Coffee Shop Visits as a Study Routine

As I progress through my first week of retirement, I think I'm starting some good habits to replace those which going to a forty-hours-per-week job automatically imposed on me. Maybe in future articles I'll spell out some of these, but right now I'll discuss one of them.  In my November 19th article a little more than a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about more consistently resuming the old habit I had of going regularly to a coffee shop (or someplace similar) and studying there.  There's something about a public setting that focuses my attention better on my tasks while not placing demands on my attention.  Mental drifting and external distractions not only interrupt my efforts, but they also dilute them when I'm devoting a bigger part of my mental efforts resisting them, and this place helps with that.  I'm writing this article on my old AlphaSmart word processor, completely disconnected from the Internet and which I later loaded onto my blog site. I take Google translations of past articles I've written, and print them out to take with me here.  Then I go phrase-by-phrase with each of them, temporarily memorizing it in each target language and then writing it down.  I cover a small amount of material daily this way but am training myself better to think in the languages I'm studying.  Now on to other activities I do here: reading, speculating and planning...

Thinking in Target Foreign Languages,

As my retirement date nears, I am looking for new ways to approach various interests and how to make progress in them.  One of these interests is foreign language learning.  One thing I have been hesitant over the past years is thinking in the target languages.  We all think in our own "best" languages, even sub-vocalizing in the process.  That doesn't mean that I instantly conjure up grammatically complete sentences in my mind with any level of sophistication regarding word choices.  But I do think in English, although more in a stream-of-consciousness mode.  The same can be true with languages I am learning, but I need to be intentional about thinking in them since the tendency is always to slip back into English.  I saw a YouTube video on this very subject...click HERE for a link to it.  Another thing about learning foreign languages has to do with the pervasive use of computers and the Internet in this regard.  In earlier years I would read texts and various materials in the foreign language, look up the meanings of new words and record my progress with pen and paper within a notebook. Now some of these language learning sites like LingQ and Anki will track my own vocabulary-building progress as well as providing convenient definitions and sentence examples...that's great! But ultimately, when it comes to reviewing what I've learned...or forgotten that I've learned...I think I need to return to my old tried-and-true comfortable method of writing down my progress on paper because engaging in it this way helps more to reinforce my learning.  Now to set up my system... 

Podcaster Rob Dial Discusses Overthinking

On his personal development-themed Mindset Mentor podcast, host and creator Rob Dial touches on a wide range of topics over the course of each four-program week.  One of his shows last week focused on the problem of overthinking and a technique that Dial has development to combat it.  I agree with him that a problem many people have...more for some of us than for others...is to overanalyze and prepare for things instead of just going out and doing them, as well as allowing distracting thoughts to dilute what we're trying to accomplish.  An example for me is whenever I'm starting to immerse myself in a swimming pool whose temperature is on the unpleasantly cool side.  No point in halfway measures...I make a split decision and get all the way in.  Afterwards I can assess the situation and act accordingly, but I'm not wasting my time trying to outthink the pool!  Lots of folk overthink just about every kind of activity imaginable...Dial asserts that this kind of preparatory extremism may have boded well for people's survival hundreds of thousands of years ago against wild beasts and other dangerous natural occurrences, but in today's environment overthinking can be a burden dragging us down.  His one tip is to get in a state of quite medication somewhere, removing distractions and closing his eyes while keeping at his side a blank sheet of paper and pen.  Inevitably all those stray thoughts start pouring on into conscious awareness and he writes them down as best he can while keeping his eyes closed.  After ten minutes or however long circumstances allow, he stops his meditation and looks at what he has written, prioritizing the thoughts he has jotted down (if they are legible enough, that is) and making an action plan for them, one thought at a time.  Rob Dial says that this has worked for him and by doing this he has been able to reduce his overthinking and enhance his ability to concentrate on whatever happens to be before him at the moment.  I once tried this kind of thing a few years ago while sitting in the car after work in the night darkness and couldn't make out a lot of what I had written...maybe cheating a little by opening my eyes for a peep or two with a hint of light might help, you think?  But don't think too much... 

An Upcoming Personal Project for 2022

I've been watching the Beatles' Get Back movie on Disney+, which depicts its members going through a series of grueling all-day sessions of song creation, rehearsing and jamming. My initial reaction was to question why anyone would subject themselves to this kind of regimen. Then it occurred to me that for Paul, John, George and Ringo this was their great love, where their skills and interests coincided and they were the most accomplished and recognized: that's why it worked for them (although they still quarreled).  The question I ask is for myself is what in my life is comparable to that which the Beatles experienced back in January, 1969 when they embarked on that project?  And I think I got the answer...

Engaging in cognitive reverie...which is what Russell Crowe's character, mathematician John Nash, often does in the movie A Beautiful Mind...is something I often find myself doing as well.  Sometimes it takes the form of regretful, retroactive daydreaming when I think of times in my distant past and wish that I had adopted different priorities and habits.  One of these areas involves my studying in high school...my attention to homework assignments was atrocious, especially with regard to mathematics.  This is lamentable since every standardized test I ever took showed an exceptional ability in the area...I even scored a perfect 800 in it on my SAT.  Well, they say folks shouldn't bury themselves in their pasts, and I agree...but with an important caveat.  If what I'm regretting can neither be resurrected or made relevant to the present, then I should let it go.  But if there is a way in which I can learn from my past experiences and apply those lessons to the current setting, then this kind of cognitive reverie can be useful and a positive force in my life, here and now.  To this extent I've decided to make the upcoming year 2022 as one themed with intense study of mathematics...I can definitely think of an application or two for the years to come. Much will be simple review and much will be a reexamination in greater depth of what I have earlier covered, but only shallowly.  I have to credit a birthday present I received a few weeks ago: The Great Courses DVD pack of The Joy of Mathematics, authored and presented by Arthur Benjamin...wish I'd had him as a teacher!  Of course, I'll keep all ya'll updated on my progress with my upcoming math adventures...to that end I think it's time to load up my computer with some basic mathematics software...

Quote of the Week...from Stephen Hawking

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.
                                                                            ---Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, the renowned astrophysicist and decades-long survivor of the debilitating and usually quickly fatal disease ALS who finally passed away last year at age 76, has many good quotes...I even discussed the same one in two different blog articles.  The above quote is spot on for me, as I try both to keep my mind active and find things in life to laugh at.  But to me, being continually engaged in learning new things and finding and relishing the humor in my life has always been an integral part of who I am and isn't just some survival strategy.  When I see others who are utterly devoid of humor or are so close-minded that they refuse to try to see things from the viewpoint of someone with a different perspective, I don't react by thinking that they will soon perish, but rather perceive that they are lacking elements in their lives that would otherwise give them fulfillment and contentment.  Besides, in a way everyone has an "active" mind, but do they engage in thinking that enhances their skill levels and understanding of the world and other people, or do they absorb themselves in fruitless mental tape-playing reinforcing their own vanity, grudges, delusions and regrets?  I submit that you cannot be a compassionate person without the ability to laugh, especially at yourself.  I look at some of these "new wave" politicians, some of them running for president, and see neither humor nor compassion in their hearts.  I think a lot of people in today's runaway world of political correctness...and PC sees no humor in anything...are experiencing their careers and futures being ruined by past gaffes that they originally intended to be funny, even going back decades in the process.  But I digress...

I think I'm going to carefully look at the current and upcoming field of presidential candidates on the Democratic side and pick one to support over the others.  Two prerequisites: they have to be thinkers on both sides of the issues, being able to explain the other guy's side as well as their own.  And they must have a sense of humor...and a little grace wouldn't hurt, either.  As for my own thinking, I don't believe I have a career in astrophysics on my "event horizon", but that doesn't mean I can't study on my own level black holes and other areas of cosmology in which the great Stephen Hawking excelled...

Comments and Cognitive Reverie

One of the problems, which incidentally is simultaneously a blessing, when I dutifully post in Facebook each of this blog's articles (which are published through Google's Blogger site), is that readers tend to not only know me personally but also know, should they choose to place a comment, that their opinions will be open for all to read and that they will be instantly identified with them.  Sometimes, as mathematician John Nash, while speculating on a win-win mathematical model scenario, once remarked to a friend in the movie A Beautiful Mind, "You have no respect for cognitive reverie", I like to just sit back and look at things from different perspectives.  I want this blog to be more oriented toward open speculation and "cognitive reverie" as well, but I'm afraid that, with a couple of noteworthy exceptions, folks just aren't comfortable with opening up with their thoughts and reactions.  There is a solution to this, though: anyone reading this blog, whether through Facebook or directly on the web, can submit their own comments to me.  I have it set up on my blog to directly take comments (bypassing Facebook) without them immediately appearing. Before I publish any, I need to first review them...my initial primary reason for this was to avoid publishing the numerous spam comments that were beginning to proliferate.  Now, though, pre-screening is useful in that anyone can submit to me his or her comment and then ask me NOT to publish it...I'll comply with any such request.  Also, anonymous comments can be submitted as well...if they don't sound like spam and aren't demeaning or profane, then likewise they'll be published at the end of the article (within the blog).  In any event, I always endeavor to respond to any reasonable comment, regardless whether I agree or disagree with the expressed view, in a respectful and appreciative manner...

Cognitive reverie to me is an activity in which one isn't tied down to any kind of dogma or ideology, instead just taking a particular subject and breaking it down...sometimes coming to conclusions that don't fit the mainstream of socially-promulgated thought.  Therefore it grieves me somewhat when I go down this road and then get a reaction from someone who is an ideologue, forming their opinions on just about everything based on what somebody else wrote or said that fits their "party line"...to me, that is the opposite of what I would call cognitive reverie.  Such people can easily disprove this about themselves by simply revealing to me at least one issue (the more the better) in which they agree with the "other side's" views.  Another way is to make their opinions more personal and to explain how they interact with their own life and experiences...or explain the thinking process that led them to their conclusions. To me, a natural product of thinking for yourself is to sometimes arrive at different conclusions to things that a particular ideology or doctrine espouses.  Thinking for yourself through the vehicle of open speculation and cognitive reverie also makes you more interesting to others instead of sounding like an obvious one-dimensional, unimaginative copycat hack...