Sometimes I don’t Understand my Brain
August 2, 2007
I’m a frequent reader and I will read just about anything if it’s well written. Things that are dry or condescending take me forever. Fiction with two-dimensional characters is a huge turn-off, but I’ll chew through it (I have this rule about finishing a book no matter how much I dislike it). All the reading leads me to learn strange things. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes accidentally.
With things I’m trying to learn, I can read them and be told about them but I really don’t start learning until I’ve had a chance to try it for myself. Sometimes it results in a monumental failure. I don’t mind that. Unless I’ve got a deadline and can’t afford the delay. Usually I realise things are about to fail before they fail and have time to fix them.
That last thing is what I find interesting. The whole time I’m working on something the rest of my brain is apparently processing data. All of a sudden there will be this *ding* and the thing that will potentially fail will pop up and I’ll go “Oh!” (sometimes out loud) and go back and fix whatever it was. Fortunately I’m only writing documents and code examples, and not something that would be impossible to correct. I don’t think this would be a good way to build an engine or a nuclear something-or-other, so if you’re also prone to thinking like this, I don’t suggest those career options.
Sometimes it’s not a “fix” but a realisation. I’m not talking about things like accidentally “discovering” that Control-A will select all the text, but suddenly thinking “Oh that’s how I can do this!” when you weren’t even (consciously) thinking about how to do “that” at all.
Aaaand sometimes those flashes aren’t even related to the thing I’m working on, so I usually have to keep a tab or Notepad open so I can get the ideas down before I lose them.
I like that about me. I like that my brain works like that. I’m not so crazy about it when the “a-hah!” hits at three in the morning, but most of the time I’m cool.
One Response to “Sometimes I don’t Understand my Brain”
I have yet to figure out how people multitask. Is that a brain thing too? Some of the multitaskers I know (folks who carry a blackberry, a cellphone, check their email, and talk to you all the same time) don’t seem to be very good at it. :) I’d rather depend on someone else than them.
As I grow older, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m a “recursive singletasker.” As users call me during the day to check if a server’s “down” or “are we having network issues”, it goes in a queue. I’ll pause on thing, work on the next, fix it, return to the prior thing.
I keep notepad open too… but it’s usually for code, shell scripts, or lists of things to do. Systems administration rarely has *AHA* moments. :( It’s more problem analysis, debugging, tracing, and resolution… at 6:20am as soon as I get in, or at 3am when a user wakes me in the middle of the night.
I envy your *ding* moments. :)
By Ken on Aug 2, 2007