Where ‘distraction’ does not mean ‘something unexpected suddenly disrupting you’, but rather something which is occupying your focus in a sustained way, and which may not be unexpected or random-feeling.
This explains why I have more ideas when I’m e.g laying in bed than when I’m at my computer: the latter has discord, fantasy card games, LessWrong, etc (most things that are done with computers, tbh).
This one has a simple solution, too: avoiding sustained-focus-takers. E.g., lay in bed thinking instead of being at your PC or doing anything else. (I’ve found sensory deprivation to additionally help when combined with this: keep lights and sound low, and try to find a position where you won’t move, to avoid body sensory changes. If you need to get up temporarily, take it very slowly and seamlessly, closing your eyes when you don’t need to be seeing.)
Also, what I mean by ‘focus’ is not really ‘object-level attention’, as in having something in front of you on your conscious mind, but more something that encompasses your whole state of mind, including cognition/processing happening in the background.
This is probably easier for some than others. If you, like me, have a mind that can easily be pushed from one focus to another, you might need to take more precautions like trying to decrease non-alignment stimuli in general, e.g trying to minimize social stimuli, so when you’re laying and thinking your mind defaults to alignment instead of other things.
Now if you just read the above, maybe you will think, this ‘quila’ user has really optimized their process for entering an intellectually active mental state, wow! But actually, I don’t even do this every day, but I should, and writing this might help self-fulfilling-prophecy that outcome. posts comment and turns off pc
Edit: did this for an hour and had a new idea (it was vulnerable to Probable Environment Hacking, but gave me some insight into the nature of embedded algorithms). It definitely works for my mind.
Adding an ‘obvious’ but important answer that I didn’t see, and couldn’t find with a ctrl+f: cultivating the environment that lets you have sustained mental focus on what you want to make intellectual progress on. I first called this ‘avoiding distraction’ and wrote the below:
Where ‘distraction’ does not mean ‘something unexpected suddenly disrupting you’, but rather something which is occupying your focus in a sustained way, and which may not be unexpected or random-feeling.
This explains why I have more ideas when I’m e.g laying in bed than when I’m at my computer: the latter has discord, fantasy card games, LessWrong, etc (most things that are done with computers, tbh).
This one has a simple solution, too: avoiding sustained-focus-takers. E.g., lay in bed thinking instead of being at your PC or doing anything else. (I’ve found sensory deprivation to additionally help when combined with this: keep lights and sound low, and try to find a position where you won’t move, to avoid body sensory changes. If you need to get up temporarily, take it very slowly and seamlessly, closing your eyes when you don’t need to be seeing.)
Also, what I mean by ‘focus’ is not really ‘object-level attention’, as in having something in front of you on your conscious mind, but more something that encompasses your whole state of mind, including cognition/processing happening in the background.
This is probably easier for some than others. If you, like me, have a mind that can easily be pushed from one focus to another, you might need to take more precautions like trying to decrease non-alignment stimuli in general, e.g trying to minimize social stimuli, so when you’re laying and thinking your mind defaults to alignment instead of other things.
Now if you just read the above, maybe you will think, this ‘quila’ user has really optimized their process for entering an intellectually active mental state, wow! But actually, I don’t even do this every day, but I should, and writing this might help self-fulfilling-prophecy that outcome. posts comment and turns off pc
Edit: did this for an hour and had a new idea (it was vulnerable to Probable Environment Hacking, but gave me some insight into the nature of embedded algorithms). It definitely works for my mind.