoitis »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

I’m not able to do my work with music, or even noise-canceling headphones. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work. I know that I’m unusual, in that sense, but there you have it. I do listen to music, on my morning walks, though. That’s the only time, during the day, when I do.

Have you tried brain.fm?

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#24

Post by chis »

It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored. It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it. One passable option is to take a 20 minute walk with no stimulus beyond the scenery. Journaling regularly. Meditation provides a similar experience but feels like a different lane.

For me I do find a similar experience to the OP. It’s easy to feel yourself going a little crazy getting sucked along the current of modern life. Flowing from one activity to the next, looking at one’s phone in the between, never any chance for an extended thought except when laying down for bed. If you don’t break out of this mode it’s easy to let weeks go by without noticing or taking much conscious impulse to shape your day.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#25

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

andsoitis wrote: post #23
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

I’m not able to do my work with music, or even noise-canceling headphones. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work. I know that I’m unusual, in that sense, but there you have it. I do listen to music, on my morning walks, though. That’s the only time, during the day, when I do.

Have you tried brain.fm?

Thanks!

I’ll check it out, but it’s still likely that I won’t listen.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#26

Post by kkotak »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

I’m not able to do my work with music, or even noise-canceling headphones. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work. I know that I’m unusual, in that sense, but there you have it. I do listen to music, on my morning walks, though. That’s the only time, during the day, when I do.

You're not unusual. Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#27

Post by hankbond »

For things that don't require that much focus like housework I really enjoy this. For things that do require focus (but not necessarily internal monologue) I prefer external stimuli to prevent my mind from wandering.

But I certainly agree that not giving myself the space to explore is detrimental.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#28

Post by BeetleB »

kkotak wrote: post #26
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

I’m not able to do my work with music, or even noise-canceling headphones. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work. I know that I’m unusual, in that sense, but there you have it. I do listen to music, on my morning walks, though. That’s the only time, during the day, when I do.

You're not unusual. Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.

> Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.

Convenient narrative, but not at all a new phenomenon. I had friends like this in the 90's. And I'm not seeing more people like this than in those days.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#30

Post by eszed »

aselimov3 wrote: post #2

Yea this is a good one but it can be so hard. Seems obvious that constant information streaming outside of silencing your own thoughts also makes the moments where you do have to sit in silence lower quality. I recently listened to the Hammock Driven Development talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc ) and it raises the very interesting point that it's not really the concious mind that makes big breakthro…

> constantly intaking information will ruin this synthesization.

I don't find that it does, for me. If I'm chewing on a hard technical problem, then I actually need the surface-level distraction of a podcast or a news article or a ballgame to keep it from dominating my conscious thoughts and let my subconscious get to work.

Where I agree with the author, and you, is that I can't do creative work - mainly writing, now, but back when I did this sort of thing professionally: coming up with approaches to a text, or ideas for sets and costumes, or exercises to get my actors where I wanted them to be - without time spent in "silence".

N=1, and all that, but I'm always intrigued by how different people's brains work, well, differently.

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