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Interesting, I experimented a bit with this when my daughter was younger. I used to walk around the room with her in my arms singing to get her to sleep. To ensure she would be settled I would then count 300 steps before putting her in the cot. I discovered I could count and sing at the same time by visualising the number in my head, instead of using my inner monologue. But it requires more focus to maintain.

Thankfully these days she can get herself to sleep. But I miss it sometimes

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It reminds a bit of musicians tracking rhythm. You can somehow feel a beat after a bit practice even when not directly paying attention to it and it's not too hard to associate it with an increasing counter (somehow). It sounds hard, but it is quite doable.

Very true. Strangely, I also found this in competitive games. You get a very accurate sense of cooldowns without consciously tracking them. StarCraft with different build times, Apex Legends with character abilities, etc.

yeah, doesn't the multitasking in this thread feel a little bit like what i imagine playing the drums is like? i've done some low-key drum-playing sorts of musical things in my life, and it was the disconnection point when you genuinely had 2-3 different things to focus on at once that i found my brain to be lacking. i observed the same with piano, but i had much more of a knack for piano, so it was only the rare song that genuinely required tracking three things at once... and those kinds of songs are hard enough for most mortals that people just pin them all as "dw those songs are super hard", when in reality it always felt like that specific skill was the thing that was lacking, and besides rote memorization i never found some way to lick it all the time. when i was really in flow, though, it would be completely effortless. it's bizarre.

> You can somehow feel a beat

If you play in an orchestra, you might have the visual memory of the conductor and their time signature motions helping you along.

The somewhat jarring tick tock of a digital metronome can also be encoded into a sort of background track that plays more or less automatically in your head.

> If you play in an orchestra, you might have the visual memory of the conductor and their time signature motions helping you along.

Or on the other side of the spectrum, most DJs learn to "feel" beat counting and phrases, more or less by feeling. After a while, your head kind of goes "1,2,3,4" by itself, and the phrases of the songs "feels" like they're about to come, then they come.

> I discovered I could count and sing at the same time by visualising the number in my head, instead of using my inner monologue. But it requires more focus to maintain.

Funny timing for this comment, just last week I was running slowly on the treadmill and was counting my steps due to curiosity about steps vs time, and decided to count using images. It definitely takes more effort but I think it's because I hadn't tried it before.

I would hold the tens digit image static and repaint the ones digit until it rolled to the next tens digit, which meant very limited effort was required to retain the tens digit image and most effort was transitioning the ones digit.

The ones digit would not just instantly flash in place, it took a small amount of time and some noticeable deliberate effort for the process to complete, and then it was just in maintenance mode until the next transition.

If you miss it, maybe she does too. You can still do it even though she doesn’t need it

Maybe. But as a parent, sometimes you have to make sacrifices (or force them to make sacrifices) as otherwise they won't have space grow.

Ugh, yeah. It’s the worst. It’s the best.

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