Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
Writer Clive Thompson writes in NyTimes a sociology and psychology CliffsNotes on theories like “ambient awareness”, the “Dumbar number”, and “parasocial relationships” to try to understand the whole social networking “microblogging” phenomenon and focuses most of the time on web trends like Facebook’s Newsfeed and Twitter. I don’t agree completely with the idea it’s trying to sell that ephemeral relationships and exchanges mean more than they actually do, but I do agree that not every relationship has to be intimate to be meaningful or to have some value.
We have discouraged daydreaming because we have switched to valuing more the idea of focus. “Letting your mind wander is not productive” you read and hear. It is true that when you’re focused, your chances of resolving problems increases, but daydreaming leads to more problem-solving breakthroughs that people may be are aware of. It warns though, that not every daydreamer is a creative genius:
“The point is that it’s not enough to just daydream,” Schooler says. “Letting your mind drift off is the easy part. The hard part is maintaining enough awareness so that even when you start to daydream you can interrupt yourself and notice a creative insight.”
I agree with the daydreaming, but I am not sure I would call it daydreaming. When I am involved in a project it is nice to be alone and focus, especially at night. This is when I get most of my work done.But, I do fall into caves where I cannot come up with the solution. (I should say what I do to make it more clear. I work in code most of the time for websites, databases and networks. So, I tend to be looking at a problem and searching for an answer inside thousands of line of code.)
I find that if I just leave my work alone, and go relax. Maybe take a nap. During my nap I will dream and somehow afterwards I find the solution as if I knew where it was.
Now, I can’t say for sure that my answer came from the nap, or the break from work, or if while I was dreaming I made the connections I needed for my work.
In my work I tend to be looking for answers and not really looking for a new idea, so maybe that is the difference..
~ jim
I guess it depends on the task your doing. For sequential tasks it’s probably not a good idea to let yourself daydream too much. The trick is to be able to stop yourself and harness that “popping lightbulb”. The article explains that there are two types of daydreamers, the ones that really let their minds wander off and the ones who can stop and become aware of the flashes and good ideas.