I don't open my eyes when I'm writing down my dreams in the morning. Too easy for them to slip away once I acknowledge the real world.
It's easier to remember things when you aren't battling with external input. Really, it works for anything where you need to focus on raw output.
Next time there's something on the tip of your tongue, give it a shot. Turn off any music too, or put on noise cancelling headphones. If nothing else, it's calming to take a moment away from the world.
Sometimes I lower my laptop screen when I'm typing these posts because it helps the words come out a bit faster. Probably because it forcibly turns off the feedback loop which is rereading what I juts wrote to fix typos and catch grammar mistakes.
Does increase my typo rate by ~5%, especially on non-alphabet characters, but it's worth it for the focus. Learn to touch type, if you haven't already.
I wish I could get this degree of speedup on things other than recall, but unfortunately most important work also requires rapid feedback loops on what you've already done. Even for writing, this only works for first drafts and major rewrites, not editing.
How often can you do something, no constraints, just sprinting to the finish? Treasure the blank slate, then ruin it.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
Do blind people get this by default, or is it compensated for by increased focus on other senses? I'm no cognitive scientist, and I don't care enough about the topic to dig through papers.
My interest is primarily limited by what will make my brain do what I want.
Is that such a bad place to be?
- Rew