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Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
- pwinnski 6y agoReading this article, I kept thinking of a song lyric: "Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb."
- throwawaysea 6y agohttps://youtu.be/L_jWHffIx5E https://youtu.be/L_jWHffIx5E
- jdkee 6y agoIt would be nice if the submitter posted a non-pay walled link.
- kreeben 6y agoYes, this article seems to have it all. Djokovic, Federer, a cute baby, and with promises of great philosophical thoughts. I would love to read it but unfortunately I actually can't afford it. Oh well. Looking forward to the comments.
- GZJOHN 6y agohttps://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
- naebother 6y agoI'm not hitting the paywall for some reason. Maybe because I have JavaScript blocked.
- jshevek 6y agoYes. If it helps, the script blocking toggle in Brave allows me to read it.
- smk_ 6y agoSome interesting bits from the article: "In less dramatic ways the same principle applies to all of us. A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense." "To make good decisions in a complex world, Gigerenzer says, you have to be skilled at ignoring information. He found that a portfolio of stocks picked by people he interviewed in the street did better than those chosen by experts. The pedestrians were using the “recognition heuristic”: they picked companies they’d heard of, which was a better guide to future success than any analysis of price-earning ratios." "How do you learn to unthink? Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from self-analysis: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.” Flann O’Brien said we should be “calculatedly stupid” in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the first place. Thinking about it is a poor substitute."
- pwinnski 6y agohttps://outline.com/u9cduE https://outline.com/u9cduE It's from (2012)
- tartoran 6y agoEternally valid advice it is
- soneca 6y agoWell, I stopped reading when it said that Federer ”has been choking”, losing due to a ”mental frailty”. It told me everything I need to know that there is nothing serious to be read and learned in this article.
- jshevek 6y agoI sometimes find word choice to be a reliable heuristic for evaluating the probable worth of some prose, but I don't see why, in this case, you feel this way. Would you mind elaborating? (Assuming your conclusion is indeed based on the phrasing chosen...)
- eindiran 6y agoPerhaps OP meant that he had been dealing with a knee injury, and that doesn't have much to do with "mental frailty" at all: https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/30821027/roger-federer-targets-tournament-comeback-qatar-next-month https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/30821027/roger-federe... EDIT: Actually the article is from 2012, so I assume its because many of Federer's best years were still ahead of him.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoYou might learn to think for yourself and that would be bad for us.
- Jtsummers 6y agoIf you read the article, that's not at all what it's about. In tech, the issue being discussed is closer to what's commonly termed "analysis paralysis". Sometimes you just have to act on your instincts (honed by experience, knowledge, and study) and act rather than looking for a larger pattern or perfect solution.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoI read the article and I don’t like the headline’s framing. Choking also can be the result of being overwhelmed because of a lack of mental preparation. Thanks for your reply.
- totalZero 6y ago"This last point is vital. Unthinking is not the same as ignorance; you can’t unthink if you haven’t already thought. Djokovic was able to pull off his wonder shot because he had played a thousand variations on it in previous matches and practice; Dylan’s lyrical outpourings drew on his immersion in folk songs, French poetry and American legends. The unconscious minds of great artists and sportsmen are like dense rainforests, which send up spores of inspiration."
- brundolf 6y agoI thought this way for many years. Confronting the fact that thoughts carry a cost, and are therefore a tradeoff that has to be weighed against their usefulness in any given case, was the biggest turning point for the better my mental health has ever taken.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zwieback 6y agoThe examples are for a specific situation, though: using your knowledge and experience under pressure. I don't think this maxim applies broadly.
- _carbyau_ 6y agoYeah, the article kinda mentions it but I see it as: If you have already put the thought required in, then when time is short simply go with it rather than rethink it. If you haven't put that thought in, well then thinking "on the spot" is statistically unlikely to do any worse... The trick is recognising situations where you have that advantage when under that pressure.
- orky56 6y ago"The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull." This point at the end seems a bit forced without any support beyond the author's assertion. The feeling I get is someone who has mastered this unthinking is "enlightened" of sorts with an ability to get to satisfaction with a humility that can be mistaken for smugness. From fiction, I might refer to the Wheel of Time series where Rand Al'Thor uses a trick to "find the void" in a way his father taught him. When you get overwhelmed from information and emotions, finding the void allows you to regain composure and think straight again.
- chrisweekly 6y agoaka meditation
- orky56 6y agoNot exactly. Meditation is a solitary activity where one can train the mind to emptiness. What the article and I'm referring to is getting to that state while still being in the moment. Meditation might be the ability to sharpen the sword but this is about being able to use it in battle.
- chrisweekly 6y agoUpvoted; I like your analogy. IMHO (and IME as a daily practitioner of zazen meditation), mindfulness is entirely about being in the present moment. Ideally, you simply stay there all the time at which point the "sword" is already sharp and always swinging, whether there's a "battle" or not. (shrug)
- orky56 6y agoGood point regarding mindfulness. I'd say we differ on this topic or at least your explanation in its relevance. Mindfulness is about being present and you could argue fully absorbing yourself in it. This can be debilitating in the moment if you want to truly understand a bitter taste or a painful feeling. I think the article and being in battle is about being resilient and coming to terms with the situation. Mindfulness provides an appreciation and empathy for it but does not directly allow you to transcend it in adverse situations. Just my opinion.
- tracyhenry 6y ago> The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment However, enjoyment in a high-stake situation is too hard to achieve. For people like actors, athletes and musicians, confidence generated through enough practice seems to be the cure. Enjoyment is an aftereffect. For situations for which you have no way to practice, enjoyment just seems hard.
- unix_fan 6y agoIf you’re playing an instrument in front of an audience, performance anxiety will usually make things much worse than if you had practiced in private.
- chrisweekly 6y agoYMMV; many musicians feed off an audience's energy and thus get more fully and deeply into the moment. Which is what all of this is about -- being 100% in the NOW and not in your conscious mind's memories (past) or anxieties (future).
- chrisweekly 6y agoalso elite athletes who play "out of their minds" when everything's on the line, eg star basketball players whose 4th quarter shooting % in playoff games is higher than at any practice
- tracyhenry 6y agoWonder how much is this related to meditation and mindfulness. Both Michael Jordan and Kobe Byrant meditate a lot: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/michael-jordan-kobe-bryants-meditation-coach-flow-ready/story?id=38175801 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/michael-jordan-kobe-bryants-me... https://www.linkedin.com/business/learning/blog/productivity-tips/kobe-bryant-is-one-of-the-best-players-ever-two-of-his-secrets https://www.linkedin.com/business/learning/blog/productivity...
- tdumitrescu 6y ago
- unix_fan 6y agoMy writing skills only improved after I stopped thinking about it. I’m still trying to figure out how to tap into this with other skills.
- Jtsummers 6y agoPractice, relaxation and the relief of (self-induced and exaggerated) pressure. By practicing your writing and getting feedback (from self-critique or others) you have an opportunity to properly internalize things you'd been consciously thinking of before. Maybe it's your style, your choice of terms, whatever. Practice permits the internalization. Relaxation and relief of pressure permit you to actually practice without fear of failure. Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements. In other skills, physical or mental, removing pressure and practicing more permits the same kind of growth and development.
- borroka 6y ago"Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements." - It certainly sounds reasonable in at least some situations (e.g. failing at losing weight does not teach much), but is it true? Luck is necessary to succeed, since most complex situations or actions have probabilistic outcomes, but I have not seen many people being taught much by failure, and for good reasons. In theory, failure can be a good teacher: one has to analyze the causal relationship between the events that led to failure and with a cool and serene mind make a better plan for tomorrow. No judgement, no regrets, no mortification of mind and flesh. They wake up feeling energized thinking about what they have learned by the previous day's failure and they are even more ready for success than yesterday. But this is not realistic; it is easy and common to feel depressed, useless, and small after failure, energy goes down, not up (of course there are exceptions everywhere) and causal relationships are challenging to unravel (when at all possible) and also may change over time and space. Success, on the hand, means that something worked (at least once!).
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- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoI finally understand my erratic bowling average.
- bumbada 6y agoIt is not really "not thinking", but not using your conscious mind, which can only focus on a single thing. You think with your subconscious mind too. But this can do multiple things at the same time, way faster than the logical mind. The harder you focus on a single thing, the more you ignore the entire system and the slower you perform. It is not just instinct as the article say, a tennis player does not play by instinct because nobody knows how to play tennis when he is born. It is by training that you develop intuition. If you train well you can perform well without thinking consciously. Training well is hard work and takes a lot of time too. If you follow your instincts you are predictable and an easy prey. I can hunt or fish animals because they follow their instincts too well.
- colechristensen 6y agoThere is a word that is missing from the language or at least common usage, and that is differentiating something done with conscious effort of every little detail, and something you just do without thinking about it. (there are probably lots of words which somewhat fit the bill) The hardest way to do something is complete conscious control of every step, the easiest way is something you can do perfectly on autopilot. "Flow" is about being able to do something very well with almost minimal conscious control. (I would expand flow to being more than this, but it is at least a defining characteristic)
- Jtsummers 6y agoIntuition versus instinct. Instinct is innate, intuition is developed. "The more you know", if you have a better breadth and depth of knowledge and experience to draw from you can "intuit" the (or a) proper course of action without the need for deliberate and thorough reasoning. Many people use the term "instinct" when "intuition" may be the better term.
- taejavu 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma
- 6y ago
- asimjalis 6y agoI find it hard to disentangle the concepts of overthinking and Economist. Could this article lead to subscriber flight?
- gnu8 6y agoI always find the Economist to be an excellent sleep aid for long flights.
- TaupeRanger 6y agohaha - I was thinking the same thing, only a corollary headline came to mind: "Saying too much can be bad for your listeners".
- smk_ 6y agoThis seems to be related to the concept of flow: finding that sweet spot between being too relaxed and too-stressed out. We need a moderate dose of stress to perform at our best. What's so interesting is that experiencing flow is also correlated with long-term fullfillment. I've recently theorized the single most important factor for happiness and performance is being able to control your stress levels and increase/decrease your stress levels at will. It is not novel, but it helps me if I see my primary task as identifying which mechanisms can help me lower or increase stress. So far, meditation seems to have the best effect.
- HugoDaniel 6y agothinking too much certainly does not help with sex
- airhead969 6y agoAbsofuckinglutely. Too much mind. My arsenal for this includes: Beer, wine, wine coolers, hard cider, stoli vodka, malibu, rum, champagne, cbd isolate sublingual tincture, music, Hue mood lighting, candle-like scents, soft sheets, massage, MIV, cell phones in the microwave (faraday cage), and not talking about anything current. If involved parties aren't relaxed, it's unlikely to be that good.
- eevilspock 6y agoThe alcohol definitely cuts out the overthinking, or any thinking at all. If you are a good soul at heart, the real you that comes out when inebriated can be quite charming, and the opposite if you the real you is a jerk. But it isn't the always greatest thing for the actual sex.
- airhead969 6y agoIn vino veritas. Tipsy vs. whiskey dick. These are so obvious, I don't see why they need mentioning or explanation.
- eevilspock 6y agoYou're overthinking. Have a drink.
- efiecho 6y agoEver heard about Bill Cosby's Special Barbecue Sauce? I think it was called BarbeQuaaludes. Anyways, it definitely made the women relax ;)
- eevilspock 6y agoor with attracting a mate in the first place. "Just be yourself" essentially means "Stop thinking... about how to look confident, how to impress her, etc." Such thinking usually yields the exact opposite effect.
- EugeneOZ 6y ago> To make good decisions in a complex world, Gigerenzer says, you have to be skilled at ignoring information. It's total bullshit. It might work with some crap like a lottery or bets on “American Idol” winners, but to solve complex tasks you need more information and more experience. All the examples in this article are to impress not-so-well-educated people, level of TV-show, not higher. When we make quick decisions in areas out of our expertise, we use the same logic as when we make decisions based on emotions, empathy, “intuition”. It's nothing more than a lottery. Their first example is just about a mentally burnt out person, that's all. Yes, we should give a rest to our brains, but the advice “just don't think too much” is an idiotic oversimplification.
- Jtsummers 6y agoFrom the article: > They found that those who placed high trust in their feelings made better predictions than those who didn't. The result only applied, however, when the participants had some prior knowledge. Which is exactly what you're saying so I'm uncertain why you're calling the article "total bullshit" when you're restating this critical part of it in your own comment and own words.
- EugeneOZ 6y agoMaybe you need to read the whole article, there is more than just that. For example, they use as evidence the experiment (on a small group of people, without a control group, without attempts to repeat it - everything to be called anti-scientific), where they separate students, based on the color of their skin. Amazing start, right? And the whole article is filled with such fairy tales, not by scientific data.
- ChipSkylark 6y agoBeing already known by my friends and family to be an "overthinker" and prone to "analysis paralysis", I sometimes wonder why I'm still a SWE. I've slowly started to realize over time that my profession is filled with overthinking and over-engineering, and that our interview process can even select for it. IMO its hard to be the person that aces the technical interview gauntlet then walks out of the building and turns the analytical skills off. Many interview processes seem to favor how well a candidate can enumerate edge cases and problem spaces over effective risk assessment and cost management. They're both important to evaluate but often in practice the dumb solution is what my team ends up using because can be more maintainable, cheaper to build, easier to reason about, etc. Today my aim is to get my requirements, write as few lines of quality code in as short of a time as possible, test it, ship it and be done. Narrow focus and the ability to scope things down to what exactly what matters helps a lot. I defeat over-analysis by meditation, intentional dumbness/willful ignorance, and flow state.
- amatecha 6y agoAs someone who's been programming for years, one of my biggest complaints in software is over-engineering. It's so universally prevalent, I literally expect to get downvoted for even making this comment. I strongly advocate for simplicity in software implementation, allowing for maintainability and flexibility... the cleanest solution that reaches the goal and doesn't lock us too far into a narrow approach that may be difficult to deviate from. Sometimes that's not realistic, but it's actually feasible a lot more than people seem to believe.
- qnt 6y agoWholeheartedly agree. The best system is no system at all - problem is it doesn't really satisfy any requirements. Anything added beyond that is extra room where fragility creeps in & the tradeoff shouldn't ever be taken lightly.
- IndrekR 6y agoReminds me this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19977678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19977678 There are other coping mechanisms you can use, although some of them are arguably worse than procrastination (eg overengineering).
- Barrin92 6y agoIn chess there's an idiom for this. "Long think, wrong think" because it's a quite common phenomenon that very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position, there's a related situation of the hardest games to win being already won positions because there's so many ways to win that people will on occasion start doing something really stupid akin to the example of having too much choice in the article. I think a nice collective analogue to this is Alfred Whitehead's observation that 'civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them'. Progress is being made by holistically integrating knowledge in a way that makes it sort of ambient. It also reminds me of a slightly snarky article why all the people in the rationalist cult never seem to actually be successful at anything other than rationalism. It's precisely because consciously thinking is easy, it's the integration of knowledge into the whole is what's difficult but actually necessary.
- 2112 6y ago“In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takandobu said, “If discrimination is long, it will spoil.” Lord Naoshige said, “When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten will turn out badly. A warrior is a person who does things quickly. When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and undelaying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.” Initially from ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagakure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagakure But taken from a site [0] I just found in the process that apparently has nothing to do with the OS and informs us that ; "Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children. This is God's dream.” - Ubuntu, as explained by Bishop Desmond Tutu [0] https://ubuntutheory.blogspot.com/2008/08/7-breaths.html https://ubuntutheory.blogspot.com/2008/08/7-breaths.html
- hnick 6y agoThinking keeps me awake. It's getting worse as I get older. Maybe it's anxiety or something related, and sometimes it's worried thoughts, but often it's just running through scenarios. Video games, media plots, what I need to do next week. My brain is far more active after 10pm, and I am personally more motivated. I get a burst of energy but it's not really the right time to clean the house so lying in bed has it all go to my head. I've come to the conclusion I can't sleep with an active train of thought going on. It sounds like meditation should help but I haven't had much luck there. Maybe I just need to try more often until it becomes second nature.
- hundoh 6y agoI'm a night owl living on a 9-5 schedule, and I have the same problem. Most of the day I'm a little tired, then at night I get a burst of energy. It's frustrating. I think the ideal solution would be to find a good job that lets me work my ideal hours, but barring that I've found a useful strategy. After my wife goes to bed, I'll go downstairs for an hour or two and read, write, and think. By letting my brain burn off some of its energy, I find myself naturally drifting into a healthy calm tired. I'm never exactly wiped to the point where I can just fall asleep, but I calm down enough that I can still get to sleep at a semi-decent hour. Combined with WFH I actually get close to 8.5 hours by sleeping in later, so it's not bad.
- hnick 6y agoFor a while last year, I did just accept it and stay up late until I felt more tired, usually around 1:30am. We were both working from home and I'd sleep in a little bit (which is also getting harder in my late 30s). This wasn't perfect but it was better. But now my wife is back at the office and is out of bed before 8am, which wakes me up and usually I can't get back to sleep easily so I've been struggling since. I've tried exercise both during the day and the evening in case it's a physical thing, but it either doesn't help or makes it worse. Sometimes my active brain state amplifies physical aches and pains and itches and it just runs away from me and is very distracting. I think what might really be missing is a sense of closure or achievement. A lot of things in life can give gratification without meaning, but the days I do something like finish fixing the shower or putting up shelves, it does seem a bit easier to switch off at night. Cooking is the closest I get most days.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/2WMRI https://archive.is/2WMRI
- ravroid 6y agoThank you.
- NoodleIncident 6y agoAfter only skimming and searching, it seems a bit weird to open an article on this topic with an example from tennis and _not_ reference The Inner Game of Tennis. It's a pretty good book that can be applied to lots of things; conscious thought and verbalizing can make you worse at learning and executing a task.
- riemannzeta 6y agoWas going to make the same comment. Gallwey does a better and more thorough job of articulating what is going on here.
- snovv_crash 6y agoIt reminds me of The Pace regarding motorcycle riding. I think there are a lot of places where this is relevant.
- Frodo478 6y agoYes, is better not thinking that much and fill all your free time with podcast, audiobooks and email subscription. So someone else will do the work for you
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- akdor1154 6y agoWell the approach of a certain successful EV CEO certainly seems to follow this advice. (Though snarky, this is a reasoned observation/opinion after reading the article in full)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- psychomugs 6y ago"The professional...must fight to preserve the naivety that the layman already possesses" - Bill Evans, one of the great jazz pianists.
- ylem 6y agoIt reminds me of a graduate quantum class I had. The professor gave what he called "infinite time length exams". We would come in during the afternoon and we could stay as long as we wanted to work on the exam--though we had to slip it under his door by say 9:00am. You could bring as many books as you wanted (apparently at one point you could bring "anything" and someone brought a professor--but that could just be a story). But, if you didn't finish in a reasonable time, you probably weren't going to get the answer.
- chii 6y agoi really like this sort of exams, where some artificial condition isn't imposed on the examinees for ranking purposes. I had a computer science exam where you are allowed to bring any text book/reference book you wish, and any notes you've written yourself. The exam was long and hard yes, but it was also thorough. One of the more enjoyable exams i recall taking - vs all of the other types.
- jawzz 6y agoWith online learning, basically all of my exams are like this. I’ve heard of some people having proctored online exams, but luckily my school’s Math and CS departments seem to have opted to just make the questions harder/unable to be looked up, and gave up on restricting us from using notes or the internet. It’s actually surprising how well it works, if the professor can design the exam cleverly enough. Really the only way you can cheat is by colluding with other students (which admittedly is a fairly big issue) or, for some types of programming questions, by just running the code on your own machine (which again can be avoided by clever test design).
- zshift 6y agoMy modern physics professor did this for all our assignments. He didn’t want to rush students to fill out answers, so he made the questions very hard. We had to really understand the mechanics in order to answer the questions. I retained so much more by learning this way when compared to wrote memorization, and it was fun having discussions with other students to help each other understand the concepts.
- jayp1418 6y agoAs tool said:"over thinking over analysing separates the body from the mind. Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind."
- AndrewPaul42 6y agoI am reminded of Alan Watts' book, 'The Wisdom of Insecurity,' where I was first exposed to this idea that "thinking too much can be bad for you." I found it lifechanging as it helped me to better manage OCD and anxiety. Recommended reading if you are searching for a tool to slow or limit your thinking.
- aryamaan 6y agoI'll definitely check this out.
- GizmoSwan 6y agoIndecision is suppose to be bad but it is probably a natural response to possibility of poor outcome. It all depends on the risks.
- bfung 6y agoThe average person doesn’t think enough.
- system2 6y agoI am certain this article is talking about non-average people like Federer.
- sbmthakur 6y agoIn my case, I have found myself not doing enough stuff whenever I think too much. "doing" here doesn't necessarily mean productive work. Even spending quality time with friends and family counts towards and can have much more rewarding effects when compared to overthinking.
- achow 6y agoTitle needs to be appended with (2012).
- nomy99 6y agoAnyone has a non pay link for the peasants ?
- Lapland 6y agohttps://archive.is/2WMRI https://archive.is/2WMRI
- FrozenVoid 6y agoIt depends on the subject of 'overthinking': not all subjects are compatible with subconscious/instinctual approach, creative/physical effort dominates only with simple rules and restricted systems - once your field is complex enough overthinking is more potent at uncovering flaws/loopholes/creative insights.
- avindroth 6y agoYou can extend this to logic can be bad for you.
- jokoon 6y agoWhen I think about the human brain and evolution, I don't view a large brain as a good or a bad thing or something that makes humans more capable than other animals or having a competitive edge. It's weird how humans are so often suffering from depression, it seems like a larger brain is more the result of an organ gaining in size for all the bad reasons: anxiety, overthinking, mental illness, etc.
- RHSman2 6y ago'and something you just do without thinking about it.' Well, when you think about it you've changed the underlying quantum structure ;) --- Cue the internet saying this isn't how quantum entanglement works #TheGame
- pantulis 6y agoI'd say that it's not thinking too much -- your brain can't stop thinking! The issue is not being aware that you are thinking and that's what cognitive therapy, meditation and mindfulness is all about: being present while you think allows you to understand how this thought process affects your emotions.
- aritmo 6y agoI don't think so.
- airhead969 6y agoQualitatively, I notice depressed people tend to read, write, and philosophize more. I think it partially explains the phenomenon of post-drinking philosophizing at 3 am since EtOH is ultimately a depressant and often amplified by tiredness, and also EtOh seems to promote socializing, Although hangovers are temporary depressive dips where reading, writing, and philosophizing may not be the first thought.. at least not until the bathroom, nsaids, and coffee.
- devxpy 6y agoThis reminds me of "This is water" by david foster wallace. > The really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chosen1111 6y agoInstincts evolved with nature and time. Thinking did too but with the coevolution of poor thinking and negative self talk and bad advice within a short period of time.