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Mar. 6th, 2009 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiLet's say you have either a job, or graduate-level schoolwork, which involves a lot of kind of math- or logic- flavored problem solving.
Are you so brilliant that it just kind of flows for 8 hours per day, with just small breaks to go to the water bubbler?
Or do you find that it starts to all go out of focus after an hour or so of sitting at your desk, pounding your head against something? I find that I feel like my working memory muscle gets tired after too many reps at one sitting. I find that after so many attempts to stuff a bunch of loops and conditionals into my brain, I start to stagnate, and I notice this when I start to do doodle-y kinds of things like move the insertion point around and around in a circle with the arrow keys. I find that insight into a problem often comes as I'm walking away to do some errand.
So, do you find that you need to do other tasks to give yourself a pause and let your thinking muscle recover? What do you do? There's only so many times "walk to the coffee shop a block away to get a cup of coffee" is going to work without developing a raging, out of control caffeine addiction. Switching gears from the hard stuff to vexing, annoying stuff such as doing the taxes is... torment. Do you read LJ? Other web surfing? Read a novel? (That can kill productivity if the novel sucks you in.) Go for a walk? (Hard to do for long enough when the weather is horrid; hard to stop doing when lovely spring weather comes. Maybe I should move to California, so I can walk for a break any time, but not go overboard because I'll start to take the nice weather for granted.)
Sleep is good for bringing insight; stuff the problem into your head one day, and then look for the solution in your head another day, is a trick that often works, if time permits.
Are you so brilliant that it just kind of flows for 8 hours per day, with just small breaks to go to the water bubbler?
Or do you find that it starts to all go out of focus after an hour or so of sitting at your desk, pounding your head against something? I find that I feel like my working memory muscle gets tired after too many reps at one sitting. I find that after so many attempts to stuff a bunch of loops and conditionals into my brain, I start to stagnate, and I notice this when I start to do doodle-y kinds of things like move the insertion point around and around in a circle with the arrow keys. I find that insight into a problem often comes as I'm walking away to do some errand.
So, do you find that you need to do other tasks to give yourself a pause and let your thinking muscle recover? What do you do? There's only so many times "walk to the coffee shop a block away to get a cup of coffee" is going to work without developing a raging, out of control caffeine addiction. Switching gears from the hard stuff to vexing, annoying stuff such as doing the taxes is... torment. Do you read LJ? Other web surfing? Read a novel? (That can kill productivity if the novel sucks you in.) Go for a walk? (Hard to do for long enough when the weather is horrid; hard to stop doing when lovely spring weather comes. Maybe I should move to California, so I can walk for a break any time, but not go overboard because I'll start to take the nice weather for granted.)
Sleep is good for bringing insight; stuff the problem into your head one day, and then look for the solution in your head another day, is a trick that often works, if time permits.
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Date: 2009-03-07 12:47 am (UTC)then some days, you just don't wanna do nothing.
then some days, it's warm and cozy outside, and you know you can get away with a 30 minute nap in your car :>
i can't quite imagine a job where everyday has that kind of flow you describe.
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