How much time do you allocate for work? If you do not work, what do you usually do? I surf the Internet, watching YouTube, movies, reading books. What do we do in between? Eating, chores. Have you tried to pause the flow and see what happens?
You can try and get bored. It’s normal. Instantly I want to do something useful or enjoyable. Taking a pause and doing nothing isn’t regarded so. We like doing something. Staring at the ceiling, and/or contemplating the thoughts isn’t “useful”. But isn’t it?
We like to consume a lot of information. A new video about cosmos, nice. A new book recommendation, gonna read it immediately! If I’m tired, I watch something.
Consuming feels great. The issue I face is producing new ideas.
Well, consume relevant information to get ideas from there?
Yes, but also why not “connecting the dots” by ourselves? We may produce interesting ideas while having only a few. And engaging thoughts about a topic. The brain is so great, it does some thinking in the background. While we sleep, it consolidates the information we consumed that day. While we walk, eat, swim, it creates new neuron connections and “forgets” the others.
Take a pause and do nothing. Leave the thoughts about a desire to eat. What do you see? Random stuff, but sometimes gems. Write them down. Continue the contemplation.
I added 15 mins of the “do nothing” time slot in my schedule. I don’t stick to it much, but I try to. It helps to realize I have an intriguing perspective on 10 pages of the book I’ve read recently. Or, a new project idea out of nothing. Another issue is not to forget to write it somewhere. That’s another topic, but I want to mention the importance of note-taking too.
Isn’t it better to have all the ideas you produced rather than a few you’ve remembered? The brain isn’t a great place to store information, but to produce it. How to understand what to write down? I try to write all ideas, even those I may reject in the future. It’s laziness that doesn’t allow us to write all the notes down. We need to reach a smartphone or laptop, open a note-taking app, find a suitable place to put a note…
Even though we think we should do useful or enjoyable stuff, we also should get bored from time to time. Get bored -> wrote interesting thoughts -> review them later. After consuming content, it’s worth taking a break and ponder about it. Fake busyness pulls out our time. I can’t keep track of the time I lost while being in the “flow”. The flow is any action that the brain automates, or allocates resources to tackle a task. For example, watching a movie, walking, doing a routine. Close the active and pending tasks to see what’s left.
The fake busyness also consumes a conscious time we’re aware of. That’s where the thoughts about time moving fast come from. Time goes fast when we don’t feel it. The flow does so.
