
What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking and Sacred Space - equilibrium
http://99u.com/articles/6947/what-happened-to-downtime-the-extinction-of-deep-thinking-sacred-space
======
WA
I'm sometimes suprised how good just a 30 minute bike ride feels compared to
30 minutes of mindless web surfing. So I'm all for downtime.

However, articles like that are always a bit shallow. It sounds like the
solution is to switch off your phoneand WiFi and everything will be alright.
If I sit down and do nothing, my mind produces nothing oftentimes. I start to
fantasize about having sex, whether I should buy a new gaming computer, what
people would say about clothes I bought a few days ago, whether I need to go
buy some groceries and if so, what I'd need and so on. There is not always
automatically some deep thinking involved.

On the contrary, I even feel like if my mind needs deep thinking (i. e. think
about strategic decisions of my SaaS business), I have no desire to be at my
computer. I have the desire to sit on the couch and look out of the window and
let my mind do the deep thinking.

I wonder if this "issue" is really a non-issue, because most of the time, our
minds are simply bored to death and being disconnected makes not much of a
difference. And in times when deep thinking is required, our mind finds a way
to make it happen.

~~~
enraged_camel
When I used to go cross-country backpacking last year, I often went out of
reception range for cell signals. Most of the time I was hiking in the
wilderness, away from most civilization. Sometimes on day trips, sometimes on
weekend trips.

It was stunningly effective at allowing me to do deep thinking. To make it
less abstract, for me this meant gaining a new perspective in my life (usually
in the form of realizing I'm not the center of the world) and new insights
into problems. What is surprising was that this was not stressful at all. On
the contrary I always came back to the city fully recharged.

Did I think about other stuff such as having sex or buying a new computer? Of
course. But it's like meditation: you have to notice when your mind wanders
and bring it back.

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shaydoc
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most
difficult and the most intellectual –Oscar Wilde 1891.

“Without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the
best things…What will happen when the point has been reached where everybody
could be comfortable without working long hours?”

-Bertrand Russell

“We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can
dispense with their labour by making the others overwork. When all these
methods prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of people to
manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we
were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these
devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a
great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.”

-Bertrand Russell

“There will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness,
and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but
not enough to produce exhaustion…At least 1 per cent will probably devote the
time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance…men
and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and
less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste
for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will
involve long and severe work for all…Modern methods of production have given
us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to
have overwork for some and starvation for the others.”

-Bertrand Russell proposing a 4 hour work day

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david927
It's making us less smart.

I have a theory that intelligence is not so much about the knowledge of facts
but about the relations between those facts (more about the edges than the
nodes). Making distinctions and the opposite, creating abstractions, are where
intelligence arises, and that happens when you're unplugged. It's an
unconscious process, so it happens when you sleep, when you shower, when you
stare out into space.

Where are the great novelists and great artists of today? I think we're not
smart enough, not insightful enough, to write like that anymore. Tolstoy died
a hundred years ago. Where is his replacement, when we have so many more
people and the percentage with access to writing tools and publishing means is
unprecedented in history?

I think they're out there; I think they're watching TV.

~~~
dcminter
They're all reading novels, listening to the wireless, watching TV, on
facebook, ...

The great novelists and great artists of today are lost in the noise. When
history has thrown away the chaff they'll be visible - and people will be
complaining about the low quality of their own contemporaries.

~~~
david927
> _When history has thrown away the chaff they'll be visible_

Tolstoy was famous _in his day_. As was Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Picasso, etc.
Sure there were a few, like Van Gogh, who died before becoming recognized, but
they were fractional exceptions.

Show me _one_ great artist living today -- anyone who can compete with a
Tolstoy or even a Hemingway. Below Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Franzen are
mentioned, but I don't think anyone in their right mind would put them
remotely at that level. You're waiting for history and there's no sign that
you'll do anything but keep waiting.

~~~
dcminter
I can think of lots of candidates for our contemporary historic greats - but
you can easily defeat this argument by assessing them as less great than your
own historic heroes.

You and I will never know. But I'm betting that the contemporary distractions
are no more the cause of mediocrity than the historic ones were.

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buildwonder
Just got back from Quadra Island (British Columbia) after four days of no cell
service and patchy wifi at best -- got a significant amount of thinking
done... made me realize I really only get 2 to 3 hours of actual work done in
the average day due to email, chat, and in-person interruptions... thinking
working at the coffee shop next door to the office could result in
significantly higher productivity... worth an experimental attempt anyway,
right?

~~~
pyre
It depends. I've found that coffee shops aren't a panacea. If your mind is
elsewhere, or you're on-edge, changing settings usually doesn't do much to
help you focus. If the coffee shop is crowded/busy, then you will probably
find it difficult to focus. It's also better to stay away from the flow of
people between the counter and the door (if the coffee shop is large enough,
or structured in a way that permits it).

~~~
leviathan
> If the coffee shop is crowded/busy, then you will probably find it difficult
> to focus.

That really depends. I have been working from home for 5 years now. And the
fact that I'm in a room with no view from the window and no human interaction
drives me crazy, so the solution that works for me is to usually go to a
coffee shop and work from there. I actually found that I need all the noise
and crowd in order to focus, I can get a lot more done in that 1 hour at the
coffee shop than the whole day working at home.

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cageface
This is exactly why I consider modern mobile technology to be a very mixed
blessing. Having all that information available everywhere I go can sometimes
be very useful. But I'm also always tempted to pull out the phone and start
browsing trivia whenever I have a few spare minutes alone or even when there's
a lull in a conversation with friends.

I've noticed my attention span is considerably shorter now than it was ten
years ago and I think this is at least part of the reason why.

------
Hortinstein
I am a distance runner and for years after I graduated running was my time to
work through daily issues and contemplate project ideas and solutions to the
harder problems that take some time to think through.

It was amazing how an half hour to an hour of just thinking to myself let me
step back from the keyboard and let me architect solutions and ideas. Same
thing applied to my relationships (work, personal and romantic).

Unfortunately I discovered audiobooks and podcasts, but I have been fighting
to get back the motivation to just disconnect and think while exercising. I
just got back from an 7 or 8 mile run totally disconnected and it felt great!

~~~
VLM
"Unfortunately I discovered audiobooks and podcasts,"

As an experiment, mess around with the subject. I'm about 10-15 years further
along the path than you by description. I found that liberal arts / history /
pretty much any lecture series from "the teaching company" really cleared my
brain and gave me things to think about.

On the other hand trying to listen to "tech" stuff just turned into an
extension of work, drained more than recharged. Nothing wrong with that stuff
while puttering around or doing yardwork, but it didn't recharge me like doing
something "new".

So do some A/B testing like this:

Podcasts : "Software Engineering Radio" "The Linux Link Tech Show"

vs

Podcasts : "The History of Rome by Mike Duncan" "In our time with Melvyn
Bragg" "Dan Carlin's Hard Core History"

Now see which "group" of media clears and refreshes your mind better. Takes
you off task, lets the unconscious cook for awhile. New ideas sprout to the
surface. Comparisons and Contrasts and historical analogies...

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cjg
The URL without the #comments is better:

[http://99u.com/articles/6947/what-happened-to-downtime-
the-e...](http://99u.com/articles/6947/what-happened-to-downtime-the-
extinction-of-deep-thinking-sacred-space)

~~~
raverbashing
Yes

the pitch for iUnplug is ironic.

No, you don't unplug by installing another app, you unplug by keeping away
from the darn thing

------
VLM
Not bad for propaganda. The method displayed in the article is the assumption
that "of course" we'll spend and consume endlessly all the junk they're
pushing, by definition and without any self control. So occasionally, while
still being mindless eaters most of the time, we could as an ascetic
experiment disconnect, oh but only temporarily, maybe as a BSDM thing to feel
the pain and the joy of reconnecting.

My solution is better and cheaper. Tried facebook for six months OMG what a
time sink and minimal/zero return, deleted account. I don't need a "sabbath
manifesto" or a momentary mental escape, I have a permanent escape to a FB
free world. The real world really is pretty nice, come and join me out here!

"TV time became a controlled endeavor because, otherwise, it would consume
every waking moment."

Um, no, it wouldn't, not for mentally healthy people. Clearly I don't have an
addictive personality. As a financially well off adult I most certainly could
spend endless hours a day watching TV if I wanted. I don't need permission
from my mom, and I can easily afford it. I don't because its highly addictive,
yet fairly boring, and doesn't have much of a return on investment other than
the addiction itself. The analogy with facebook and other social media as
discussed in the article is obvious... People with a severe addiction problem
don't need to read a "sabbath manifesto" as the article suggests, or
occasionally meditate. That just leads to a microscopically better read,
somewhat better rested, hard core addict. They need treatment, medication. Its
like telling a heavy heroin addict in a very condescending tone that all they
really need to do is read one bible verse a day and it'll fix itself, and once
in a while they should wait 15 minutes before getting high, just to appreciate
better the feeling of being high or the trip of experiencing something unusual
for them aka real life.

------
regal
It seems to me that the real problem is the habit of always "doing" something
we're in, making any wasted time when we _could_ be doing something but aren't
feel bad and anxiety producing.

When I'm on a long train ride in a third world country for a half a day or
more with no Internet access and no ability to do work (or surf the web, for
that matter), this feeling of urgency disappears and I feel at peace. When I
try to meditate early in the morning for 20 minutes back at home though, it
takes a lot longer than it should to clear my mind of urgent desires to
"check" on things and make sure nothing's blowing up at the office and get
cracking on the day's agenda.

~~~
pyre

      | a long train ride
    

It depends on the train ride. If it was going through a tunnel (for half of a
day), I might get restless, but if it was going through the country-side, then
you can just gaze at the world whizzing by.

------
begriffs
Looks like more cities could use a "thinkerspace" like what just opened in
Madison, Wisconsin.

[http://blog.begriffs.com/2013/06/madison-thinkerspace-now-
op...](http://blog.begriffs.com/2013/06/madison-thinkerspace-now-open.html)

------
DigitalJack
Excercise blanks my mind very well. I find motorcycle riding does as well, but
traffic sucks where I live.

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outside1234
This is why I mountain bike.

