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I wonder if this is related to the effect of being better at something after not doing it for a while. When it comes to a lot of things I do repetitively, I no

I wonder if this is related to the effect of being better at something after not doing it for a while. When it comes to a lot of things I do repetitively, I notice that there comes a point where either my skill doesn't improve or I actually get worse at what I'm doing. Then I'll take a day or more off, and when I come back suddenly I'm a total boss. The brain probably needs rest time to throw out the bad input and that can't happen as much during execution.

zwkrt 5y ago
An old mentor of mine once said some thing I found very profound: “Learning is like eating; you can choose what you consume. But knowing is like digesting; it will happen regardless, and in its own time. You only have control over eating, so eat well and frequently” There’s really a little leap of faith any time we want to learn something, because we don’t actually control how or when it fits into our brain or body, just that if we keep trying that it will.
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
  I frequently find myself contributing to conversations with knowledge that I don't recall specifically learning. Once in a while, I think "Wow, how did I come up with something that insightful? When did I ever learn that?" It seems there's a background activity in the mind that is actually synthesizing a wide variety of inputs from our environment. As in what I read, movies I watch, meetings I sit in on, Tweets that transpire, hikes I take, visits to distant cities, and so on. In many cases, it seems the connections and support for ideas, notions and realizations that then become knowledge are made without explicitly reasoning through them. I'd say this happens most frequently in conversations related to my work, which makes sense since that's where most of the inputs are sourced.
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    > Once in a while, I think "Wow, how did I come up with something that insightful? When did I ever learn that?" ... and then I look it up and usually realize I was way off :)
  - BearsEatBeats 5y ago
    innsæi means "intuition" in ancient icelandic
  - throwaway2331 5y ago
    I think this is what happens during sleep (a part of it). There have been times where I've been unable to "fall" asleep, but stayed in my bed, completely unaware of my surroundings or anything else except what's going on inside my mind. It feels like my thoughts were starting from a single point, then randomly branching off into multiple directions (one after the brisk "completion" of the other), and each path had a certain "feel" to it -- as if my brain was testing things it had "learned" or "inferred" (and the mental models it had collected), or even things it wasn't too certain about or even guessing -- simply to see how it would "feel" when thought. It's like your mind has a complex array of filters/gates that decide how an input will be processed -- and these filters are constantly changing, rearranging, and growing more complex as you grow; so during sleep it feels like the mind is in a loop, constantly throwing very simple things that have collected in memory, into the "mix"/filters to see what happens (will those filters adjust, a la conditioning and adjusting weights like in a neural net? Will some new and palpable way of looking at things be found? Are some thoughts/paths no longer needed? Should other thoughts/paths be prioritized?). I think our minds hold onto all the inputs we've gotten during the day, and then process them at night, is what I'm trying to say. I imagine this is one of the big reasons why we sleep so much as we do (compared to hunger-gatherers, and primitive tribes): we have so much sensory input that gets collected during the day (including our thoughts, albeit the thinking we do during the day serves the same end: forcing our heads to deal with new information to figure out what to do with it). And then you have meditation, that basically forces you to clean out the "volatile memory," so it doesn't interefere throughout the day. Basically telling your mind, "I don't need to incorporate this shit into my thinking. It's not vital. Dump the memory onto the disk, and we'll deal with it later, but not now!" I've noticed that sleep completely changes my train of thought. On any given day, I'll have a certain "mindset" or overarching "feeling" for the day. If I stay up for a day or two, that feeling will remain. And no matter what I do, that feeling rarely changes throughout the day. BUT, when I go to sleep, it's completely different. I always wake up with a new "train" of thought. Like when I was awake, the train was going on a certain rail line, but during sleep it was moved to a different one.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
glitchc 5y ago
I've discovered much the same. If you visualize yourself doing the activity during the break, it actually accelerates the learning process.
Waterluvian 5y ago
I began playing piano last year and this blew my mind. I’d play 30-60 mins a day, and every single time this was true: I was better on my first try the next day than my best try the previous day.
keyle 5y ago
I would say this has to do with sleeping. You've realigned everything and the signals come clearer the next time around.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  I wonder at what stage that takes place. This seems to happen regardless of what takes place in dreams, though I know that dreams take place only in certain stages.
politician 5y ago
That’s the theory behind Spaced Repetition Learning, and it doesn’t surprise me that it applies to physical skills.

zwkrt 5y ago

An old mentor of mine once said some thing I found very profound: “Learning is like eating; you can choose what you consume. But knowing is like digesting; it will happen regardless, and in its own time. You only have control over eating, so eat well and frequently” There’s really a little leap of faith any time we want to learn something, because we don’t actually control how or when it fits into our brain or body, just that if we keep trying that it will.

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
I frequently find myself contributing to conversations with knowledge that I don't recall specifically learning. Once in a while, I think "Wow, how did I come up with something that insightful? When did I ever learn that?" It seems there's a background activity in the mind that is actually synthesizing a wide variety of inputs from our environment. As in what I read, movies I watch, meetings I sit in on, Tweets that transpire, hikes I take, visits to distant cities, and so on. In many cases, it seems the connections and support for ideas, notions and realizations that then become knowledge are made without explicitly reasoning through them. I'd say this happens most frequently in conversations related to my work, which makes sense since that's where most of the inputs are sourced.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  > Once in a while, I think "Wow, how did I come up with something that insightful? When did I ever learn that?" ... and then I look it up and usually realize I was way off :)
- BearsEatBeats 5y ago
  innsæi means "intuition" in ancient icelandic
- throwaway2331 5y ago
  I think this is what happens during sleep (a part of it). There have been times where I've been unable to "fall" asleep, but stayed in my bed, completely unaware of my surroundings or anything else except what's going on inside my mind. It feels like my thoughts were starting from a single point, then randomly branching off into multiple directions (one after the brisk "completion" of the other), and each path had a certain "feel" to it -- as if my brain was testing things it had "learned" or "inferred" (and the mental models it had collected), or even things it wasn't too certain about or even guessing -- simply to see how it would "feel" when thought. It's like your mind has a complex array of filters/gates that decide how an input will be processed -- and these filters are constantly changing, rearranging, and growing more complex as you grow; so during sleep it feels like the mind is in a loop, constantly throwing very simple things that have collected in memory, into the "mix"/filters to see what happens (will those filters adjust, a la conditioning and adjusting weights like in a neural net? Will some new and palpable way of looking at things be found? Are some thoughts/paths no longer needed? Should other thoughts/paths be prioritized?). I think our minds hold onto all the inputs we've gotten during the day, and then process them at night, is what I'm trying to say. I imagine this is one of the big reasons why we sleep so much as we do (compared to hunger-gatherers, and primitive tribes): we have so much sensory input that gets collected during the day (including our thoughts, albeit the thinking we do during the day serves the same end: forcing our heads to deal with new information to figure out what to do with it). And then you have meditation, that basically forces you to clean out the "volatile memory," so it doesn't interefere throughout the day. Basically telling your mind, "I don't need to incorporate this shit into my thinking. It's not vital. Dump the memory onto the disk, and we'll deal with it later, but not now!" I've noticed that sleep completely changes my train of thought. On any given day, I'll have a certain "mindset" or overarching "feeling" for the day. If I stay up for a day or two, that feeling will remain. And no matter what I do, that feeling rarely changes throughout the day. BUT, when I go to sleep, it's completely different. I always wake up with a new "train" of thought. Like when I was awake, the train was going on a certain rail line, but during sleep it was moved to a different one.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago

glitchc 5y ago

I've discovered much the same. If you visualize yourself doing the activity during the break, it actually accelerates the learning process.

Waterluvian 5y ago

I began playing piano last year and this blew my mind. I’d play 30-60 mins a day, and every single time this was true: I was better on my first try the next day than my best try the previous day.

keyle 5y ago

I would say this has to do with sleeping. You've realigned everything and the signals come clearer the next time around.

ravenstine 5y ago
I wonder at what stage that takes place. This seems to happen regardless of what takes place in dreams, though I know that dreams take place only in certain stages.

politician 5y ago

That’s the theory behind Spaced Repetition Learning, and it doesn’t surprise me that it applies to physical skills.