Based on ill-remembered citations of the efficacy of exercise for improving focus and general mental health, and after a lot of angst about body acceptance, I I reduced trivial inconveniences to working out below the inertia setpoint and started jogging three days a week. (I settled on running after an extended period of never getting around to signing up for hot yoga, crossfit, or a membership to the Y so I could swim, all of which seem more appealing.)
Good outcomes so far: feeling of accomplishment post-workout; feeling of accomplishment when I put on shoes and leave the house (remembering that not long ago I was basically incapable of making myself do anything I found unsavory); getting a lot less winded by minor physical exertion (e.g. walking briskly up a hill or flight of stairs). Meta-good-outcome: practice at finding and focusing on successes for self-motivation.
Waiting for more data: My focus has not yet improved discernibly. To do: self-test whether focus improves globally if I focus on jogging while I’m doing it.
Good question; I had briefly considered whether “better focus” was actually measurable, then forgot to think about it further.
So now I’ve thought about it a little further and (maybe there’s a bias name for this phenomenon, but) yes, I will be going with subjective effects. It’s not clear to me if “focus” has more content than feeling focused, and in either case, what I want is the feeling of being focused—i.e., an awareness that what’s going on in my head corresponds closely to what my memory and senses tell me is going on outside of my head.
Based on ill-remembered citations of the efficacy of exercise for improving focus and general mental health, and after a lot of angst about body acceptance, I I reduced trivial inconveniences to working out below the inertia setpoint and started jogging three days a week. (I settled on running after an extended period of never getting around to signing up for hot yoga, crossfit, or a membership to the Y so I could swim, all of which seem more appealing.)
Good outcomes so far: feeling of accomplishment post-workout; feeling of accomplishment when I put on shoes and leave the house (remembering that not long ago I was basically incapable of making myself do anything I found unsavory); getting a lot less winded by minor physical exertion (e.g. walking briskly up a hill or flight of stairs). Meta-good-outcome: practice at finding and focusing on successes for self-motivation.
Waiting for more data: My focus has not yet improved discernibly. To do: self-test whether focus improves globally if I focus on jogging while I’m doing it.
How do you plan to measure focus? Just subjective effects, or are you using QuantifiedMind, or pomodoro success rate, or something?
Good question; I had briefly considered whether “better focus” was actually measurable, then forgot to think about it further.
So now I’ve thought about it a little further and (maybe there’s a bias name for this phenomenon, but) yes, I will be going with subjective effects. It’s not clear to me if “focus” has more content than feeling focused, and in either case, what I want is the feeling of being focused—i.e., an awareness that what’s going on in my head corresponds closely to what my memory and senses tell me is going on outside of my head.