Mind Watching: Field Notes from Wilderness Solitude-Day 13

50 days of observations, insights, and contemplations...

by Tyler Volk

Day 13 - Scraping by without Meta-thinking

For too long the wooden boards that form the low apron of the porch have cried for a new coat of paint. But first, the old paint had to be scraped away, spot by flayed, peeling spot. It was tedious. I enjoyed the work as its own special kind of attention.

The task was ordinary and I became more ordinary as well. During a break from scraping, I wrote a review of a scientific paper. Scraping is repetitive. Even technical writing progresses along a groove I have been down before. None of these activities by themselves activated thinking about thinking. Apparently, I will have to work hard, internally, for that meta-level. Consciousness is limited in how much it can hold. If it is filled with other tasks that demand attention, well, out the window goes metacognition.

It is well known that being overly conscious about an activity can sabotage the performance. A guitarist who tries to think through the details of every hand position and how each finger needs to shift for the next chord or riff will quickly turn into all thumbs. A tennis player who tries to return a serve by thinking about every footstep, arc of the arm, and racket angle will soon end up watching the opponent’s serves whiz past. We do not think about the minutiae of controlling our feet, ankles, calves, and thighs when walking, or about the particulars of mouth and tongue movements when talking. And we had better not. Thinking can be hazardous to the health of many activities.

Thinking is itself an activity. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that thinking about thinking (meta-thinking) can inhibit ordinary thinking, when that ordinary thinking needs to be tuned and thereby limited to the right amount of attention upon an activity in the outer world. When writing a review, I need to be focused about that field of information and cannot think about thinking at the same time. Even when scraping boards, as mindless as that seems, I need to attend to each spot of old paint. Each is different and requires a decision about whether or not to scrape and how far to go to call the spot finished so I can move along to the next. Thinking about thinking will best be done when no thinking is specifically required for what are life’s other, ongoing tens of thousands of micro-tasks.

© 2024 by Tyler Volk