I feel more people-centred after focused mental work that involves marshalling intuition—this was after hitting high dual n back levels (12+) for which conscious rehearsal strategies were necessarily eschewed in favour of recourse to ‘feel’.
This is incredibly interesting to me. Have you found anything else that uses intuition like that? How about music, or physical activities?
Does anagramming, etc. help your concentration? I have to confess I’m not clear why anagramming is any less intuitive and dual n-back more intuitive. When I anagram it feels like letter sequences pop into my head by intuition, while I’ve only used conscious rehearsal strategies for dual n-backing.
I think it’s to do with the intensity and direction of concentrated thinking as much as the retrieval of information. It’s true that intuition comes into play when I anagram but my focus is always consciously fixed on the task at hand. When I play dnb intuitively, I purposefully weaken conscious awareness in order to strengthen the ‘intuitive signal.’
But, to clarify, although dnb minus conscious focus humanises me, dnb + focus does not turn me into a robot, whereas anagramming does—possibly because the former involves memory operations only, with no attendant analysis. Similarly, intensive vocabulary memorisation is fine.
Perhaps this suggests a fundamental difference in social interaction styles: between actively searching for meaning in the social space (through analysis) and waiting for meaning to make itself known (which requires trusting that it inevitably will).
Oh yes, another anecdote regarding the activity/personality interaction: whilst studying English, people, when prompted, would correctly divine that that is what I did. Now, they assume that I am science-oriented. I suppose I must just give off a different kind of ‘whiff.’
This is incredibly interesting to me. Have you found anything else that uses intuition like that? How about music, or physical activities?
Does anagramming, etc. help your concentration? I have to confess I’m not clear why anagramming is any less intuitive and dual n-back more intuitive. When I anagram it feels like letter sequences pop into my head by intuition, while I’ve only used conscious rehearsal strategies for dual n-backing.
I think it’s to do with the intensity and direction of concentrated thinking as much as the retrieval of information. It’s true that intuition comes into play when I anagram but my focus is always consciously fixed on the task at hand. When I play dnb intuitively, I purposefully weaken conscious awareness in order to strengthen the ‘intuitive signal.’
But, to clarify, although dnb minus conscious focus humanises me, dnb + focus does not turn me into a robot, whereas anagramming does—possibly because the former involves memory operations only, with no attendant analysis. Similarly, intensive vocabulary memorisation is fine.
Perhaps this suggests a fundamental difference in social interaction styles: between actively searching for meaning in the social space (through analysis) and waiting for meaning to make itself known (which requires trusting that it inevitably will).
Oh yes, another anecdote regarding the activity/personality interaction: whilst studying English, people, when prompted, would correctly divine that that is what I did. Now, they assume that I am science-oriented. I suppose I must just give off a different kind of ‘whiff.’