I tell my wife, "My brain hurts, I'm going for a walk." There does appear to be only so much paper shuffling my mind can do when working on programming problems before it requires the drawers be emptied or whatever it is the walk induces.
I've a hypothesis that a lot of the actual work is done in the background.
Focused thinking about a problem just sort of spawns new threads (some of which get OOM-killed if you keep spawning more). The process seems to need not actively thinking about the problem for the jobs to actually resolve.
It's like thinking about the problem triggers the background calculations to start, it doesn't actually perform the work.
Then you get that famous "aha!" in the shower or when you're off on a walk or whatever.
The background processing can still happen while sleeping too (which is useful to use).
I went through the Navy's Nuclear Power program a lifetime ago and that was often 16-18 hours of instruction and study (and exercise) per day to do well. When you recognize that you're at that point of mental exhaustion you can sneak in something like a 30 minute nap to power through the remainder of what you need to achieve that day...
My general approach was to physically write down and do some checks to verify that I understand all of the material (reinforced memorization) and get as much in per day like a sponge.. and then sleep on it. The retention was nuts (was top of my class) and it kind of just becomes habit at some point.
I think the odder thing is that if you just keep doing it for decades you notice the missing information too. Those loose associations are still there for sure but the brain can only pack in so much at a given time or some such.
This seems to match my experience. I'll pile on a hypothesis of my own:
When we encounter a new problem, our brain spans a decision tree of assumptions from the closest known solution to a similar problem. The area around this tree is searched depth-first, which often brings good results (e.g. thinking about whether you'll put some threshold value at 0.2 or 0.25), but it's best at refinement. The more time passes and the more different things you do, the more the search is moved into breadth-first (which makes intuitive sense - the deeper the tree, the more processing power would have to be put towards it). Often times we literally cannot conceive a good solution to a problem, because our brain is focusing on finding the right deep leaf of the wrong subtree!
There's a really great book called Consciousness and the Brain that goes into all the various research around how our brain works, and there is a huge amount that we think of as "thinking" that is totally unconscious to us. As I've aged, it seems like more and more of my thought processes are unknown to me. I just get agitated thinking about things, go do something for a while, then my unconscious "me" is suddenly like, "ok, here's the understanding".
The most productive hours at work for me has either been things I'm doing for the third time OR 15 minutes after I've left for the day after 8 hours of going in circles.
Privately, some of my most productive development has been when my girlfriend and I had separate apartments. I'd spend days working on problems undisturbed at my place, and then I'd go visit her for a few days (bringing no computer).
I always came back to my apartment full of inspiration, with half a notebook full of ideas and plans, which I'd spend the next days implementing, while spawning new background jobs that would mature the next time I was AFK. Rinse and repeat.
Something about this set-up was just insanely good for my productivity. I was much more productive than periods I didn't have these forced breaks away from input.
Indirectly this also betrays the kind of job where you had the "luxury" of being in a position to be able to take such forced breaks in the first place.
This is already a good situation to be with regard to burnout.
I'd love to do this (and try to when I can), but more often than not it's a balancing act between "rest but fall behind" vs "don't rest but catch-up".
While there's some element of privilege involved, I wouldn't have been able to ever work like this if I wasn't willing to take risks that many would consider too much. But the pay-off from taking those types of risks also (sometimes) ends up opening doors for more unconventional career steps.
I'm grant funded for the next year, and after that I have some savings to live off that may last another year or so (maybe less if this inflation keeps up), but after that I haven't got a singular clue where my money is coming from.
But I also don't have kids, and don't want any either. If I had or wanted, none of this would be possible. I'd definitely choose the golden handcuffs in that counterfatual.
Same. This is why it’s so important to go to bed late at night when working on a bug instead of grinding it out. I’ve found that when I wake up, I almost immediately have more ideas on what to do instead of beating the same dead horse I was at 3am.
It is absolutely more work especially in the beginning. Personally, I don't find doing work some huge burden to be avoided. I like doing things. Mileage may vary.
I agree the notepad could absolutely be straightforward win for some. However, the OP describes writing the ideas down as a "problem." If the OP says writing down things is a problem, I offer that we can't legitimately propose that same solution as a "win."
I really wish I had a good way to just get ideas into my phone quickly when on the road. Far too often I think I have some good ideas or make progress in something I thought of earlier, but I have no way to "save" it.
I bought a Bluetooth keyboard at some point that I can hook up to my phone if needed, but I almost never have the keyboard with me :-(
I use Drafts on iOS. But I hate Siri dictation. Too many mistakes which are difficult to correct while walking.
Was thinking Mic > Whisper transcription > GPT to take in a rough brain dump including instructions like “scratch that!” and convert it into the form you want (say, bullet points or action items). Should even be possible to dictate concept maps that way. Or even write Python functions on the go.
Sounds functionally correct. I imagine that if glutamate levels are building up in the brain, then exercise that increases blood flow to the brain while also increasing oxygenation and carbon dioxide removal via increased breathing would help flush the brain and reset the metabolite levels. This might be assited by also relaxing the cognitive functions during exercise, i.e. not thinking about much of anything.
Walking, on a fast pace, is the best stress reliever and mind clearing activity for me. I still think about stuff but usually my mind wanders through unimportant stuff like books I'm reading, movies or even hobby projects. It's so cathartic that afterwards I feel my body a bit numb and the fog in my brain is gone.
I found about this after covid lockdown where I'd go for 3h long walks.
