Does anyone else know what I mean when I say, "my mind can do anything it puts me to"? Because that's what it feels like when most of my interesting stuff comes out of sessions of almost-uncontrollable hyperfocus
It's like, my designer friends will ask me "You have a baby and a day job. How on earth did you find the time for a complete redesign of this game since last week's session?" And I'm like "My mind just kinda forgot that humans need sleep."
It's like the Nora Roberts line about juggling rubber balls and glass balls, and knowing that you can drop the rubber balls without severe consequence, but you have to handle the glass balls. Sometimes sleep is a rubber ball until our body says otherwise
I’ve definitely had friends describe similar experiences. All the pieces of the plan kind of lock in and they know they’re in for a ride the rest of the night, maybe the morning. To borrow (and maybe twist)
an analogy from them, they have to cook while the knobs are on the stove.
Was this the kind of HF where you create something amazing or the kind where you make a monkey spreadsheet? Because the day you posted you made one I read it when I was literally looking at a page of monkey notes I was curating about the same monkeys I was like thank god someone else is doing this.
Exactly the same, and I've had this kind of hyperfocus for my whole life. I get completely consumed by something, learn new skills to accomplish it, and when I'm done, the skills are rarely accessible to me again.
I keep assuming in the future something happens with aliens and humanity needs the specific skills and there's like, a montage or something, then we are like "oh am I so glad I learned how to do that."
I wish I could retain the skills! I feel like if I have to do them after the hyperfocus, I have to relearn them almost from scratch. Like I was watching someone else do it instead of doing it myself
Yeah - it reminds me of how the comic book Flash once built an entire bridge by learning all the engineering and then doing all the construction but then afterwards oops forgot it all.
I’m not sure if the ‘ama’ should be related to the statement (sorry 🫣) but if not:
“Do you celebrate your ferrets birthdays? Is there special ferret cake?”
If it should be, then “How do you recover from the burned out haze?” (Also, hope you’re recovering okay ☺️)
Carrie and I usually go out for dinner on a ferret birthday to celebrate. We don't bring the ferret - it's not like they know the difference! We try to treat them like it's their birthday every day.
For burnout, I remind myself that as long as I'm not under pressure to accomplish something specific, whatever I'm doing at the moment is the right thing. Even if it's nothing, even if it's unproductive.
The little chunks are so key. Sometimes I have to be like, "I can't face doing this task but I will open the file for later" as the single microtask I am able to accomplish right now. Sometimes it is a trick, and the act of opening the file gets me to keep going. Sometimes it doesn't. Both ok.
Yeah, it's a good way to fool my recalcitrant brain into doing something it doesn't want to. "You only need to do this bit. OK, now you only need to do this next bit." etc
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an analogy from them, they have to cook while the knobs are on the stove.
Dumbest superpower ever.
“Do you celebrate your ferrets birthdays? Is there special ferret cake?”
If it should be, then “How do you recover from the burned out haze?” (Also, hope you’re recovering okay ☺️)