An exercise I adopted when I was a child that I did not read anywhere is to recall or reconstruct the thought that led to my current
thought, then the thought before that, etc.
By examining many such transitions, I discovered some generalizations about the unconscious function that takes thought N to thought N+1.
I do the same, too. (But I had never thought of it as an exercise, just curiosity about “Why the deuce am I thinking about this?”.) I think there was an xkcd comic about that, too, but I can’t find it now.
An exercise I adopted when I was a child that I did not read anywhere is to recall or reconstruct the thought that led to my current thought, then the thought before that, etc. By examining many such transitions, I discovered some generalizations about the unconscious function that takes thought N to thought N+1.
I do the same, too. (But I had never thought of it as an exercise, just curiosity about “Why the deuce am I thinking about this?”.) I think there was an xkcd comic about that, too, but I can’t find it now.