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Comment by ratelimitsteve

5 days ago

Hear me out: it's your scarcest resources and also a certain amount of waste is not just expected but necessary. This article starts with the phrase "Like many people, I have most of my best ideas in the shower." What's happening when you have shower ideas is something called the default mode network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network) is activated. It's basically "What you're thinking about when you're not thinking about anything" and it's how your brain builds relationships between facts. It's usually where you do your thinking about yourself, about other people and the past and future, as opposed to what is called the task-positive network which is when your thinking is focused on concrete things in the here and now. What's interesting about the default mode network is that it's the source of those "a-ha!" moments because, unconsciously, its actually been analyzing the problem, building potentially insightful connections between ideas and integrating those ideas into what you already know.

> Hear me out: it's your scarcest resources and also a certain amount of waste is not just expected but necessary.

Where's the waste in what you're describing?

If all this stuff is going on then it doesn't sound wasteful at all to me.

  • Fair, but when I say "waste" I mean more "cannot and should not be consciously marshalled toward a specific effort"

    Also sometimes this same network that creates insights creates things like when I couldn't remember the lyrics to Mingulay Boat Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29l90zcoTBo) so I bopped around the house for a week singing "Heel ya ho boys/Let her go boys/She's a vampire/Set her on fire" so it's not all diamonds in the mine