Thanks Connor! To self-prime, we need to generating priming material (or strategies for generating priming material). What might these generators look like? If your goal is to introduce new directions of thinking without particular targets, here possible strategies:
-Go to r/random and look at the best of all time for up to 5-10 minutes (set a site nanny like StayFocusd so it doesn’t exceed this)
-… Same, but for YouTube, Podcasts, Wikipedia, etc. Youtube video walking tours of different cities are intriguing and different
-Quickly list things that you’re [afraid of, curious about, hateful of, disgusted by, in love with, uninterested in] and choose one to investigate
-Find someone with opinions about your media consumption. Get them to recommend a book/band/movie where “there’s no way you haven’t seen this!!”
-Daydream in a linked list. “This reminds me of my dream about subway stations which reminds me that the BART infrastructure has always puzzled me, so I’ll look into that because why not”
The problem with these for me is some part of me thinks this is artificial novelty, not something that will cause deep updates about the way the world works (so I won’t actually use them). If you’re like me, you’ll need to generate priming material your own way, and the above list are just clever-sounding strategies.
(Although the media one seems like it would take ages and be more about actual exploration than priming per se.)
As to your comment at the end, I want to note that the point isn’t actually novelty! Yours are in fact more novel than mine were. You just want your brain to be chewing on something. If you choose things you like, they won’t be very novel, but they *should* hook your brain and get you idly replaying them in the back of your head. Hopefully just basking in cool/interesting things for a bit will take care of the “artificial” objection?
Thanks Connor! To self-prime, we need to generating priming material (or strategies for generating priming material). What might these generators look like? If your goal is to introduce new directions of thinking without particular targets, here possible strategies:
-Go to r/random and look at the best of all time for up to 5-10 minutes (set a site nanny like StayFocusd so it doesn’t exceed this)
-… Same, but for YouTube, Podcasts, Wikipedia, etc. Youtube video walking tours of different cities are intriguing and different
-Quickly list things that you’re [afraid of, curious about, hateful of, disgusted by, in love with, uninterested in] and choose one to investigate
-Find someone with opinions about your media consumption. Get them to recommend a book/band/movie where “there’s no way you haven’t seen this!!”
-Daydream in a linked list. “This reminds me of my dream about subway stations which reminds me that the BART infrastructure has always puzzled me, so I’ll look into that because why not”
The problem with these for me is some part of me thinks this is artificial novelty, not something that will cause deep updates about the way the world works (so I won’t actually use them). If you’re like me, you’ll need to generate priming material your own way, and the above list are just clever-sounding strategies.
These are great!
(Although the media one seems like it would take ages and be more about actual exploration than priming per se.)
As to your comment at the end, I want to note that the point isn’t actually novelty! Yours are in fact more novel than mine were. You just want your brain to be chewing on something. If you choose things you like, they won’t be very novel, but they *should* hook your brain and get you idly replaying them in the back of your head. Hopefully just basking in cool/interesting things for a bit will take care of the “artificial” objection?