Part of it’s probably that I work very long hours often 7 days a week (blah blah stash money before ASI kills my differentiator)
The biggest thing is not having a goal of being able to prove a solution to myself
Like stop the search early basically
Don’t need to formalize or document everything or remember every finding
I think most of the time the brain actually does a pretty good job of gradually solving problems over time without conscious thought
We don’t think of it as thought because it’s not conscious or subtitled by our auditory processing system
But it still thought & learning
Relying on that implicit system instead often gets me better results than logically formalized versions
I guess now I’m kind of debating the core premise of the post—that it’s even possible or useful overall to discover or learn in that way, or that it’s real learning
But it probably is helpful for some % of people who are less tunnely / tic-prone
Maybe I’m just jealous that it works for some people after devoting (and largely wasting) so much time on it myself
FYI I do currently think “learn when/how to use your subconcious to process things” is an important tool in the toolbox (I got advice about that from a mentor I went to talk to). Some of the classes of moves here are:
build up intuitions about when it is useful to background process things vs deliberate-process them
if your brain is sort of subconsciously wandering in a rut, use a small amount of agency to direct your thoughts in a new direction, but then let them wander once you get them rolling down the hill in that new direction
Yeah I like that approach
Part of it’s probably that I work very long hours often 7 days a week (blah blah stash money before ASI kills my differentiator)
The biggest thing is not having a goal of being able to prove a solution to myself
Like stop the search early basically
Don’t need to formalize or document everything or remember every finding
I think most of the time the brain actually does a pretty good job of gradually solving problems over time without conscious thought
We don’t think of it as thought because it’s not conscious or subtitled by our auditory processing system
But it still thought & learning
Relying on that implicit system instead often gets me better results than logically formalized versions
I guess now I’m kind of debating the core premise of the post—that it’s even possible or useful overall to discover or learn in that way, or that it’s real learning
But it probably is helpful for some % of people who are less tunnely / tic-prone
Maybe I’m just jealous that it works for some people after devoting (and largely wasting) so much time on it myself
Not sure
FYI I do currently think “learn when/how to use your subconcious to process things” is an important tool in the toolbox (I got advice about that from a mentor I went to talk to). Some of the classes of moves here are:
build up intuitions about when it is useful to background process things vs deliberate-process them
if your brain is sort of subconsciously wandering in a rut, use a small amount of agency to direct your thoughts in a new direction, but then let them wander once you get them rolling down the hill in that new direction