
The Top Idea in Your Mind  - tarunkotia
http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html
======
michael_nielsen
A very closely related idea is that most people have a "ground state": an
activity that they naturally gravitate toward when nothing else intervenes.

For many people, their ground state is shopping, or talking with friends, or
watching tv. Nothing wrong with any of these.

For some people, their ground state is aimless coding, or writing, or drifting
around some community (e.g., the community of actors, or musicians, etc).
Again, nothing wrong with any of these, and they may be a useful way of
learning, or having ideas.

But for a very small number of people their ground state is much more focused.
I've known people whose ground state is writing papers about physics or
mathematics. And it's simply unbelievable what such people can get done in a
year. (Note, mind you, that very few professional physicists or mathematicians
fall into this category.)

I haven't founded or worked at a startup. My observation-from-the-outside is
that founders often have to take on many different tasks. And I wonder how
difficult that must make it for any of them to become a ground state task.

~~~
quickpost
I like your idea... it makes me wonder if it's possible to change your own
"ground state". It certainly seems like it would be an awesome lifehack if you
could change it over time to suit your objectives.

~~~
alnayyir
In my experience, yes. I shifted my ground-state from 90% video games to 33%
video games + 66% coding.

It's helped a lot, but I would like to push it further.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
All work and no play..

~~~
alnayyir
I do a lot of non-work-related coding in addition to my work-related coding.

I do it because I enjoy it.

Nobody's going to pay me to (edit: because I'm not a tenured professor) make
finite state machines, toy languages in LLVM, and roguelikes.

~~~
klipt
The problem with roguelikes is that while coding them is good practice,
actually playing them is pretty much a pure waste of time. Which makes me
wonder whether I can still justify coding them...

~~~
thewhitewizzard
This can be said of any game. Whether or not something is a waste of time is
determined by the user, not the creator of the game. If you like coding them,
then code them and gain the experience of coding them.

------
nostrademons
I suspect that one of the major reasons why big companies are incapable of
innovating is that the top idea on most employees minds' is "What is my boss
thinking about me?" Followed closely by "What are my coworkers thinking about
me?" Social approval is a powerful motivator, particularly when that social
approval is essential for your continued livelihood. Only the most self-
confident (or delusional ;-)) people can completely ignore their boss's
opinion and focus on innovating.

I suspect that at least some of Google's success has come from the hands-off
culture of its management. You don't generally fear your manager's
disapproval, since the bulk of your review comes from your peers. OTOH, you're
still thinking about your coworkers' approval, and while it's a bit easier to
ignore many people than it is to ignore one person, it's still hard. I suspect
that one reason why startups can still out-innovate Google comes from an
intense focus on their product, instead of being distracted by all the other
perks, projects, and people at the Googleplex.

Similarly, scrappiness in a startup isn't just a matter of saving money. It's
also a matter of avoiding distraction: when you're thinking about how awesome
your life is, you aren't thinking about your product. You want enough perks so
that employees don't have to have other things intrude on their consciousness
(like where to buy lunch or what will happen to them when their COBRA benefits
run out), but not so much that the perks distract from the project.

~~~
pg
Actually there was a paragraph about this in the essay that I cut:

    
    
        The Nile Perch quality of disputes may help explain why large
        organizations are so unproductive.  The size of large organizations
        insulates them from the forces that keep smaller ones in line.
        Questions tend to be decided instead by political battles, and such
        disputes have a terrible cost because they push other ideas out of
        all the participants' heads.  Politics is like an infectious disease,
        because political schemers suck up not just their own attention,
        but also that of all the people in their way, who might otherwise
        have been thinking about other things.

~~~
matwood
What a great time for me to read this essay and in particular this part you
left out.

My small team operates as a startup inside of a large company. We have
produced more software at a faster pace than any other group in the company.
We had a conf call today with the powers that be who have decided they want
more process.

Why would they do this? Well, while other groups are sitting around talking
about resource this and ticket that we have simply been churning out software
that meets the operational needs. The problem is that by doing this we are
stepping on all sorts of political toes..."why did your team do this it's not
your area?"

Sigh, I guess it's time to move on so I can get my mindset back to solving
problems with software.

~~~
roedog
It sounds like they want to control something that works so they can claim
credit, or at least reap the rewards. I went through this a couple years ago.
It's painful.

I worked on a system that we had deployed and that was working. A competing
group, highly process oriented, who were was still generating requirements
paperwork, but not a single line of code. Their objective was to take over our
project. They played mean politics. Eventually they took charge.

~~~
matwood
Yeah, taking credit is definitely a big part of it, but it's more than that.
By simply doing what we do we keep making other groups in the company look
horrible. I don't think we're all-stars, but in big corporations it seems that
just doing your job with a results minded attitude easily sets you above the
rest.

Also, don't think we anti-process :) I'm a stickler for SCM and testing, but
we operate in an agile manner. Most projects start out with a 'hey, this would
be cool' and then we iterate based on user feedback. Early on code changes can
roll out daily, while the new process wants us to bundle our code and hand it
to a 'deployment team' who might take 2 weeks to get around to deploying. How
this is acceptable is beyond my comprehension, but it might explain why other
groups never seem to deliver anything (or put 6 months on any timeline).

I told my boss today that if this goes through that it will likely destroy
what makes us so successful and he agreed. I'll just look at it as motivation
to work harder on my own ideas and maybe once and for all escape ;)

------
grellas
There is a lesson here about lawsuits, which will drain you of _both_ money
and peace of mind all at the same time. Sometimes you can't turn the other
cheek, much as you would like to do so, and have no choice but to fight.
Having the guts to stand up for yourself (or for your company) is in itself a
virtue and there are times when it is best not to walk away. Unless you are in
such a spot, though, always consider that the engagement _will_ cost you
dearly in just the ways pointed out in this fine essay - it will consume your
waking thoughts and may even pop up in your dreams (or nightmares) (and it
will cost lots of money, enough to sink most startups as a matter of course).
Therefore, when it comes to lawsuits, use your best judgment but _always_
count the cost before proceeding.

~~~
Mz
For many situations, having really good radar so you know how to avoid
stepping in it before it puts you on a slippery slope is the only hope of
avoiding the necessity to take a stand. I'm fortunate in that I seem to have a
natural knack for such things (and have intentionally honed it with both
formal and informal study). Of course, one problem with being good at
something like that is that it essentially cannot be proven. Avoiding trouble
often doesn't look to other people like one has done anything. :-/

~~~
Kaizyn
Good radar or no, you still have to keep an eye out for the unknowable "black
swans". In any case, good radar for trouble just means you've traded away most
of the peace of mind that comes with obliviousness in exchange for an
unquantifiable reduction in hassles.

~~~
Mz
_you've traded away most of the peace of mind that comes with obliviousness in
exchange for an unquantifiable reduction in hassles._

There is some truth to that. I do, at times, fret too much. So there is some
cost in terms of peace of mind. However, even though I cannot prove to other
people that there is a cause and effect relationship (between my actions and
specific outcomes) and even though the reduction in hassles cannot be
quantified with exactitude, that doesn't mean I cannot quantify it
sufficiently to conclude that the benefit is well worth the cost.

For example: My divorce was amicable and there were no lawyers. IIRC, the
average cost of a divorce lawyer when and where I got divorced was $18,000.
No, I can't know if I "would" have spent $5000 or $18,000 or $40,000. I can
know that I saved thousands of dollars on lawyers fees by having an amicable
divorce. I am also very certain that it benefited me by more than that: I got
thousands more from my husband than I was legally entitled to. My husband was
not a wealthy man. After paying lawyers, there wouldn't have been that much to
fight over. (He had a job, we had a bunch of debts and some household
possessions.) I have every reason to believe that the approach I took was all
to the good. Can I prove that to skeptics beyond a shadow of a doubt? No. Can
I measure it with a high degree of confidence for my own peace of mind? _Yes._

------
DTrejo
Nassin Taleb calls this "glander."

 _Glander best describes the notion of lifting all inhibitions to “tinker
intellectually in an undirected stochastic process aiming at capturing some
idea that will enrich your corpus”. “Researching” or “thinking” smack of a
top-down activity." More on Glander by Taleb: "It is an irony that the academy
does not have a word for the process by which discovery works best –but slang
does. I was trying to describe in a letter what I am currently doing: French
would not let me. But argot lends itself very well... I am involved in an
activity called “Glander”, more precisely “glandouiller”. It means “to idle”,
though not “to be in a state of idleness” (it is an active verb). Gandouiller
denotes enjoyment. The formal French word is “ne rien faire” (to do nothing),
which misses on the active part –so do words that have a languishing
connotation. Glander is what children without soccer moms do when they are out
of school. It resembles flâner which has this perambulation part; though
Glander does not have any strings attached. The Italians have farniente but it
is really doing nothing. Even the Arabs do not have a verb for Glander: the
construction takaslana from the Semitic root ksl denotes laziness (other words
imply some inertia)."

Newton was a “glandeur”; In Dijksterhuis 2004:

George Spencer Brown has famously said about Sir Isaac Newton that “to arrive
at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of
contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior
of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking.
Simply bearing in mind what it is that one needs to know.”_

— Excerpt from The Black Swan

~~~
gruseom
What a marvelous paragraph. It almost makes me want to give Taleb a second
chance (Fooled by Randomness did nothing for me). This is a sharp observation:

 _Glander is what children without soccer moms do when they are out of
school._

I'm reminded of someone (maybe John Taylor Gatto) who wrote about the
education he got as a boy from long hours spent at a pond.

Also interesting that while he addresses the lack of similar words in Arabic
and Italian, he doesn't mention the lack of such a word in English, which of
course is the only reason he's writing the paragraph to begin with. "Idleness"
is loaded with a Protestant strain of the moralism he's objecting to. I
suppose colloquialisms like "hanging out" and "chilling" convey something of
the idea, but lack its generative core. "Reverie" comes to mind as having a
similar quality; telling, perhaps, that it too is French.

~~~
logicalmind
_I'm reminded of someone (maybe John Taylor Gatto) who wrote about the
education he got as a boy from long hours spent at a pond._

If you discover what you were referring to, please post. I am curious to read
about that. I did a bit of searching and as far as I can find, Gatto discussed
ponds and education in relation to Thoreau's Walden Pond experience.

~~~
foompy_katt
I believe the body of water was the Monongahela river, actually, but close
enough :). Go to <http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc3.htm> and
then click on Chapter 10.

That's from the online version of "The Underground History of American
Education", which is worth reading in its entirety. The published version is
even better and has been updated and corrected. Enjoy!

~~~
gruseom
You're right! The text I was thinking of was Chapter 3 of _Dumbing Us Down_ ,
which is titled "The Green Monongahela".

------
sridharvembu
This is great essay - pg's best in my opinion!

I call the thoughts my mind drifts to as the "background thread" in my CPU.
And there are times when that background thread is very productive and
enjoyable. Alas, there have are times when that thread is destructive -
conflict, as pg mentions, is a very destructive background thread.

In general, I have found that the bad threads are much more persistent than
good threads, which means that is is harder to get out of a bad thread than a
good one. As an example, it is far easier to slip out of "How does this thing
work" thread running in the back of my mind, but very hard to get out of "How
unfair that ..." in that it takes a more conscious effort to get out of it.

I also would say that the difference between when I was 25 vs when I reached
40 is that I am now much more conscious of these threads. That awareness makes
it somewhat easier to avoid bad threads (alas, not always). There is still a
kind of thermodynamic efficiency involved, in that there is a maximum good-
thread percentage.

As an aside, the spiritual philosopher Eckhart Tolle has many interesting
things to say about these.

~~~
lkozma
Also the famous zen story describes a similar idea:

copy/paste:

Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and
there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young
woman was standing unable to walk across because of a puddle of water. The
elder of the two monks went up to a her lifted her in his alms and left her on
the other side of the road, and continued his way to the monastery. In the
evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said, "Sir, as monks, we
cannot touch a woman ?" The elder monk answered "yes, brother". Then the
younger monk asks again, " but then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on
the roadside ?" The elder monk smiled at him and told him " I left her on the
other side of the road, but you are still carrying her "

------
dangrossman
I realized the ability of my unconscious mind to solve hard problems some time
around high school. I made good use of it in college, especially in courses
involving coming up with algorithms or proofs. I could rarely come up with a
good solution consciously, but if I spent 30 minutes thinking about the
problem right before bed, the next morning optimal answers would come easily.

I also formed a habit of driving at least an hour away to do regular shopping
(groceries and such) on weekends. The long drive on the mostly empty highways
let me daydream without distraction, kind of like a long shower. I made a lot
of architectural decisions for my web apps while on those drives.

~~~
Tycho
Mark Zuckerberg does this a lot, even without an excuse, reportedly (the
driving to think).

~~~
brm
So does Noah Everett from twitpic

~~~
vitolds
So does Ray Kurzweil from Queens.

------
jazzychad
I've called this type of thinking "subconscious thought" for years (thought
"ambient thought" has a nice ring to it). This is exactly why I _always_ have
at least two current projects to work on. When I get stuck on some problem in
one project and cannot solve it in a reasonable amount of time (depends on the
project, could be 5 minutes, could be a day), I will force myself to stop
working on it and do a full context switch to another project.

My subconscious mind grinds on the problem in the background without me having
to exert any real effort thinking about it, until it finally finds a solution
and raises an interrupt in my conscious mind.

This process has become so effective, that if I can spot a problem coming, I
say to myself, "I should figure out how to solve X", and don't think about it.
A few days later when I come back to it, as if by magic, I have a solution
already starting to form.

This is the same phenomenon that causes you to wake up in the middle of the
night with an answer to a question you were thinking about earlier in the
day... usually, "who sings this blasted song?"

The brain is an amazing, complicated, wonderful thing.

~~~
eelco
Same here. I like having multiple projects active at the same time, mostly
because of the 'switch when stuck' possibility, but also just to give my brain
some time _not_ to think about the project. I think I'll go crazy if I had
just a single top idea.

On the other hand, when inspired, working for a longer stretch (couple of
weeks) on one single thing also works really well for me.

Ah, well, I guess it is a matter of balance (like most things in live :)

------
photon_off
I love reading these essays so much. There's something about the tone, perhaps
because it's slightly playful and a bit pensive, that causes the curiosity at
the core of the writing to become the unstated focal point. And for some
reason, I find it more enjoyable to find meaning in things when they aren't
explicitly written. Kind of like a special bond you have with someone, even a
perfect stranger, when you're the only group of people to really "catch the
drift".

I love the process of trying to figure things out that happens in these
essays. Really, it's just great. Keep it up pg.

------
b_emery
I think this is why meditation can be so beneficial. With practice, you can
take control of the thoughts going through your mind, eventually becoming
quite good at it. Later on, say at work (or in the shower), you can then make
the top thing on your to-do list the top idea in your mind.

Usually my top idea is a lot more fun to think about than all the other
nonsense (conflicts, minutiae, etc) so that helps too.

------
ErrantX
On the subject of dispute as a distraction; I've observed this almost every
day for the last 4 years as a Wikipedia contributor.

You jump into article looking to improve them - add content, format, tweak,
source and so on.

But within hours someone disputes the use of a word or the reliability of a
source. Which usually gets sorted in a quick discussion - but often takes
ages, drags in other editors and winds up with a month long discussion on
various noticeboards and talk pages and edit wars on articles.

And you can see four or five of them start a week.

All over a single sentence. :)

So, yeh, I can relate a lot to what Newton was saying.

~~~
philwelch
That's why I quit Wikipedia three years ago after three years as a
contributor.

------
maxharris
"Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who
does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by
taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore
injuries you can at least avoid the second half. I've found I can to some
extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling
myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head. I'm always delighted to find
I've forgotten the details of disputes, because that means I hadn't been
thinking about them. My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my
motives are purely selfish."

This is brilliant, ethically (and practically - the two are never at odds in
my view).

------
BrandonM
I've recognized this phenomenon in myself in the last several years, but I
never articulated it this well. I would just tell people that I had a "one-
track mind," and that even though I find myself analyzing things a lot, it
tends to gravitate towards whatever I happen to be working on most.

I have observed this several different times in my life: When I thought I was
in (actually out of) love in high school, that was all I could think about,
and I put out a ridiculous amount of poetry describing my "anguish". At
various times I got caught up with different games: Everquest, Chess,
Minesweeper, Battle for Wesnoth, Poker, and Chess again; at each point, I
found myself spending all my leisure time on a single game, and all of my idle
thoughts considering different opening sequences, or mine layouts, or starting
hands: whatever was applicable to current "addiction". When I have been in
relationships, I find that I tend to be consumed with not only the small
disputes (as pg describes), but with things like "sweet" things I can do or
say to make my s.o. happy -- thoughts tend to drift toward planning,
anticipation, reconciliation, and any number of other difficult bits that are
part of a serious relationship. At various points I have also found myself
wrapped up in technical things like math, physics, computer science, and
startups in general. And lately my top idea has been the nature of life, human
relations, introspection, and psychedelics.

So for me, it basically seems to be whatever is currently consuming the
majority of my consciously-used brain power. Some social problems are hard and
require a lot of brain power to try to solve. The same goes for philosophical
or cash flow problems. Of course, topics in math or science or engineering are
most likely to take up this brain power, but for me at least, those are the
things that I tend to procrastinate on the most.

So even though I find myself inclined to consume my top idea space with
relevant technical stuff, I tend to nudge those out of my mind when I'm
thinking consciously, instead focusing on more immediate topics
(entertainment, socializing, paying bills). The worst part is that I _know_
that if I'd only restructure my free time to actually work on worthwhile
things, I would see my productivity increase many-fold due to the "Top Idea
Effect". I'm really not sure what's stopping me from doing that.

------
proee
My background thoughts and ideas are usually based on what I really WANT to be
doing, not what I SHOULD be doing (i.e. for my employer).

In fact, the basis for our startup came when I was focusing on the first, and
ignoring the latter. The distraction to focus on the first became so strong
that forming a startup was inevitable.

Now that I'm focused 100% on the startup, my thoughts are based on what I want
to be doing AND what I should be doing - it's a great feeling!

------
hugh3
The effectiveness of thinking in the shower is why I hate shower curtains. If
you have a proper transparent glass shower screen instead, you can write and
draw on it as it steams up.

When I get my own place, this will be my first renovation: the ultimate
thinking shower.

~~~
noonespecial
After one too many great ideas fogged over, I've decided that there's a
product idea in semi-waterproof "dry" erase markers for shower doors.

I'd buy a dozen.

~~~
istari
A random Calvin and Hobbes comic strip popped into my mind:

Calvin bugs his mom about money

Calvin's mom is exasperated

Calvin asks his mom for soap. "Yes, have all the soap you want"

Calvin sitting before his parents' car, grinning, with "4 SALE, CHEEP" written
across the windshield

Maybe you should buy some soap?

~~~
revorad
There's a danger here of soap becoming the top thought in one's mind.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Yep, thanks you you and hugh3, I just spent 10 minutes searching for a product
such as this.

------
physcab
This is exactly why you want a company culture like Zappos. If you work for a
company like Zappos, you probably think less about things like disputes,
medicare, salary, etc which means you can focus more on doing great work. I'm
sure they aren't perfect but I've heard enough about Tony Heisch's philosophy
about creating a great workplace to know employees are probably on average
happier working there. Any Zappos employees here care to elaborate?

------
Arun2009
Jacques Hadamard gives an account of a similar phenomenon (a sudden flash of
an idea) in Mathematics in his Psychology of invention in the Mathematical
field (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Hadamard#On_creativity>).

Also, _very coincidentally_ , I have been reading up classical works on
"proper conduct" in an attempt to do a spring cleaning of personal attitudes
for pretty much the same reason as PG's - it just frees up a lot of mental
energy. I'm currently doing a parallel reading of The Dhammapada and the
Analects of Confucius. Earlier I read the Thirukkural (English translation,
alas! - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/20912297/Tirukkural-of-
Tiruvalluva...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/20912297/Tirukkural-of-Tiruvalluvar-
English-Translation-Complete)).

If you or I rationally considered affairs and made up quotes ("'Tis easy to
achieve an aim, if it be firmly kept in mind"), they wouldn't have the moral
authority and rhetorical power they do coming from the world's classics. It
just feels nice to work from ready-made axioms of conduct.

------
ddewey
PG talks about the problem of having a top idea that he didn't want, something
practical like making money or impractical like disputes, stealing his
ambient-thought time.

I have the opposite problem: practical things that need some ambient thought
to really get right (day-to-day work, money stuff) fall by the wayside, while
things that I care about or find more interesting (like programming projects
or relationships) take all the ambient time. Anyone else find this happening?
Have coping strategies?

I guess I have a long way to go towards controlling my ambient thought. Maybe
this is part of why I always had trouble "forcing myself" to study
effectively?

~~~
edash
The issue of day-to-day work falling by the wayside was addressed in pg's
essay on "Good and Bad Procrastination"

<http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html>

~~~
ddewey
Wow, that's an inspirational read. Thanks. Maybe I won't try to fix my
"problem" :)

Hamming's Questions ("What are the most important problems in your field? Are
you working on one of them? Why not?") are great, but somewhat daunting. Maybe
the blow can be softened by loading those problems into ambient thought mode
instead of pounding against them systematically. That was one of Feynmann's
methods: keep a few hard problems in the back of your head all the time and
wait to stumble on something that helps.

~~~
aharrison
I have always envisioned Hamming's third question as less of a leading
question and more of an honest one. Having read that lecture, I think if I
said "well, because they don't pay and I have a mortgage" Hamming would have
just as easily agreed and moved on. The interesting part to me about this
series of questions is more that it requires being honest with yourself. That,
and the fact that most of the people he asked were apparently insulted, took
it negatively, and hated him for it. Not only could they not be honest with
themselves, they metaphorically shot the messenger.

Still, a great series of questions to make you re-evaluate your course in
life.

------
barmstrong
Wow - this really resonated with me.

I have some investment properties and I've been realizing recently that even
if they are decent investments, they have too often become the top idea in my
mind when I didn't want them to be. This tax on my productivity and creativity
could actually make them a net negative.

------
olliesaunders
In response to the first footnote: I know it by the name intellectus, which
apparently comes from Thomist Josef Pieper in his book "Leisure: The Basis of
Culture". In it he says:

 _The middle Ages drew a distinction between the understanding as ratio and
the understanding as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive, logical
thought, of searching and of examination, of abstraction, of definition and
drawing conclusions. Intellectus, on the other hand, is the name for the
understanding insofar as it is the capacity of simplex intuitus, of that
simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye. The
faculty of mind, man's knowledge, is both these things in one, according to
antiquity and the Middle Ages, simultaneously ratio and intellectus; and the
process of knowing is the action of the two together. The mode of discursive
thought is accompanied and impregnated by an effortless awareness, the
contemplative vision of the intellectus, which is not active but passive, or
rather receptive, the activity of the soul in which it conceives that which it
sees._

------
jiganti
If anyone is interested in further reading on the subject of ideas and how to
manipulate the "drifting" of them, I suggest reading "The DaVinci Method". A
decent amount of research has been done correlating the tendency to be
distracted with creativity, the rationale being that these people have less
control over their thoughts.

Those with ADD/ADHD among other "disorders" tend to be more prone for an
outside-the-box thought process.

Some things you can do to stimulate your Alpha brain waves, which give you
adequate conditions for what Paul Graham calls "drifting" include walking
barefoot on grass, and staring into the darkness while laying in bed before
falling asleep.

I tend to have a lot of abstract thoughts, some brilliant and many more
ridiculous, and I have benefited greatly from writing them all down in my
phone. Translating them into english is extremely beneficial, and it's
surprising how easy abstract thoughts are to forget. I would suggest this for
anyone who is in any field requiring an ounce of creativity.

------
kenpratt
This reminds me of the famous poem "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann. Same sort of
philosophy.

<http://www.fleurdelis.com/desiderata.htm>

"Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit." is a
good method of keeping overly dramatic interpersonal interactions from
affecting your top idea.

------
euccastro
Minor nitpick:

 _The reason this struck me so forcibly [...]_

While "forcibly" isn't wrong here, if you mean "with force" (sin. poignantly)
rather than "by force" (sin. inevitably) then "forcefully" is less ambiguous:

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/forcibly>

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/forcefully>

------
ashishbharthi
I mostly juggle between what I call work thoughts and life thoughts. Work
thoughts are strictly work related and life thoughts are buying house, paying
mortgage, buying car, paying loan, planning vacations and the like. I am
having this trouble only after I got married.

Does anybody having similar problem? Which ones should be your shower
thoughts: work thoughts or life thoughts?

I think my problem could be resolved if I start taking shower twice a day!

------
berryg
Ap Dijksterhuis is a famous Dutch psychology professor and has written a lot
about unconscious thought. He even has a Unconscious Lab, see:
[http://www.unconsciouslab.com/index.php?page=People&subp...](http://www.unconsciouslab.com/index.php?page=People&subpage=Ap%20Dijksterhuis).
You can find a lot of links to scientific papers on this website. He is also
the author of a Dutch bestselling book on unconscious thought "Het slimme
onbewuste". Unfortunately it has not been translated in English.

In an article on the BBC website
(<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4723216.stm>) he says:

"The take-home message is that when you have to make a decision, the first
step should be to get all the information necessary for the decision. Once you
have the information, you have to decide, and this is best done with conscious
thought for simple decisions, but left to unconscious thought - to 'sleep on
it' - when the decision is complex."

------
scottyallen
I realized while in college that I did my best thinking in the shower/bath
tub. But I always forgot my good ideas in the process of drying off/getting
dressed, before I could write them down.

So I went out and bought an underwater slate (divers use them to communicate
and record information underwater). It's probably 6"x9", made out of plastic,
and has a pencil attached with a cord. I can jot down
notes/sketches/doodles/whatever when I come up with an idea, and take the
slate with me when I get out of the shower to record in a more permanent
fashion. To erase, I just scrub it with a green scrubber sponge. I love it -
it's paid for itself many times over.

I also tried bathtub crayons. They're good in that you have more surface area
to write on, but they wash off more easily and it's not as convenient to
permanently record whatever you wrote down (it's hard to take the shower wall
with you when you get out).

------
nagrom
"(I hear similar complaints from friends who are professors. Professors
nowadays seem to have become professional fundraisers who do a little research
on the side. It may be time to fix that.)"

There are too many words in that second sentence. I work in academia, and I
know of very few professors who have any time to do research whatsoever.
What's more, modern professors tend not be the people who were great at
research - they're organisers, politicians and project managers.

I've often wondered about the similarities between a research leader and a
start up founder, especially highly technical start ups. I have the greatest
respect for anyone who can continue to write top quality advanced code and
employ people, raise money, market and network. The individual tasks aren't so
hard, but the combination is a killer.

------
MJR
This hit me like a ton of bricks. It makes so much sense now that this could
easily be the grounding principle behind the common saying "Do what you love
and the money will follow". If you're doing what you love, your thoughts are
focused on that. When what you love is your top idea you have the focus to
innovate, solve problems, etc.

If you're too worried about making money, you'll be too preoccupied with that
to give any thought to other things. If you're too concerned with a specific
outcome, you end up taking energy away from the actions that will ultimately
drive any outcome at all. Focus on your top idea and the rest will follow.
It's not always as simple as it sounds, but I think there's a lot of truth
there.

------
ztay
A nice actionable insight, "You can't directly control where your thoughts
drift. If you're controlling them, they're not drifting. But can control them
indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into."

------
JesseAldridge
While changing your top thought directly may not be feasible, I think you can
at least adjust the weights on various competing thoughts. For instance, my
aunt is the president of a teacher's union and she recently recruited me to
work on their website. She's paying me $25 an hour. I can feel the money
pulling around my ankles like quicksand. It would be dangerously easy to get
sucked into making web pages for the rest of my life. I tell my friends about
the job and they say, "That's great!" and their respect for me increases
palpably. I can tell they don't really understand startups and hacking and
have been thinking of me as just being kind of a bum all this time.

But I tell myself: "This is not what I want to do with my life. I'm doing this
as a favor to my aunt. I'm doing this on the side, just to make enough money
to keep working on the stuff I really want to work on. That is my real focus,
designing web-pages is not." And then when people say, "That's great!", I tell
them the same stuff I told myself. I think saying the words out loud to others
helps me convince myself on a deeper level.

So maybe by affirming your own values you can allow what you really want to be
focused on to naturally rise above the petty stuff.

I also agree with disputes being a huge distraction. One guy I used to work
with is extremely contrary by nature. He would argue with anything I said,
seemingly out of habit more than anything else. After arguing with him, I
would invariably find myself turning over the argument in my head and having a
hard time focusing on work. Eventually I decided the guy was hurting me more
than helping and that I needed to stop working with him. There were several
other factors involved, but that was a big one.

One way to avoid disputes like that is to be single founder. Or at least seek
out a co-founder who is agreeable. I watched an interview with Larry and
Sergei the other day. They were asked, "What do you guys argue about?" and
they seemed kind of stumped for a moment before one of them said, "We don't
really disagree about much..."

This essay also helps explain the vague sense of frusteration and despair I
feel whenever a friend wants to visit, or whenever I need to visit my family.
Inevitably interpersonal relationships end up forcing their way to the top of
my brain. Living a monk-like life of isolation is the best way I know of to
focus on real problems.

Lastly, I think it is possible to do "ambient thinking" intentionally. Just
sit or lie down somewhere comfortable (but not so comfortable you fall
asleep), and do nothing for several minutes. Time passes amazingly slowly when
you're doing nothing, so you don't need to worry about wasting time. Your mind
will naturally start defragmenting itself and playing with various ideas -- at
least mine does.

~~~
megablast
Sorry, I do not see the problem of actually working and getting paid, while
working on your own projects. How else are you living? (You sound like someone
out of college who has not worked before, if this is not the case then ignore
that sentence. If you have worked, and are taking a break to pursue your
startup, then I completely understand.)

Meanwhile you are learning about doing web pages, and more importantly,
dealing with clients.

I do like your point that isolating yourself from many distractions really
help you focus, but probalby not a good idea to do it for too long.

~~~
JesseAldridge
Well, as the essay suggests, "working and getting paid" will become your top-
thought and "working on your own projects" will start to slip away.

If I focused on getting paid, I think I would start to rationalize putting
short-term gains ahead of long-term gains. I would tell myself that by working
I'm learning X, Y or Z while avoiding thoughts like, "...but those things are
easy."

I am recently out of college, yes. Or rather I dropped out (about five years
ago). I'm living off of savings -- about $5000 a year. You can stretch a
little bit of money a long way like that.

And yeah, _completely_ isolating oneself is probably a bad idea.

------
runT1ME
Has PG matured an incredibly amount in the last few years? Honestly, I hated
his writing before (which may be part of the point, incite controversy and get
me to remember who he was and what he said), but lately I've thought his
essays were very well done...

Am I alone in this trend? Did he just win me over because of time?

On this particular topic he's quite right that letting your mind drift, but
also controlling the environment of that can lead to good things. I'm going to
actively make an effort to try this from now on.

~~~
istari
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to
have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much
the old man had learned in seven years." \-- Mark Twain

snark/

------
tmsh
Now that I think this phenomenon is very clearly articulated, I wonder if it
isn't possible to have multiple 'top [ideas] in your mind' or 'ground states'.

It could be simply a matter of training your brain to have a strong _stack_
for traversing the two or maybe three key _areas_ or _contexts_ that you're
thinking about.

I.e., one solution is: make sure your top idea or ground state really is what
you want. Another solution may be: train a better graph visitation algorithm.

However, trying to train one's unconscious may be sort of like quantum physics
-- i.e., for lack of a better word: difficult. Perhaps you can just throw two
or three main things you'd like to see happen into a collider, go to sleep or
take a shower, and see what happens. But it may be possible to train yourself
to think with very clear visitation between different contexts consciously,
and actually have this process bubble down into the unconscious and take hold
there too. I.e., hack your unconscious. Arguably it's the same sort of thing
we do when we try to offload parallel processing onto a GPU or cloud (though
in those cases the hardware is much more specific).

------
bootload
_"... If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half.
I've found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have
done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head. ..."_

Sage advice. It doesn't always work because you can't control what you think
all the time but a good, _"habit of mind"_.

------
covercash
For me, water in general has a calming effect, letting my body relax and my
mind wander. I can stand in the shower with water flowing over me and get lost
in thought or I can float in a pool and not realize where time went. I find I
have more technical thoughts in the shower and in the pool I tend to lean
toward more creative ideas.

------
dfranke
_I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time._

I'm not so sure this is true. It's true of me; it may be true of you; it's
probably true of most HN readers. However, non-geeks who know me well enough
to observe this of me think it's weird, which leads to me to think it's not
true of people in general.

------
corysama
A book that deals directly with the strengths and limitations of the
unconscious reasoning pg is talking about is "Hare Brain Tortoise Mind".

[http://www.amazon.com/Hare-Brain-Tortoise-Mind-
Intelligence/...](http://www.amazon.com/Hare-Brain-Tortoise-Mind-
Intelligence/dp/0060955414)

I recommend it to everyone I know.

------
dgudkov
This topic confirms one more time that personal productivity strongly depends
on capability to manage thoughts. While it's not possible to manage thoughts
fully, at least there are some ways to influence the way of thinking.
Successful high-performers (like PG) usually have found their own ways to do
it.

------
gfodor
Great essay, and great writing.

This is why I shower twice a day. The morning shower is to boot the brain and
for all the other things that showering is done for.

The second shower is simply to think, before the night's coding binge.
Refreshed and with clear thoughts, I find that it provides a fresh start for
the evening's challenges.

------
jnaut
I haven't seen such subtle observations of mind laid out so cleanly and
perfectly, ever before. I was going all thru such "unnecessary drifting"
disputes/money, for quite some time in recent past, but realised it just now.
Feels like enlightened!

I need to change the top idea in my mind for sure. But as pg rightly noted and
I quote: """Money matters are particularly likely to become the top idea in
your mind. The reason is that they have to be. It's hard to get money. It's
not the sort of thing that happens by default. It's not going to happen unless
you let it become the thing you think about in the shower. And then you'll
make little progress on anything else you'd rather be working on. """ I will
still need to do something about it, without letting it become the top idea in
my mind.

Thanks!

------
danielharan
Corollary: stop working so intently on the problem, and give yourself time to
let your mind wander. Being a workaholic actually impedes creative ability.

No need to stay in the shower for hours. Go dance, swim, skate or climb a
tree: anything but startup related work.

------
euccastro
_[1] No doubt there are already names for this type of thinking, but I call it
"ambient thought."_

The metaphor I had for this is background process, stressing my suspicion that
they hog precious mind resources even when you're not consciously pondering
them.

------
ziadbc
PG is a bona fide philosopher. Just as we had the epicureans and the stoics,
and their houses, we now how the house of ycombinator. AFAIK PG doesn't
necessarily want it to get cultish, but its not cultish if its based in
reason. And based in reason it is. Articles like these are what makes yc more
than just a group of people doling out money for good material ideas. Its a
forum for thinking about philosophical ideas too. This makes it an idealistic
culture, and thats pretty cool.

Background on sensate, ideational, and idealistic cultures.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitirim_Sorokin>

------
danielford
I've been doing this for the last six months, and I didn't even realize it
until now.

Thank you.

------
yewweitan
Thanks for this one Paul. After reading this I just had to draw this one -
<http://scrivle.com/2010/07/22/ideas-in-the-shower/>

------
joubert
Incubation is described in the psychology literature.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_(psychology)>

------
dknight
I had a similar realization recently. I was in the toilet and was preoccupied
by thoughts about some trouble at the bank. Well I was having a host of issues
and very less time to solve all of them. After having a turmoil for a few
minutes, I told myself that I can take more and suddenly my mind was calm. My
mind was no more centred around the issues and the topic had changed to
something else.

I believe the process of thoughts is quite usual; but the process of meta-
thoughts could be more powerful.

------
haidut
The "ambient thinking" in the shower you are referring to has been studied
extensively. Here is the New Yorker article on the studeis of insight and
creativity:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer)

Research suggests (as you have discovered yourself as well) is that the most
creative moments are 1) while showering 2) shortly before going to bed 3)
shortly after waking up.

------
ajj
__"I knew it (in the shower) was a good time to have ideas. Now I'd go
further: now I'd say it's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't
think about in the shower." __

This is so very true. It is incredibly hard to get myself motivated about
things I do not think about in the shower. On the other hand, it is impossible
to stop myself from working towards things I do think about.

Sometimes this is scary -- its almost as if I don't have any control over what
I will be passionately pursuing.

------
alex1
In the 9th paragraph:

"Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones
you want think about."

Should be:

"Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones
you want _to_ think about."

Right?

------
thingsilearned
Well written PG. I sent this to a lot of friends with whom I've had issues
describing my tendency to ignore details, pointless worries, and simplify my
surroundings and lifestyle.

I personally find that keeping schedules in my head is a particularly
distracting practice. If kept in my head there's always something I'm afraid
of forgetting and continually think over it in my mind to keep the thought
fresh. When I use a calendar or have very consistent days my thinking is much
clearer.

------
billswift
page 119 - _But Dijksterhuis's work also shows that our unconscious thought
processes don't engage with a problem until we've clearly and consciously
defined the problem. If we don't have a particular intellectual goal in mind,
Dijksterhuis writes, "unconscious thought does not occur."_

from Nicholas Carr's _The Shallows_.

My local library got a copy right after the review of it was posted on HN. It
makes a really good case against too much browsing web pages or other
hypertext.

------
mmphosis
_Dreaming, a technique employed by Warriors to achieve a "dreaming body" or
"Double". The technique requires the apprentice to see his hands in sleep
dreaming. Once the hands are envisioned the dreaming process has begun. The
"Double" or dreaming body is a metaphysical manifestation of the self that can
be employed by the dreamer to do any number of tasks. Individuals within the
realm of the Tonal (day-to-day conscience) would see the "Other" (also known
as the "Double") as ordinary persons or as other metaphysical (see philosophy)
beings. Seers, would see them as very bright luminous beings, brighter then
their human luminous counterparts. As such the dreamer and the dreamed become
one but not in the same place or time. Dreaming might be compared with
experiences such as lucid dreaming. Through the art of "Dreaming" Naguals
theoretically can shape shift into numerous forms including but not
exclusively the following: coyotes, crows, and non animals._

 _Gazing is another form of "dreaming" and is a waking meditative state._

"I am going to teach you right here the first step to power. I am going to
teach you how to set up dreaming. To set up dreaming means to have a concise
and pragmatic control over the general situation of a dream, comparable to the
control one has over any choice in the desert for instance, such as climbing
up a hill or remaining in the shade of a water canyon. You must start by doing
something very simple. Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands.
Don't think it's a joke. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying or any
other thing in this awesome, mysterious world."

    
    
        DON JUAN MATUS, Journey to Ixtlan

------
johngalt
Sounds almost like Nietzsche on solitude. If you can't control your
environment then you become a product of it. It's difficult to force yourself
to NOT think about something. The brain is a very reactive piece of equipment.

If I said "Don't think about the hexagon on top of Saturn" how many of you
would actually be able to avoid considering it?

------
shaunxcode
For me I find if I DONT "steal" back the time to pursue the top idea I will
perform poorly on what ever else I am trying to get done (contract work). So
it is actually necessary to "procrastinate" and flesh the idea out - more
often than not it ends up being something that has far greater worth than the
"paying" contract work.

------
paulnelligan
For me, there's a very important lesson here about stress management. If you
can manage stress effectively, you're allowing those creative thoughts to
bubble to the surface, eventhough you may be going through the fund-raising
process. Of course, managing the stress is the challenge, talking about it is
no problem.

------
sanj
I refer to this as my "back brain processing".

I've had conversations where I tell people that I'll do the work that they
want me to, but it will only be a fore-brain effort because I've got a much
more interesting problem percolating.

And I try -- hard -- to avoid working for/with/on anything that doesn't engage
the back brain.

------
ddelony
Artists, writers, and other creative people have the same frustration of
having to think about money when they'd rather be thinking about their work
that Graham describes in the essay.

I know we live in interesting economic times, but maybe it's about time for
patronage to make a comeback.

------
samlittlewood
I believe a corollary of this is that a good leader should be working to
maintain this state in those being led - both by removing things that might
displace the good ideas (pay, rations, IT, politics ...) and by keeping the
important subjects intriguing.

------
m_myers
That's funny; I'm almost sure I've read the same basic idea somewhere else
within the past year or two, but I can't for the life of me remember where. I
thought it was Joel on Software, but a little Googling didn't turn it up.
Anyone else?

~~~
username3
<http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

_If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day,
your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake
up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer. For those who
don't get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on
other things and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself
is that when you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get
the center of your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep
your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep
peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free._

~~~
m_myers
Could be, but I'm remembering the specific example of a programmer's mind in
the shower.

~~~
jcl
You might be thinking of an article that was on HN several months ago -- "The
Benefit Of Being Naked":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1244308>

~~~
m_myers
No, I wasn't even on HN then. Turns out it was a Paul Graham article after
all: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1536852>

------
statictype
Playing Devil's Advocate: I would say that sometimes you _have_ to bring
unpleasant thoughts (like fund raising) into the top of your mind. Because if
you don't do it now, then it becomes an even bigger problem later on.

------
orionlogic
I wonder why new essay didn't show up in the feed.

Its very true for me that i found creative solutions in shower to my hard
thought problems. May be i need a water resistant pen to write on the shower
cabinet (possibly there is one).

------
redsymbol
_(I hear similar complaints from friends who are professors. Professors
nowadays seem to have become professional fundraisers who do a little research
on the side. It may be time to fix that.)_

Now there's a startup idea!

~~~
hugh3
How exactly?

In an ideal world, you could sell the service of helping professors to prepare
their research proposals. You could also keep an eye out for grants which the
professors might be interested in, and generally handle the money side of
things for professors who would rather be worrying about something else.

However, I don't think this would work, because the professors have no way to
pay you. As far as I know, no funding agency will fund you for the cost of
contracting someone to prepare your grants for you. And they probably won't
want to do it out of their own pocket, because; heck, this kind of service
will be really expensive (and professors hate funding their research out of
their salaries anyway).

But if you've got another business model, I'm all ears.

~~~
Kliment
I know a company (and its founder) who did exactly that, with success.
Apparently research institutions have some buffer funds, and if they have a
decent chance of getting more funding, will use them to commission such
services. What they did was writing the proposal, proofreading and editing
input supplied by partners, then taking a share in the project and dealing
with management and documentation. Pretty much exactly what you describe here.

------
sashthebash
This is exactly why dating women is dangerous to your startup success ;).

------
da5e
Wow, this is such a simple, yet powerful, idea. It's one of those "why didn't
I think of that" ones. Another good time to discover your real top idea is at
3 am when you wake up thinking about it.

------
mmaunder
So true it'll be hard not to think about in the shower.

------
moolave
That is why they say, ask for something (your good idea for instance) then let
it go. It happens when you least think about it.

------
bluethunder
This is an awesome piece from PG. I have known/felt all of the stuff but was
never able to articulate it as well.

------
steveplace
I always wanted to sell markers you could use in order to write ideas on
shower tiles.

------
indrax
See Also: <http://xkcd.com/386/>

------
cammil
This is a really good essay. Absolutely spot on.

------
eds
Good essay, but paragraph six is redundant.

------
tmsh
I'd been thinking about a sort of related topic a week or so ago -- but I
couldn't remember what it was until, ironically, sleeping last night, so I
thought I'd relate my thoughts real quick.

It's my theory (and this essay does a good job articulating part of it) that
the brain operates at different levels of 'connectedness'. By connectedness I
mean the thresholds at the synapses that determine how many neurotransmitters
'make it' in communication with the nearby neurons. I was reading an AMA from
a neuropsychologist on reddit, and she mentioned that on average each neuron
is connected to 70 other neurons.

So that got me thinking: when you're sleeping, it seems like one makes
connections so much more easily. And wouldn't that be because the thresholds
are lowered and neurotransmission between neurons is increased? So if
previously 40% of your neurotransmitters were making it across the synapse for
the majority of the neurons at each node connection, perhaps that level were
increased to 60% throughput when you're asleep.

This would come about via dopamine or other naturally occurring hormones and
proteins (in addition to drugs, which have the real risk, of course, of
causingyour brain to re-normalize levels) which bind to the chemical receptors
and prevent reception (threreby lowering the throughput). Other hormones
regulate _these_ hormones and increase throughput.

So to make a long story short, if sleep is a natural adaption to vary
'throughput' in the brain's graph of neurons at night -- to ease visitation
and solve things at a much faster, much more 'connected' rate. Then perhaps
this is an evolved tool for problem solving.

Perhaps certain problems are better solved by traversing quickly through the
graph, and perhaps even during the day, as dopamine and other things are
constantly adjusting in the brain, perhaps we vary out global thresholds in
the brain.

So when you take a shower, or take a walk, or do some other activity, you may
be changing your thresholds by 2% -- and that may allow you to see certain
connections that you wouldn't otherwise. Too much 'connectedness' and it's
hard to make logical sense of anything. So for the most part these thresholds
are really quite high (low connectedness).

But I wonder if it isn't a sort of a model for problem solving, with various
different global parameters that affect the edges' connectedness. It's sort of
like having different graph visitation algorithms and then changing the edges'
weights globally to try and rattle through different visitations or insights.

At any rate, this sort of dovetails with what PG was talking about (I
remembered the connection initially because we'd both thought of different
mental states in the shower) -- because anything that becomes the 'top idea in
your mind' probably becomes a much bigger deal than we realize, because we are
used to thinking that we only think with one level or global threshold
parameter. But in reality when there are many levels, a big idea in mind is
being visited much faster at night and in lower threshold / higher throughput
times -- than we probably take for granted -- because, again, we presume that
the only level of connectedness that matters is the one when we are fully
'conscious' during the day.

------
c00p3r
This is very big idea - life is shaped by our mind, but what is shaped our
mind? (behavior, which influences mind through body because they're two sides
of a coin)

But how to control the mind? There are tens of techniques, from caring a
beeper to write a diary every night. You need some kind of exceptions,
interruptions, to catch yourself sweeping away into day-dreams and to return
to the concentraction on the proper subject.

Many people will disagree, but meditation technique offers very efficient
solution, like returning to posture and breathing when mind starts to wander.
It is not like you must convert to Buddhism, it is about understanding how the
mind works.

So, it is just a mater of a regular practicing, which will develop a new habit
of observing where your mind is wandering about, so you could make any
corrections.

This technique works perfectly for most of stresses, anxiety and obsessive
neuroses, so it could help to concentrate on a proper subjects also.

~~~
thailandstartup
Yes, I've found that it is possible to change the 'top idea' in my mind, just
by noticing that I am thinking of it, and choosing to not think, or think of
something else in that moment. This seems to cause thinking about it to occur
less frequently.

------
TotlolRon
Brilliant observations weakened by a cultural biased conclusion.

> _Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages._

It is only true if someones self is defined by the culture of turning the
other cheek. There are other ways to define self and solve a dispute. For
example:

 _And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!"_

That's also a valid selfish conclusion.

~~~
cabalamat
> _It is only true if someones self is defined by the culture of turning the
> other cheek._

Not true. You evidently didn't understand the essay, which makes it clear that
the advantage of turning the other cheek is it frees your mind to think about
productive things rather than unproductive ones.

~~~
TotlolRon
> _the advantage of turning the other cheek is it frees your mind to think
> about productive things rather than unproductive ones._

Your definition of "productive" has the same bias.

Turning the other cheek is _by origin_ an alternative to an eye-for-an-eye.
For a mind that can only be freed with an eye-for-an-eye settlement, turning
the other cheek won't do it. But an eye-for-an-eye approach _can_ be
productive:

 _And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" And he bent with all his
might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it.
So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in
his life._

~~~
anthonyb
Killing yourself and a bunch of other people and destroying a large house?
That is productive... how, exactly?

~~~
TotlolRon
It delivers justice.

(if you've been taught to turn the other cheek you will not see why, but if
you've been taught another way, you will. This _is_ cultural _and_
fundamental)

~~~
anthonyb
It delivers _revenge_. Whether it delivers justice or not depends on the
specific situation, but if you have to resort to vigilantism, probably not.

~~~
TotlolRon
revenge _is_ justice _is_ productive.

I didn't invent it.

The concept of _"turning the other cheek"_ is about 2,000 years old. The
concept of _"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"_ is over twice that
old. They represent two different schools of thought that have been debated
enough.

PG introduced " _turning the other cheek_ " as a means to resolve " _the pain
of having ... controversy constantly reintroduced as the top idea ..._ " and
this is biased. There is another way to resolve the issue, it just comes from
another culture.

(Or in other words, it is true that _"someone who does you an injury hurts you
twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward
thinking about it."_. You can _"at least avoid the second half"_ \- or - you
can try and hurt them twice, no matter the cost. Culture choice.)

~~~
anthonyb
Yes, yes - but it's not _productive_ , is it? Particularly the biblical
example that you gave.

Suppose that I'm an evil supergenius - someone cuts me off in traffic or tells
me that unitards are going out of fashion, so I use my orbiting death ray to
blast the entire world into ashes. Perhaps it's assuaged my sense of injury,
but at what cost?

This is what happens when you use 2,000 year old fiction to support your moral
choices.

~~~
TotlolRon
Now imagine you are me and this is the sugar-coated version of your story:
<http://www.totlol.com/t/story>

~~~
Robin_Message
I read that story a while back, and it sucked. I empathise with your anger and
sympathise with your loss. But I am trying quite hard to write a comment to
say there is another way, and it is better.

> you can try and hurt them twice, no matter the cost. Culture choice.

In trying to hurt them twice, can you hurt them for what it costs you to do
so? Or do you just have to pay that cost out of pocket? And if you hurt them
twice, but they only directly did one bad thing to you, can they hurt you
back? And can you hurt them back for that? Most wars are founded on logic such
as this.

If you are talking Jewish philosophy, what about Job (the book is newer than
an eye for an eye, but Job himself probably lived before the Torah was given)?
I believe Job says (amongst other things), "Life isn't fair. Good things
happen to the bad guys. Bad things happen to the good guys. Accept that in the
knowledge that God will make it right in the end."

~~~
david927
If a strategy doesn't work, _stop it_. Don't hide behind the words "cultural
choice" because they won't protect you from the consequences.

A culture that lives by eye-for-an-eye is a culture that's going to find
itself constantly oscillating between victim and executioner.

I remember once watching three kids. Kids A and B would build a tower of
blocks and Kid C would knock it down. Kids A and B would be devastated,
wailing terribly. While Kid A was crying Kids B and C would build another one.
Kid A would lift up his head, see it, and knock it down. Kids B and C are then
crying, and then Kids A and C start building a new one, and Kid B would knock
it down. This would go on and on, with each child knocking down the tower in
turn, and the other two crying inconsolably about it.

You are not your culture. Your choice is up to you.

