I’ve had a similar idea myself, so I think the principle generalizes: Focus on positives rather than negatives.
I find this intuitive because the set of “good” things, like goals, preferences, and even clearity and “what is”, is far smaller than the complement set of “bad” things and future possibilities. My working memory is quite limited, so if I point my attention towards the negative set of anything, I quickly lose my oversight, and only being able to fit a subset of the problem in my mind at a time is very uncomfortable.
I only have a few goals, they fit in my working memory. The list of things I’d like to avoid though, is huge, and If I throw my attention at it, my brain will be occupied for a long time and spit out a whole list of scattered and incomplete ideas which can’t be unified easily. I find that the brain doesn’t like incomplete things, and that it will keep working on them long after I give up myself, remaining as background noise. Confusion for me, feels like an accumulation of these fragments that the brain refuses to let go of (because it believes they’re important, I guess). It helps to write down everything on my mind since it allows me to clear my mind, but I like the idea of thinking in a way which reduces the risk of this fragmentation/noise appearing in the first place.
Some notes: Stress makes my brain think more, and pushes me closer to a skizophrenia diagnosis. This process also feels a lot like the Tetris effect, and it gets quite bad if I try to learn too much material too fast, after which I will feel literal nausea (the kind you get when you eat too much of the same thing). I think all of this has an overlap with what you’re describing, hopefully enough that it adds something
I’ve had a similar idea myself, so I think the principle generalizes: Focus on positives rather than negatives.
I find this intuitive because the set of “good” things, like goals, preferences, and even clearity and “what is”, is far smaller than the complement set of “bad” things and future possibilities. My working memory is quite limited, so if I point my attention towards the negative set of anything, I quickly lose my oversight, and only being able to fit a subset of the problem in my mind at a time is very uncomfortable.
I only have a few goals, they fit in my working memory. The list of things I’d like to avoid though, is huge, and If I throw my attention at it, my brain will be occupied for a long time and spit out a whole list of scattered and incomplete ideas which can’t be unified easily. I find that the brain doesn’t like incomplete things, and that it will keep working on them long after I give up myself, remaining as background noise. Confusion for me, feels like an accumulation of these fragments that the brain refuses to let go of (because it believes they’re important, I guess). It helps to write down everything on my mind since it allows me to clear my mind, but I like the idea of thinking in a way which reduces the risk of this fragmentation/noise appearing in the first place.
Some notes: Stress makes my brain think more, and pushes me closer to a skizophrenia diagnosis. This process also feels a lot like the Tetris effect, and it gets quite bad if I try to learn too much material too fast, after which I will feel literal nausea (the kind you get when you eat too much of the same thing). I think all of this has an overlap with what you’re describing, hopefully enough that it adds something