I’m not sure I can reliably recognize what mental fatigue feels like. I’d like to be able to diagnose it in myself (because I suspect that I have less mental energy than I used to), so do you know of any reasonably quick way to induce something that feels like mental fatigue, e.g. alcohol?
Whatever your worst subject is, do a whole bunch of exercises in it until you start making so many mistakes it is not worth continuing. No need for alcohol, might as well wear out your brain.
It would be interesting to see if you’d get different types of fatigue from doing different kinds of activities. For instance, if I do three hours of math problems, I have trouble speaking after that—it’s like my symbol manipulation circuitry is fried. (I have dyslexia, so that’s probably related.) If I wear out my verbal processor (something that I think only started happening to me after I developed some unexpected vitamin deficiencies) this results in irritation. I can’t explain myself very well, so people jump on me for mistakes, and it’s really hard to tell them what I meant instead, so I get frustrated.
So, exercising each area of mental abilities might yeild different fatigue symptoms.
If you decide to experiment on yourself I’m definitely curious about your results!
If I’ve been reading/studying too long, I find much harder to concentrate and am more easily distracted by stray thoughts.
If I’ve been writing computer code/doing maths too long, I make the kind of trivial mistakes that screw up the results but are hard to locate way more often.
How much can you do of each activity before becoming fatigued?
It depends—usually between 20 minutes and 3 hours.
I’m not sure I can reliably recognize what mental fatigue feels like. I’d like to be able to diagnose it in myself (because I suspect that I have less mental energy than I used to), so do you know of any reasonably quick way to induce something that feels like mental fatigue, e.g. alcohol?
Alcohol doesn’t induce mental fatigue in me; high temperatures and dehydration do. YMMV.
EDIT: So does not eating enough sugars.
Whatever your worst subject is, do a whole bunch of exercises in it until you start making so many mistakes it is not worth continuing. No need for alcohol, might as well wear out your brain.
It would be interesting to see if you’d get different types of fatigue from doing different kinds of activities. For instance, if I do three hours of math problems, I have trouble speaking after that—it’s like my symbol manipulation circuitry is fried. (I have dyslexia, so that’s probably related.) If I wear out my verbal processor (something that I think only started happening to me after I developed some unexpected vitamin deficiencies) this results in irritation. I can’t explain myself very well, so people jump on me for mistakes, and it’s really hard to tell them what I meant instead, so I get frustrated.
So, exercising each area of mental abilities might yeild different fatigue symptoms.
If you decide to experiment on yourself I’m definitely curious about your results!
That happens to me, too.
What are your fatigue symptoms? How much can you do of each activity before becoming fatigued?
If I’ve been reading/studying too long, I find much harder to concentrate and am more easily distracted by stray thoughts.
If I’ve been writing computer code/doing maths too long, I make the kind of trivial mistakes that screw up the results but are hard to locate way more often.
It depends—usually between 20 minutes and 3 hours.