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Thinking is a bottomless pit for attention. Put X attention into digging a hole and you get that much hole dug. Put X attention into sandwich-making and you g
by swayvil 4y ago
Thinking is a bottomless pit for attention.
Put X attention into digging a hole and you get that much hole dug.
Put X attention into sandwich-making and you get that many sandwiches made.
But with thinking there's no real connection like that. You can put a whole decade of attention into a bunch of thinking and achieve zip.
It's an amazing attention sink. Whole mountains of attention can disappear. Easily. Casually.
And then when you consider that many of us basically think all the time. Habitually. Chewing over... memories and dreams and plans and stuff. Woah!
And that attention is our energy budget. Flushed down the thinkhole.
- rzzzt 4y agoCan you go without thinking for an extended period of time? I have split seconds here and there when I get the feeling I haven't thought about anything for a while, only to interrupt the streak with the very act of noticing.
- swayvil 4y agoYes I can. That's sorta what we do in this one meditation technique called vipassana. I've been doing it for a few years. When you get out of the habit of doing stuff with your attention all the time (thinking etc) then your attention moves in a new way. It sorta grows. It's pretty great.