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If the holes you dig are all in a general area, you don't have to shift dimensions to switch holes, though sometimes you could do that. You could also connect y

If the holes you dig are all in a general area, you don't have to shift dimensions to switch holes, though sometimes you could do that. You could also connect your holes which helps create a mesh of connected knowledge. Staying in the flow makes sense, but you also need to get depth sometimes and that means yanking yourself back from jumping to another thought-stream and sticking to the one you were on. Discipline has a role to play in the thinking process, I think.

jtheory 14y ago
When you get to digging holes in alternate dimensions, and making a mesh of connected holes, it's probably time to drop the metaphor. :) Staying "in the flow" -- I'm not sure how you think of it, but for me this means significant depth. When I'm properly engaged, I'm past the point of flipping idly between thought-streams, and I'm completely engaged in a single task. The interesting thing about having multiple projects is not that we can flip rapidly between them (i.e., never deeply mentally engaged in any of them), but that when the engagement is waning on project #1 and we come up for air, instead of opening HN/NYT/whatever and wandering off, we can switch to a fresh project and dive back in again. I.e., our brains don't need "rest" as much as they need sufficient novelty and variety; if you can harness that, you can be hugely more productive -- not just because you're minimizing downtime, but you're also getting into the habit of frequent deep mental engagement.
- khitchdee 14y ago
  The point of the metaphor is you don't do your thinking in one shot. Usually you build on what you did last time and it requires effort focused at a point each time and a repetition of the process over a sustained amount of time. After you've thought through something, usually it stays with you. So there is some permanence to the results of the the process, much like the hole you dig. The flow thing is related to being a little lazy and listening to every whim and fancy of your mind while you're thinking on a topic. If I were to choose, I would choose depth over flow -- it's more difficult to go deep.

jtheory 14y ago

When you get to digging holes in alternate dimensions, and making a mesh of connected holes, it's probably time to drop the metaphor. :) Staying "in the flow" -- I'm not sure how you think of it, but for me this means significant depth. When I'm properly engaged, I'm past the point of flipping idly between thought-streams, and I'm completely engaged in a single task. The interesting thing about having multiple projects is not that we can flip rapidly between them (i.e., never deeply mentally engaged in any of them), but that when the engagement is waning on project #1 and we come up for air, instead of opening HN/NYT/whatever and wandering off, we can switch to a fresh project and dive back in again. I.e., our brains don't need "rest" as much as they need sufficient novelty and variety; if you can harness that, you can be hugely more productive -- not just because you're minimizing downtime, but you're also getting into the habit of frequent deep mental engagement.

khitchdee 14y ago
The point of the metaphor is you don't do your thinking in one shot. Usually you build on what you did last time and it requires effort focused at a point each time and a repetition of the process over a sustained amount of time. After you've thought through something, usually it stays with you. So there is some permanence to the results of the the process, much like the hole you dig. The flow thing is related to being a little lazy and listening to every whim and fancy of your mind while you're thinking on a topic. If I were to choose, I would choose depth over flow -- it's more difficult to go deep.