The cost of touching a text twice (experience report)

Sascha

2022-02-12 I haven't touched Booker's current book Seven Basic Plots for a few weeks because I wanted to concentrate fully on the second edition of the notebook method. Today, I sat down to the book again. In doing so, it took me about 2h to get back into the subject matter enough to reach my usual level of productivity.

That's two hours I didn't work at "optimal operating temperature".

The reason it took me so long is related to the depth of the material. But there are additional requirements beyond the book. I have to orient myself in the appropriate section of the notebook and load peripheral knowledge into my working memory. Also, I've been working in a completely different mode for a few weeks: Seven Basic Plots is a blend of science, psychology, and spirituality. The subject of the slip box, on the other hand, is merely factual and aimed primarily at immediate use.

In some distant future, I would like to conduct an empirical study on this issue. (Do you know some empirical knowledge?)

Andy

@Sascha said:

In some distant future, I would like to conduct an empirical study on this issue. (Do you know some empirical knowledge?)

I assume that the "issue" here is that "it took me about 2h to get back into the subject matter enough to reach my usual level of productivity"? I tried to think of a term for this issue; "touching" is not the right term in English. What came to mind was the term "warming up", analogous to the warm-up exercises that an athlete or musician does before playing so that they play at "optimal operating temperature". (Your term "temperature" also uses the same metaphor as "warming up".)

A search for the terms reading + warm-up suggests that much of the literature that uses those terms is about teaching children and may be based more on common sense and experience in the classroom than on methodologically rigorous studies. For example: Harvey S. Wiener (1996), "Reading Warm-Ups", in Any Child Can Read Better: Developing Your Child's Reading Skills Outside the Classroom, 2nd edition, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. The first part of this chapter by Wiener focuses on the skill of previewing texts. Previewing is a study skill that all educated adults already know, but one implication of this skill (that would need to be tested empirically) is that warming up for reading a text will be easier and faster if you choose a text that is highly previewable (my term) according to the criteria that Wiener lists. Textbooks are generally more previewable than are narrative nonfiction books. What may be slowing you down in your situation mentioned above is that Seven Basic Plots may not be very previewable. You could test that hypothesis by comparing your warm-up time for Seven Basic Plots to another book that is more preview-friendly according to Wiener's criteria.

Andy

@Andy said:

Previewing is a study skill that all educated adults already know, but one implication of this skill (that would need to be tested empirically) is that warming up for reading a text will be easier and faster if you choose a text that is highly previewable (my term) according to the criteria that Wiener lists. Textbooks are generally more previewable than are narrative nonfiction books.

After I wrote this, I thought of Josh Bernoff's 2019 blog post "Why books work: a rebuttal to Andy Matuschak", which was a response to Matuschak's essay "Why books donʼt work" published a couple of weeks earlier. As a footnote to to Bernoff's post, we could hypothesize: Highly previewable books work better.

Will

Restarting the focus engine

Subatomic: Stoking the fires that drive the locomotion of curiosity and creativity.

Empirically, I'm not sure the root causes of why it sometimes takes a longish time to get the groove back. I do experience that the time to reengage is variable. Is this because I expect that I should be able to instantly reengage with a cognitively complex idea? Who told me that this was possible? Why wouldn't I think that the two hours it takes me to reengage with these ideas isn't already as quick as I can expect? Are these two hours slow, or is my impatience showing?

One of the variables in the length of time to reengage can be fished out of Jünger's quote.

Ernst Jünger wrote that "to the same degree that a topic becomes important to us, its relations to other topics increase. It is as if we had knocked at a door that leads to a panorama of ideas" - Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990, p. 10.

Ideas expressing more curiosity and complex activities are rich with related ideas, each pushing and pulling on attention. Some of these reinforce the target activity and some distraction. The balance of the combination determines the ramp-up time for re-engagement.

Having activities or projects that have a rich enough texture where we worry about a "warm-up" or "gathering of steam" is a blessing. I'd hypothesize that most people in the world are not so privileged.

Often we start to get into the groove only to be distracted by something and then have to reengage the mind all over again, never reaching a point where we start exploring new territory.

A second variable would be momentum. A body in motion tends to remain in motion, and conversely, a body at rest tends to remain at rest.

"To save time, take time in large pieces. Do not cut time up into bits…The mind is like a locomotive. It requires time for getting under headway. Under headway it makes its own steam. Progress gives force as force makes progress. Do not slow down as long as you run well and without undue waste. Take advantage of momentum. Prolonged thinking leads to profound thinking." - Charles Franklin Thwing [@thwing:1912, 51]

Metaphor exploration.
Can we train the muscle of accelerated return to focus mode? Is this a learnable and teachable skill? Are there secondary skills that affect the time to return to focus mode? What role do life's insistent distractions in the success of, let alone the timing of, a locomotive of curious creativity getting up enough steam? How might mindfulness shorten the "time to escape velocity?"

Paul Graham has insightful ideas about protecting ourselves from distractions.
Good and Bad Procrastination

References:

• Thwing, Charles Franklin. Letters from a Father to His Son Entering College. 1912, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32803/32803-h/32803-h.htm#CHAPVI.
• Graham, Paul. Good and Bad Procrastination. 2005, http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html.

Andy

@Will said:

Can we train the muscle of accelerated return to focus mode? Is this a learnable and teachable skill?

Some have thought so. Not far down in the Google search results for the terms time required to warm up for studying is this oldie:

"Finally, as to the length of time to study at one period, the student should learn how to 'warm up' rapidly, how to study long enough to secure the advantages from 'warming up', without carrying his activity to the point of fatigue and so fluctuating attention." – Frank P. Graves (1916). "Constructive Elements in the Class-room". Proceedings of the 30th Annual Convention of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, December 1–2, 1916, pages 52–60.

ZettelDistraction

There are numerous studies online on the time it takes to recover from a distraction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interruption_science

Joyce Carol Oates said, “The great enemy of writing isn’t your own lack of talent, or industry, it’s being interrupted by other people.”

That's an argument for making writing the only thing that counts. (I have few friends, and no television.) As far as Deleuze's distinction between writing-as-neurosis and writing-as-health goes, assuming the indication one way or another has a shred of supporting empirical evidence, there are too many distractions to adopt a completely instrumental attitude toward others. One might as well make writing the only thing that counts—you have nothing Deleuze.

Andy

@ZettelDistraction said:

That's an argument for making writing the only thing that counts. (I have few friends, and no television.) As far as Deleuze's distinction between writing-as-neurosis and writing-as-health goes, assuming the indication one way or another has a shred of supporting empirical evidence, there are too many distractions to adopt a completely instrumental attitude toward others. One might as well make writing the only thing that counts—you have nothing Deleuze.

For anyone who is confused, this is a response to a comment I made in another thread. To be fair, @ZettelDistraction should have said "you have nothing Andy–Deleuze!" since the interpretation was probably more mine than Deleuze's. It's not always clear what the hell Deleuze was saying, and he wasn't saying exactly what I recruited him to say. He wrote "one does not write with one's neuroses", which contradicts the whole writing-as-neurosis and writing-as-health distinction (although I can attest that I have sometimes written with my neuroses, so my positing of writing-as-neurosis is from my own personal experience), and he qualified that the writer's health is a "delicate health that stems from what he has seen and heard of things too big for him, too strong for him, suffocating things whose passage exhausts him while nonetheless giving him the becomings that dominant and substantial health would render impossible". I recommend reading his article ("Literature and life") which is richer and more ambiguous than the use I made of it in that discussion.

Will

@Andy said:
… is this oldie:

"Finally, as to the length of time to study at one period, the student should learn how to 'warm up' rapidly, how to study long enough to secure the advantages from 'warming up', without carrying his activity to the point of fatigue and so fluctuating attention." – Frank P. Graves (1916). "Constructive Elements in the Class-room". Proceedings of the 30th Annual Convention of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, December 1–2, 1916, pages 52–60.

Graves maybe is getting close to how to train to speed up engagement, but "the length of time to study at one period" and " the student should learn how to 'warm up' rapidly" don't tell us how. The how comes in the "without carrying his activity to the point of fatigue." Take breaks and force yourself to leave work when you are excited rather than "finished for the day" or depleted. You leave the work when activated because it makes you itching to get back at it and shortens the reengagement time.

ZettelDistraction

@Andy said:
For anyone who is confused, this is a response to a comment I made in another thread. To be fair, @ZettelDistraction should have said "you have nothing Andy–Deleuze!" since the interpretation was probably more mine than Deleuze's.

The pun is better as it is.

Andy

@Will said:

Graves maybe is getting close to how to train to speed up engagement, but "the length of time to study at one period" and " the student should learn how to 'warm up' rapidly" don't tell us how. The how comes in the "without carrying his activity to the point of fatigue." Take breaks and force yourself to leave work when you are excited rather than "finished for the day" or depleted. You are leaving the work when activated leaves you itching to get back and shorten the reengagement time.

Right, the empirical research on "how" is missing in Graves. I agree from my own experience that leaving the work in the right state and shortening the reengagement time helps, as does a moderate amount of caffeine! There are many work/study skills (or "hacks" as the kids say these days) that are relevant. That's all about the learner, and then there is the issue of the quality of the learning materials as I mentioned above. As someone said in the Hacker News discussion of Matuschak's "Why books don't work": "So for these examples it is my opinion that it's not a case of books not working, but of very healthy brain garbage collector discarding information that is not actionable and in a lot of cases not even correct."

@ZettelDistraction said:

The pun is better as it is.

Looks like I'm Deleuzer here.

Will

@Andy said:
I agree from my own experience that leaving the work in the right state and shortening the reengagement time helps,

This is n=1, and with my agreement, we now have n=2. Do I hear an n=3 in the crowd?

There are many work/study skills (or "hacks" as the kids say these days) that are relevant.

As the kids call them today, I wasn't thinking of study hacks with my comments. I was thinking of creative endeavors. I guess this dates me.

That's all about the learner,

What about a teacher? Some part might, kind of, sort of, in some universe, be about the teacher.

then there is the issue of the quality of the learning materials as I mentioned above.

I hope you are not suggesting that a teacher's only indirect role is to present learning materials to a learner.

As someone said in the Hacker News discussion of Matuschak's "Why books don't work": "So for these examples it is my opinion that it's not a case of books not working, but of very healthy brain garbage collector discarding information that is not actionable and in a lot of cases not even correct."

Garbage collecting and rather books work or don't seem to be a non sequitur. Maybe all this is above my pay grade.

ZettelDistraction

@Will said:

@Andy said:
I agree from my own experience that leaving the work in the right state and shortening the reengagement time helps,

This is n=1, and with my agreement, we now have n=2. Do I hear an n=3 in the crowd?

n=3

Andy

@Will said:

As the kids call them today, I wasn't thinking of study hacks with my comments. I was thinking of creative endeavors. I guess this dates me.

Garbage collecting and rather books work or don't seem to be a non sequitur. Maybe all this is above my pay grade.

The original post did not say exactly what use was being made of the book, so both interpretations (study hacks and creative endeavors) are possible. I assumed that @Sascha was trying to extract some truth from the book, which is more like studying, and was not using the book as inspiration for writing concrete poetry, which is more like arbitrary poetic invention. If he was trying to extract some truth from the book, then the amount of truth in the book and how well it is presented is relevant.