

Thinking time - grayprog
http://gorban.org/post/14162629940/thinking-time

======
skore
It's also a very good idea to find the right balance with _allowing your brain
to think_ , so not setting a fixed time for it, but recognizing when your
brain is caught in a situation where it _needs to finish a good bunch of
thoughts_. When you push yourself to get work done, you often end up putting
that off for too long and your brain just hits back with a state of general
confusion.

If that's the case - you finding yourself with a busy brain that seems
incapable of finishing any thought - _Stop working_ and allow it some time off
to tie up those loose ends.

I have found that my brain has three modes of working when it comes to
creative thinking - The first is in-the-moment thinking, where and work and
thinking are one - Synchronous Thinking. The second is finishing up thoughts
while I'm doing something else (literally, getting the results to a thought-
process out of the blue) - Asynchronous Thinking. The final one is the one
described here - Exclusive Thinking.

Learning which of those to employ at a given moment (based on your workflow
and mental constitution) is an artform and hard to master, but just being
aware of it is already a big step.

(And not to forget - there is also a fourth one - Exclusive Non-Thinking, but
that's a whole different area of philosophy and more related to general mental
balance than it is to getting work done.)

~~~
keithpeter
Perhaps its my background in Mathematics, but I have a bit of a problem with
the idea of 'putting thinking time on my schedule'.

I find that the thoughts come along when they want to and think themselves
anyway. They laugh at my (paper) diary. I suspect that this is related to me
being on the 'maker' schedule rather than the 'manager' schedule.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

~~~
skore
I really enjoy actual paper notes as well - particularly when you end up in
creative thinking mode, having a completely non-technical capture medium does
the trick for me. I've tried a lot of the electronic stuff, but plain A6 cards
that I can later organize work wonders and I have yet to find something better
(it's not really like I'm looking for something, though - I have found my
sweet spot).

------
eykanal
From my experience, this is immensely helpful in dealing with the problem of
procrastination, which has come up a lot here on HN. I found it to be most
useful in two scenarios:

1) You have a complex problem that will require a complex solution, and you're
procrastinating in figuring out how to deal with the problem.

2) You're coming towards a milestone in a project, and it's time to plan out
the next steps and goals.

For both of those scenarios, just taking a walk with a pen and a notepad can
be the most efficient use of your time. Sometimes a bit of fresh air and slow,
methodical thinking goes a long way.

------
zdw
This reminds me greatly of the GTD "review" process, which is frankly the part
of GTD that I'm worst at doing.

Basically it's scheduling a time to review and evaluate everything on your to-
do list. This seems to be a forward looking "what else can I do?" variation on
that.

