2013.08.12 More Stupid Philosophy

I have long been a subscriber to the idea that mental attributes are largely dependent upon effort - the whole "brain as a muscle" idea, where it gets stronger the more you use it. With all the related extrapolations about creativity and whatnot. Which is all well and good as a generally smart sort of person, making it dubiously self-congratulatory.

A recent twist that has made itself apparent is the regular onset of mental fatigue. With the advent of parenting eating up much of my thought processes, and my job gradually increasing its background problem-solving demands, it feels like the few moments of free time I do cling to are preferentially spent not thinking very hard. Usually mountain biking, when I can, but all-too-often just soaking up blogs while watching TV.

Comparing my mental exertions as a student to that of a Senior Engineer and parent, I notice something amusing. While I am undoubtedly thinking more continuously now, the difficulty of the thinking I undertook as a student was undeniably more rigorous despite being much more sporadic. And it was during my days as a student that I had considerably more capacity for creative output. Which is amusing precisely because of the "brain as a muscle" idiom, as the generally superior method of conditioning muscles is interval training.

If you want to be a better runner, you improve much more rapidly by sprinting up hills in energetic bursts and letting yourself rest regularly than you do by plodding continuously for long durations. Maybe this is the same for thinking.

All of which is pretty useless to me, even if it turns out to have merit. Because it was easy to rest my brain as a student, as the advanced theories being forced on it were usually not much fun. Meanwhile, I love and enjoy both the work I contemplate continuously and the parenting that fills my life. I suppose that I'll just have to grow accustomed to gradually becoming stupider and happier.