>multitasking for a long time is not a free lunch
The multitasking I was talking about was combining a mindless repetitive task that has low cognitive demands such as walking on a treadmill, yardwork raking leaves, driving on non-descript boring roads ... with listening to a podcast about whatever topics are interesting. The mind is engaged while the hands and feet doing the work are on autopilot. In those cases, it can be a "free lunch" in the sense that the curiosity-seeking mind got fed while whatever physical task that needed to get done also got done with less procrastination and dread.
I wasn't talking about trying to edit a Excel spreadsheet while listening and concentrating on a podcast about the politics and protests of datacenter buildouts.
> In those cases, it can be a "free lunch" in the sense that the curiosity-seeking mind got fed while whatever physical task that needed to get done also got done with less procrastination and dread.
The interesting thing is, exercise is more effective and beneficial when brain is focused on what body is doing, i.e. doing mindful exercise is more beneficial than giving brain a pacifier while body is doing something else.
On the "procrastination & dread": The brain has a daily limit on hard concentration. From my personal experience (during my Ph.D.) it tops around four hours most. I also find staying put very useful and beneficial, because after stuffing too much information into it, your brain needs to sift through and filter it. Also I find myself refining my previous ideas while staying put and doing nothing maybe except writing down what I'm refining or journaling.
You can create brain fatigue, fog or plain burnout by trying to make it run flat our all day long. Let it rest, reset and restore. You'll have much more happier.
I had not heard that about mindful exercise before. Do you have a source with more information?
I do not remember the exact study, but the one I read was pretty eye opening:
A big hotel chain takes a group of housekeepers and told them that their work also doubles as exercise. When compared to the control group, I believe after 8 weeks, the group which told that their work also doubles as exercise lost some weight collectively. Looks like the paper is at [0].
I have also done some further research into this, and found a couple of related studies.
One is [1]. Which simply states that focusing on the muscle group you're working on increases its activity and doubles the build-up. More references are present in the article.
Another study [2], tells that having an external focus point (music, podcasts or something) allows brain to make actions automatic and improve movement efficiency and economy, meaning the energy used is decreased IIUC. Hence, focusing internally makes body to burn more energy.
This study [3] states that listening to well selected music can improve efficiency and work output while reducing perceived strain. Improved efficiency again reduces the burnt calories per fixed time period, hence somewhat reducing the effectiveness of the exercise itself.
Hence, if you want to go far, some music or podcast can be beneficial, but for burning maximum calories in a limited time slot, looks like it reduces the effectiveness of the exercise somewhat.
Hope this helps.
[0]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01...
[1]: https://larsonsportsortho.com/mind-muscle-connection-can-bui...
[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7739707/
[3]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3339578/
It’s also under appreciated that its good to have the brain be bored and doing nothing. While you are being curious you aren’t thinking or contemplating or creating or imagining, just consuming that dopamine sink.
There is indeed quite a rich literature on the importance of boredom too. Basic links can be found on Wikipedia, Buddhism generally confronts it as well, and even research in psychology generally sees it as an important cognitive or emotional process. Sadly I feel we are losing sight of this.
I was a professional glass artist and auctioned all of my work. When you've done it for years, molten glass keeps the hands busy, but seems to leave the mind free - very easy to listen to a podcast or music while working.
But... if I didn't... I made substantially more money per hour. Partially by being faster, but mostly by being better.
On the surface, it felt like nothing was going on, simple as driving to work, but just having that headspace for intuition to happen made a big difference. Also, probably worth mentioning that I never did production work, only explorative, so perception/intuition was maybe overweighted.
I half suspect that it's true for all of life, though. It's just a lot harder to tell when you don't have the market telling you the value of how you spent your hours each week.
Yeah. We have limited capacity to use every day. So I try just keep the brain away from stimulation as much as I can and use it only on useful stuff.
>its good to have the brain be bored and doing nothing. While you are being curious you aren’t thinking or contemplating or creating or imagining, just consuming that dopamine sink.
Those 2 sentences are based on 2 misconceptions/assumptions that need to be clarified.
1) That being bored is better than ingesting information. There seems to be a bias that self-dialogue and introspection is "superior" to external information. That depends on the person and so it's not always true. For some, when left to their own thoughts, they get into negative loops replaying past mistakes, or anguish about upcoming dilemmas ("Should I quit my job?", "Should I put mom in a nursing home?" etc) to which they don't have answers for. This is what some call "getting stuck in a rut" or "beating yourself up". It's inflicting self-harm. You can try to tell people "just don't think of negative thoughts and just sit there thinking of nothing". That doesn't work because it's like the joke of instructing people, "Don't think of an elephant!" -- which causes people to immediately think of an elephant. Instead of destructive loops, maybe a steady diet of external voices can help reframe things or just give the mind other ideas that are more productive and healthier to think about. To improve the quality of introspection, maybe look for quality external ideas.
2) My comment gave the impression I do nothing else but listen to podcasts and have no silent contemplative time. That's not what happens. For the first ~8 hours after I wake up, that's when my mind is most alert and mentally sharp. I do not "waste" this energy on listening to podcasts at all. That's when I do my contemplations, coding, etc. However, after the morning when my mind starts to drag... that's when it's ok to listen to audiobooks. Since I have to go outside to spread several cubic yards of mulch (mindless unpleasant housework), I queue up several podcasts to feed the mind while the work gets done. At that later point in the day, the brain is too fried to have deep introspection but it can still handle a lightweight podcast talking about trends in AI. Hopefully pick up some new ideas to bounce around the next morning's contemplative session. It's optimizing the schedule of activities to match the ups and downs in mental energy throughout the day. For neighbors who observe me, they just see that "he has headphones on all the time". Yes, because they don't shadow me at my desk in the morning when I don't.
I think there are some in this thread that assume the audiobooks/podcasts are "junk food" and the silent introspection is the "good and pure nourishment". That's not necessarily true. The opposite may be the case.