thraxil.org:

mental exercise

by anders pearson Fri 28 Jun 2002 10:04:35

i frequently suffer from insomnia. this usually involves me lying in bed for hours staring at the ceiling waiting to fall asleep while my mind jumps from subject to subject. a game i like to play sometimes when i'm lying there is to try to backtrack along my stream of consciousness. i try to remember what the last topic i was thinking about was, then i try to think what i was thinking before that lead me to that, then what i was thinking before that lead me to that point. on and on until i can't remember how i got started on a certain subject. it's hard at first but if you do it on a regular basis i've found that you can usually improve how far back you can remember. if you do it regularly, i can pretty much guarantee that you'll gain new insights into how your mind and, in particular, your subconscious works. my theory is that doing this kind of exercise on a regular basis will even change how your mind functions, possibly giving you more control over how you focus and giving you more of an ability to think creatively. this can also be fun in a group setting. if you're sitting around with a few friends having a drink and conversation and the conversation hits a lull, pick out the last topic you were discussing and try to work back from there to figure out how you got onto that topic. you'll probably get much farther than with the solo exercise. also figure out who it was in the group who initiated each topic change. try drawing a diagram of the conversation. maybe you'll notice interesting things about the group dynamic and individual personalities; eg, perhaps a certain member of the group has a tendency to change the topic much more often than other people. well, that's the kind of thing that i think about when i can't sleep...