Re:What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinkin...
by enraged_camel on Wednesday June 05, 2013 @08:34AM
(#5825131)
When I used to go cross-country backpacking last year, I often went out of reception range for cell signals. Most of the time I was hiking in the wilderness, away from most civilization. Sometimes on day trips, sometimes on weekend trips.
It was stunningly effective at allowing me to do deep thinking. To make it less abstract, for me this meant gaining a new perspective in my life (usually in the form of realizing I'm not the center of the world) and new insights into problems. What is surprising was that this was not stressful at all. On the contrary I always came back to the city fully recharged.
Did I think about other stuff such as having sex or buying a new computer? Of course. But it's like meditation: you have to notice when your mind wanders and bring it back.
However, articles like that are always a bit shallow. It sounds like the solution is to switch off your phoneand WiFi and everything will be alright. If I sit down and do nothing, my mind produces nothing oftentimes. I start to fantasize about having sex, whether I should buy a new gaming computer, what people would say about clothes I bought a few days ago, whether I need to go buy some groceries and if so, what I'd need and so on. There is not always automatically some deep thinking involved.
On the contrary, I even feel like if my mind needs deep thinking (i. e. think about strategic decisions of my SaaS business), I have no desire to be at my computer. I have the desire to sit on the couch and look out of the window and let my mind do the deep thinking.
I wonder if this "issue" is really a non-issue, because most of the time, our minds are simply bored to death and being disconnected makes not much of a difference. And in times when deep thinking is required, our mind finds a way to make it happen.