Mental Acuity Maintainence.

[BurnedOut]

The title says it all. What do you guys do to keep your thinking top notch and untainted in a ready-to-analyse state ? For me it's extremely important that mind keeps working at any cost and I often go to lengths to do that.


I employ :
1. Playing the eguitar
2. Programming
3. Multitasking
4. Trying to do some mentally intensive task with a lot of disturbance
5. Lucid dreaming
6.Sleeping and taking naps at fixed intervals
7. Stay up late and research
8. Read up about something
9. Do deductions about some stuff regularly.

This keeps me mentally alert most of the times but I've reached a state where my thinking goes berserk and it becomes brainstorming for the slighest of the slightest of the things. Anyway what do you guys do to stay alert and keep your functioning intact ?

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[Ex-User (14663)]

Avoiding garbage stimulus like social media

 

[Skinart]

I can see value in some variant of what you've listed except for multitasking. I wish I still had sources on it but research shows multitasking is a skill people get worse at the more they do it. What they get better at is thinking they're good at it. Monotasking produces better results.

I think the problem is people get better at switching tasks all the time but don't notice they're getting worse at each task. Long term you can expect the opposite of your intent as you will train away from sustained effort.

However, there is a form of monotasking that is more efficient than others. Sometimes people think of it as multitasking. If you have processes you can setup and let finish unattended, and it has a long enough runtime, you can set up overlapping runs. This is different than changing focus between multiple tasks all the time because these are tasks you complete your part of before doing the next thing.

In a machine shop, a single operator can run multiple CNC machines by using runtime for tending other machines, unless the runtime per part is so short it's impractical. It's critical for sanity for parts with runtimes of 15 minutes or more. The exception to the really short runtime concern is that even if you have a part that finishes in about the same time it takes to check and deburr a finished part, you can be a bit more efficient and happier if you have a long runtime part to break up the monotony a couple times an hour.

I once ran three machines with 15 to 20 minute runtimes and moderate load and unload times. By midday I was able to find time to clean too! But it was all staggerred monotasking. I started a step and worked till done.

A more relateable example: I avoid looking at loading screens. If something is loading, I look for a task that will take about the same time. Boot cycles are perfect for getting or making coffee, loading a washing machine or dryer, sweeping the kitchen, etc. It's multitasking in the same way loading a dishwasher is multitasking because you don't hang around sitting on your hands waiting for it to finish--which is to say, not at all.

I have reservations about trying to do things in distracting or intrusive environments. Experience tells me it just means doing things twice. Once noisy, and once correctly. But I can cheat by using hearing protection.

 

[BurnedOut]

I wonder what there is no research on how people can condition themselves to multitask without suffering too big a loss of their concentration. Such pop researches run concurrent to the concept of cursory investigation or the whole thing is not submitted by the webpage hosting the information. One more example of a flawed/incomplete displayed information is that on intuition which claims that intuition is supreme and is right because 80-90% of the people feel satisfied after following its dictates. However it is not mentioned explicitly that confirmation bias is the one playing the bigger role. This was confirmed by my personal experience and a lot of digging to find a recluse webpage hosting the real stuff.

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[gps]

In a machine shop, a single operator can run multiple CNC machines by using runtime for tending other machines, unless the runtime per part is so short it's impractical.
It's critical for sanity for parts with runtimes of 15 minutes or more.

Though you're aware of my experiences with training CNC repair people, awareness of CAD DNC, and such from our participation on 99problem's thread on `College Algebra' in that `other group' perhaps the domain most analogically useful for folks here is the multitasking and multi-threading of computers.
And it's a decidedly FALSE and/or misleading metaphor.

When computers implement multitasking via interrupts, a shitload of data can be `pushed onto a stack' or retained faithfully SOME WAY ... then restored faithfully COMPLETELY after the interrupt is processed.
Humans CAN NOT DO THIS.
We humans experientially-manifest PRIMING; we can't refrain from mixing, blending, and losing bits and bytes like balls dropped by a juggler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)

A clever machinist might notice the periodicities of load-unload intervals of different parts running on several machines THEN attempt to use timing offsets to stagger the load-unload times such that no two machines often require re-cycling at the same time ... with the performance of de-burring between servicing machines.

A clever human mulititasker would Have To discover how their personal processes lose bits, drop balls, magically manifest priming, and such and EXPECT results very different from multitasking as manifested via digital computers capable of preemptive multitasking, multi-threading and such which we humans CAN'T do ... analogically, metaphorically, in any faithfully mimicking way.
Artists of various sorts do this sort of multi-BLENDING which doesn't very much or very often mimic the multi-tasking of computers.

There are still plenty of self-deluding multi-taskers out there trying to drive a car, apply make up, and text 7 of they're very best friends ... as I'm riding my bike on the side of the roads their lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home driverless cars are on.
And if I thought about it I'd probably stay the hell off my bike and the road sides on which these multi-taskers 1/8 drive and 7/8 self-distract with god-nows-how-many OTHER `multiple' tasks.

 

[Skinart]

Though you're aware of my experiences with training CNC repair people, awareness of CAD DNC, and such from our participation on 99problem's thread on `College Algebra' in that `other group' perhaps the domain most analogically useful for folks here is the multitasking and multi-threading of computers.
And it's a decidedly FALSE and/or misleading metaphor.

When computers implement multitasking via interrupts, a shitload of data can be `pushed onto a stack' or retained faithfully SOME WAY ... then restored faithfully COMPLETELY after the interrupt is processed.
Humans CAN NOT DO THIS.
We humans experientially-manifest PRIMING; we can't refrain from mixing, blending, and losing bits and bytes like balls dropped by a juggler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)

A clever machinist might notice the periodicities of load-unload intervals of different parts running on several machines THEN attempt to use timing offsets to stagger the load-unload times such that no two machines often require re-cycling at the same time ... with the performance of de-burring between servicing machines.

A clever human mulititasker would Have To discover how their personal processes lose bits, drop balls, magically manifest priming, and such and EXPECT results very different from multitasking as manifested via digital computers capable of preemptive multitasking, multi-threading and such which we humans CAN'T do ... analogically, metaphorically, in any faithfully mimicking way.
Artists of various sorts do this sort of multi-BLENDING which doesn't very much or very often mimic the multi-tasking of computers.

There are still plenty of self-deluding multi-taskers out there trying to drive a car, apply make up, and text 7 of they're very best friends ... as I'm riding my bike on the side of the roads their lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home driverless cars are on.
And if I thought about it I'd probably stay the hell off my bike and the road sides on which these multi-taskers 1/8 drive and 7/8 self-distract with god-nows-how-many OTHER `multiple' tasks.

Not sure if you're aware, but we're on the same page.