This isn’t an extremely useful technique. What it really does for me is break me out of undirected thinking with my writing and get me to actively start thinking things like “ok, but why would this be happening?”
I think 75% of the time it’s not helpful. Sometimes unhelpful when breaking a flow.
I’m working on thinking things faster. Though, it’s not a skill I’d say I have yet.
However, it’s pretty low cost for any payoff at all.
25% of the time it being helpful sounds pretty good to me.
Just to be clear, when you say “undirected thinking” do you mean thinking that is not pertinent to your intention or goal with a writing session or a piece of writing; or is it knowing that you want to write something but wandering aimlessly because you’re not sure what that thing is? Or am I well off the mark on both?
Closer to the first one.
I find when writing to think my mind has two modes. Very system 1 and system 2. If I’ve been going for a while on a side branch system 1 takes over. The writing becomes less about thinking and more about the act of writing. This leads to me making a hypothesis and saying “idk why that is”. That triggers the alias, which points out to me that I’m not really ‘thinking’. I then switch to “How could I test if this is true?”
I appreciate the 25% reframing. That’s something I wish I’d thought faster.
This isn’t an extremely useful technique. What it really does for me is break me out of undirected thinking with my writing and get me to actively start thinking things like “ok, but why would this be happening?”
I think 75% of the time it’s not helpful. Sometimes unhelpful when breaking a flow.
I’m working on thinking things faster. Though, it’s not a skill I’d say I have yet.
However, it’s pretty low cost for any payoff at all.
25% of the time it being helpful sounds pretty good to me.
Just to be clear, when you say “undirected thinking” do you mean thinking that is not pertinent to your intention or goal with a writing session or a piece of writing; or is it knowing that you want to write something but wandering aimlessly because you’re not sure what that thing is? Or am I well off the mark on both?
Closer to the first one. I find when writing to think my mind has two modes. Very system 1 and system 2. If I’ve been going for a while on a side branch system 1 takes over. The writing becomes less about thinking and more about the act of writing. This leads to me making a hypothesis and saying “idk why that is”. That triggers the alias, which points out to me that I’m not really ‘thinking’. I then switch to “How could I test if this is true?”
I appreciate the 25% reframing. That’s something I wish I’d thought faster.
Trigger: I see a %# Action: Switch it in my head