I’m curious how universal the value of “Undirected Time” is. I’ve found that I pretty much just… don’t have “shower thoughts”, at least not ones that are more frequently about what I’ve been working on. Similarly, I don’t relate to the phenomenon of taking a break from a hard problem, coming back, and then suddenly making faster progress on it. And I especially don’t relate to the phenomenon of having ideas come to me in dreams.
It’s not obvious to me whether this is better or worse. On one hand I could be saving time by not having to wait for background processes (I don’t feel like I get particularly stuck on problems anyway), but on the other hand maybe I’m just failing to use the background processes to do the cognition for me?
On the other other hand, I have to wonder if maybe I just do the equivalent of “undirected time”, like, all the time? I feel like I pretty often switch what I’m thinking about between unrelated topics, or change scope, or wonder about whether things are connected in a certain way, etc. It feels like this might be satisfying the intended meaning of “undirected time”, even if it doesn’t feel undirected to me.
I’m curious how universal the value of “Undirected Time” is. I’ve found that I pretty much just… don’t have “shower thoughts”, at least not ones that are more frequently about what I’ve been working on. Similarly, I don’t relate to the phenomenon of taking a break from a hard problem, coming back, and then suddenly making faster progress on it. And I especially don’t relate to the phenomenon of having ideas come to me in dreams.
It’s not obvious to me whether this is better or worse. On one hand I could be saving time by not having to wait for background processes (I don’t feel like I get particularly stuck on problems anyway), but on the other hand maybe I’m just failing to use the background processes to do the cognition for me?
On the other other hand, I have to wonder if maybe I just do the equivalent of “undirected time”, like, all the time? I feel like I pretty often switch what I’m thinking about between unrelated topics, or change scope, or wonder about whether things are connected in a certain way, etc. It feels like this might be satisfying the intended meaning of “undirected time”, even if it doesn’t feel undirected to me.