You may remember a post in which I mentioned a kooky method for making decisions—by tapping into your own bodily sensations. In that post1, I described how I wrote two options, waiting after each one to see if any sensations or emotions arose. At the time, I had even been impressed by the results—one option triggered a powerful positive emotion. Some of you may have thought (or may be thinking right now): “Damn, this dude is losing it.”
Well, I have news for you: that thing has an actual scientifically-backed name: it's called Interoceptive Awareness or Interoception.
Huh? Wiki, do your thang.
Interoception encompasses the brain's process of integrating signals relayed from the body into specific subregions—like the brainstem, thalamus, insula, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex—allowing for a nuanced representation of the physiological state of the body.
— The Wikipedia
In other words, your body is constantly sending signals so you know what’s going on “down there” and “in there”. At this point, you may be going: “Duh.”
What does it mean for our day-to-day life? A whole shit-ton of things, it turns out. First of all, let’s look at how our brain really works. It does not act like a muscle or a computer (the two most widespread metaphors for the brain.)
It's more like an orchestra conductor/composer, the conductor being the brain and the musicians every single body part. Most of the time, the way we go about our work looks something like this: our conductor is sitting in a room by himself in front of a screen and moaning and whining because he can’t put down on paper the melody he wants. Worse, he thinks his brain (full meta!) is like a muscle and that if he just shows Grit and pushes through the resistance and the procrastination and lashes himself long and hard enough the symphony will get done.
The best way for him to accomplish what he wants though is to get off his butt, go listen to his musicians as they jam and be extra aware of what each section or single instrument is telling him.
What the fuck am I talking about? Okay, this metaphor is a bit convoluted I agree.
Let me give you an example.
In a study, participants were asked to pick cards from four different decks, with each card making them gain or lose money. Two decks were bad and two were good (had more cards giving money then taking money and vice versa).
After a while, the participants were still consciously unaware of which decks were good or bad, but their skin, which was being monitored, was acting up! Every time they reached for a card from a bad deck, their skin would flare up as a kind of silent alarm system. And the participants still had no idea about the nature of any of the decks.
Mind blown.
Does that mean people who are more aware, and more in touch with their intuition or gut feelings or bodily signals end up being more successful?
So in the case of our conductor, if he really listened to his musicians, he might end up with a much greater concert than another one who’s sitting in a room by himself.
In real life though, how do we apply any of that?
Going to the body might mean paying more attention to sensations or following your intuition more often, but that’s far from everything I wanted to share with you.
Because our body and our brain did NOT evolve to sit all day in front of a computer, our mind is NOT optimal in that setting. However, due to modern society’s demands, we’ve become quite good at ignoring what our body is telling us. More often than not, the signals’s meaning is quite simple: MOVE!
Taking breaks is sometimes the productive thing to do. Most of us categorize taking a walk or going to a coffee shop as leisure time. I've come to think this is not always the case.
Over the years, I have acquired all these tools that may look like extraneous activities surrounding my “actual work” but they allowed me to improve and break through roadblocks a lot faster than I used to.
Whether it be the simple 5 minutes breathing exercise I do when I can’t get started (while walking around), or how taking walks have fixed plot holes countless times, or how changing the setting helps restore creativity.
All of that’s because we think better when we’re moving.
When the work is hard, the solution is not to keep going. It's often much better to get up and use one of those tools because your body is telling you: “Hey, buddy! Let me move around a little.” You could see it as a sort of “I scratch your back you scratch mine” type of thing, except you have the same back and there was never two people in the first place because there is no such thing as a body/mind separation.
Oh, by the way, this marvellous topic came to me through a podcast episode from the Ezra Klein Show in which he received Annie Murphy Paul who wrote the book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. (It’s on my list of Want to Read)
I'll conclude with a quote from Ezra:
Sitting still poses a greater cognitive burden then walking or standing.
— Ezra Klein
So okay, I tried finding that post again but didn’t. So maybe I only thought about writing on that, but never did, which was like, destroying my whole intro, so I kept it as is anyway.
This is great stuff. I heard an interview with the same author but on a different podcast.
Probably another reason for me to go back to a standing desk at some point... When not sitting, it's so easy to start walking around as soon as you need to think about something and I did it all the time. But when sitting, the extra friction often means you just won't get up..