Whether I was rested after resting always seemed so chaotic to me.
Also notable—at least if you’re autistic, but this probably applies to neurotypical people as well—is that the kind of mental energy that you have available to spend on resting—and thus the kind of restful activity that will actually result in a gain in energy—can vary over time. For example, I may find music restful one day, and find the exact same music exhausting to listen to the next, even if I’m equally tired in a general sense on both days. My theory is that this correlates with what other tasks I’ve been doing recently (though not in the sense that doing a lot of auditory processing will lead me to ‘run out’ of that kind of energy—more in the sense that if I’ve been doing nothing that involves auditory processing, that brainbit turns off, and can’t be effectively used for recreation), but I haven’t tracked the relevant things well enough yet to do more than speculate.
I take it from the upvotes that this is a way of thinking about mental abilities that resonates with people and is novel enough to be useful? Should I write more? I’ve been poking at the ‘chaos’ of my brain’s variable usefulness at various tasks for a good few years now; if it’s a topic of interest I can devote a bit more effort to that for a while and try to come up with a post on it.
Also notable—at least if you’re autistic, but this probably applies to neurotypical people as well—is that the kind of mental energy that you have available to spend on resting—and thus the kind of restful activity that will actually result in a gain in energy—can vary over time. For example, I may find music restful one day, and find the exact same music exhausting to listen to the next, even if I’m equally tired in a general sense on both days. My theory is that this correlates with what other tasks I’ve been doing recently (though not in the sense that doing a lot of auditory processing will lead me to ‘run out’ of that kind of energy—more in the sense that if I’ve been doing nothing that involves auditory processing, that brainbit turns off, and can’t be effectively used for recreation), but I haven’t tracked the relevant things well enough yet to do more than speculate.
I take it from the upvotes that this is a way of thinking about mental abilities that resonates with people and is novel enough to be useful? Should I write more? I’ve been poking at the ‘chaos’ of my brain’s variable usefulness at various tasks for a good few years now; if it’s a topic of interest I can devote a bit more effort to that for a while and try to come up with a post on it.