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Comment by diNgUrAndI | Hacker News Reader

One tiny issue with leisure in general is unpredictability. An uncontrolled mind can wander anywhere and come back (may not come back at all) in whatever state, not necessarily charged and refreshed.

I wonder if there's anything like disciplined leisure, where you concentrate on one thing intensively for a while, and you intentionally force yourself to let go of those thoughts, divert your attention to something else and let sub-consciousness deal with the topic. But the point is to come back to the same thing at the end with new ideas and a refreshed mind.

Am I too naive?

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"The word school derives from Greek σχολή (scholē), originally meaning "leisure" and also "that in which leisure is employed", but later "a group to whom lectures were given, school"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School

I remember I had Philosophy professor tell me this, back in the day. I think part of his point was that up until very recently, getting an education was a privilege that only the elite got to enjoy. Also, I imagine he was trying to say that compared to the back breaking manual labor almost everyone was expected to participate in back then, learning must've actually been leisurely.

More specific to your comment, I feel like what you're describing is sort of the idea behind things like the pomodoro technique. Take a timed break, let your mind wander, and come back (sometimes) with a solution. To digress one final time, this idea also reminds me a of practicing a musical instrument. I can't tell you how many times I've struggled with a piece of music, only to stop for a few hours or maybe a day, just to come back and "magically" be able to play it.

Taking that philosophy to be true, maybe the word 'leisure' has taken on the role of 'diversion' in the modern day. Is there an ancient Greek/Roman/Eastern take on 'diversionary' activities?

Not that I'm familiar with. I know various sports were big in Ancient Greece, but I couldn't say if they were seen as a 'diversion' from a cultural standpoint.

The topic you touch on is addressed quite poignantly by the inimitable Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (or Prof. C), in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. (I've mentioned this book here before, but it's always worth mentioning again.)

Let me make a choice quote (from the chapter: "Enjoying Solitude And Other People"):

“The ultimate test for the ability to control the quality of experience is what a person does in solitude, with no external demands to give structure to attention. [...]”

You can put the above text in books.google.com and read the surrounding text (I recommend to slow-read the whole book, of course); he makes some time-tested suggestions, without imposing them on the reader.

PS: If you want pronounce Prof C's full name, here is a memorable mnemonic by the man himself: "Me-High Chick-Sent-Me-High".

Josh Waitzkin talks about this. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to produce much public work anymore. This is from a Tim Ferriss Interview [1]:

And a lot of what I work on with guys is creating rhythms in their life that really are based on feeding the unconscious mind, which is the wellspring of creativity information and then tapping it. So for example, ending the workday with high quality focus on a certain area of complexity where you can use an insight and then waking up first thing in the morning creating input and applying your mind to it, journaling on it. Not so much to do a big brainstorm, but to tap what you've been working on unconsciously overnight. Which of course, is a principle that Hemingway wrote about when he spoke about the two core principles in his creative writing process, number one ending the workday with something left to write and -- Tim Ferriss: Yeah, often in mid-sentence even. Josh Waitzkin: Right. So not doing everything he had to do. Which most people do, but they feel this sense of guilt if they're not working. You and I have discussed this at length, but leaving something left to write and then the second principle, release your mind from it. Don't think about it all night. Really let go. Have a glass of wine. Then wake up first thing in the morning and reapply your mind to it. And it's amazing because you're basically feeding the mind complexity and then tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it. This rhythm, the large variation of it is overnight, and then you can have microbursts of it throughout the day. Before workouts pose a question, do a workout, release your mind after workout, return to it, and do creative bursts. Before you go to the bathroom, before you go to lunch, before anything. And in that way you're systematically training yourself to generate the crystallization experience, that ah-ha moment that can happen once a month or once a year. A lot of what I do is work on systems to help it happen once a day or four times a day, and when we're talking about guys who run financial groups of $20 to $30 billion, for example, if they have a huge insight that can have unbelievable value. If you can really train people to get systematic about nurturing their creative process, it's unbelievable what can happen and most of that work relates to getting out of your own way. It's unloading. It's the constant practice of subtraction, reducing friction.

[1] https://fhww.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pd...

> And it's amazing because you're basically feeding the mind complexity and then tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it.

This is an interesting way to put it. Thanks for the quote!

I recommend the book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind" by Guy Claxton for a well-researched and approachable overview of cognitive science and different modes of thinking.

I think the point of the article was that coming back to the same thing is best left to the robots; humans should take advantage of their capacity to wander off and find new territory.

>I wonder if there's anything like disciplined leisure, where you concentrate on one thing intensively for a while, and you intentionally force yourself to let go of those thoughts, divert your attention to something else and let sub-consciousness deal with the topic. But the point is to come back to the same thing at the end with new ideas and a refreshed mind.

it's called meditation. as soon as your workplace mandates that you do it, it becomes impossible to perform successfully, thankfully.

Isn't that what meditation/mindfulness do for you?

Disciplined leisure is almost a contradiction in terms - how does one not think of it as work?

This is called “meditation”.

Yes, meditation could be called disciplined leisure. I'm not sure if the post you are responding to is getting at that. Meditation and minding wandering are very different things, even opposites. But I think both are very useful for that creative process. It would be interesting to examine the effects of these two things in the context of this article.

There are broadly speaking two kinds of meditations: focussed meditation and awareness meditation.

I heard a useful analogy of the mind being like an elephant that wants to wander around on its own.

In focussed meditation, we try to focus your attention on our breath, or some point inside our body or an idea. We tie the elephant with a rope to a pole. If it wanders too far, we tug it and bring it back to the pole.

In awareness meditation, we just observe where the elephant roams wherever it wants. That is more like leisurely mind wandering.

I'd like to recommend "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa John Yates. Besides the elephant analogy, there is much actionable advice on meditation to be found in that book.

Maybe "time-boxed leisure" is a better term for what I wanted to describe.

> Disciplined leisure is almost a contradiction in terms

Not at all. Meditation is an excellent example, but also volunteering and learning.

Open research. The most academic of labs or research groups used to be places where professors could follow their interests - it's hard to imagine that nearly as many scientists today would have freedoms to pursue interesting math or phenomena like Feynman or Shannon had in their day. It feels like accountism (or maybe some would say neoliberalism) has infected everything.

Is there somewhere I can learn more about the evolution of expectations on professors? This seems like an interesting phenomenon to learn more about, but I'm not quite sure where to start in finding material on this change.

This biography on Shannon gives some idea of what it was like in the heyday of Bell Labs. Flamethrowing trumpets are mentioned.

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented-Informatio...

Far from naive, I think you worry too much. How is it that leisure is can be somehow threatening. Is it that unless told, you don't know what to do next?

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