Overthinking and how to nobble it
Dec. 19th, 2010 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andygatesAn interesting study has been going the rounds (Ars has the clearest writeup) and its got me thinking. Not about M&Ms -- well, mmm, now you mention it -- not about M&Ms but about thinking and doing, and why I'm so very good at adhockery and starting projects and so very bad at follow-through and finishing things.
I'm very, very good at task visualisation. I know exactly how the finished bathroom will look: I've gone over all the details of every job but I just can't find the gumption to make it physical. I know exactly what that training session will be like but, meh, maybe I'll just surf for a bit (million-tab baby, baby: if I could I'd twinscreen each eye separately). And yeah, I know exactly what healthy food I'll do tonight but meh, I've already thunk that, let's have dirty pizza instead. I've turned into Grampa from the Lost Boys: read the TV guide, don't need the TV.
Let's assume for a moment that this article provides a working hypothesis: if I think about things less, I'll do more. I may even fall into fewer gumption traps (the most obvious ones are Lane Rage and For Want Of A Bolt) as my planned-stuff is less rigid, so less derailed by unplanned stuff.
How in the seven hells does that actually turn into a thing to do? All I can think to do is make a bunch of to-do lists and spin the bottle, but that's a project and I'll get bored of it after I've worked out the list parameters and upgraded the bottle for some custom dice or maybe made an app for it.
You lot are different think-meats in different heads; barring the solipsistic horror of the entire Universe being my imaginings, you must think in different ways. Do you hypervisualise and then get bored? If you don't... what do you do? Are you always surprised when things work out as expected, because "as expected" is a null set? How do you do anything without the mental map beforehand?
I'm very, very good at task visualisation. I know exactly how the finished bathroom will look: I've gone over all the details of every job but I just can't find the gumption to make it physical. I know exactly what that training session will be like but, meh, maybe I'll just surf for a bit (million-tab baby, baby: if I could I'd twinscreen each eye separately). And yeah, I know exactly what healthy food I'll do tonight but meh, I've already thunk that, let's have dirty pizza instead. I've turned into Grampa from the Lost Boys: read the TV guide, don't need the TV.
Let's assume for a moment that this article provides a working hypothesis: if I think about things less, I'll do more. I may even fall into fewer gumption traps (the most obvious ones are Lane Rage and For Want Of A Bolt) as my planned-stuff is less rigid, so less derailed by unplanned stuff.
How in the seven hells does that actually turn into a thing to do? All I can think to do is make a bunch of to-do lists and spin the bottle, but that's a project and I'll get bored of it after I've worked out the list parameters and upgraded the bottle for some custom dice or maybe made an app for it.
You lot are different think-meats in different heads; barring the solipsistic horror of the entire Universe being my imaginings, you must think in different ways. Do you hypervisualise and then get bored? If you don't... what do you do? Are you always surprised when things work out as expected, because "as expected" is a null set? How do you do anything without the mental map beforehand?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 12:55 am (UTC)That's probably a classic engineer trait, isn't it? I'm all about proving that you can do something, while living in a mess of incomplete projects that never quite get all the bugs worked out (because I've got a good idea of how to do that, which makes it no longer interesting). If there's an external reason to complete something, I'm quite capable of doing so, but it seems that the vast majority of my satisfaction comes from working out *how* to solve problems rather than actually getting off my arse and solving them.
Sadly, I work best in fire-fighting mode. If things go wrong, I'll happily work my arse off to restore the zero state, but that's not a particularly healthy way to do anything.
Back to the M&Ms thing, the idea that keeping things unplanned - or perhaps undefined - to make them more completable has merit. Ironically because there isn't a 'complete' state to aim for (or be satisfied with a most-of-the-way-there approximation of). I can kind of see how that works for straightforward stuff that doesn't involve any planning, anyway. I'd think about it some more, but then I'd never get round to testing the idea...
no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 09:10 pm (UTC)This!
Once the proof of concept is proved, the continuation to product is boring. To my right at the moment, chainmail-backed gloves. Well, one glove, and one that I haven't fitted together because I KNOW IT'LL WORK ITS A CHORE!
But it's not an evil chore, it's a cool chore, so why am I ... almost resenting its choriness? I think the only chore I didn't resent, apart from making miscellaneous hot beverages, was chopping firewood.