#ThinkfullyHabit: Let the dust settle
How often do your thoughts become clearer once given a bit of time to settle? Or an idea emerges from what originally seemed like a confusing mess of information? If we understood what occurs in our minds, perhaps we wouldn’t be so surprised when this happens.
Virginia Woolf insightfully reminds us in her 1925 essay, ‘How Should One Read a Book?’, that the true benefit of reading takes place after the reading is done and once the impressions settle and come together as deeper, lasting ideas*. The same is true, more generally, when we let ideas and information whirl around in our minds without forcing them too early into place.
“Wait for the dust of reading to settle; for the conflict and the questioning to die down; walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep. Then suddenly without our willing it, for it is thus that Nature undertakes these transitions, the book will return, but differently. It will float to the top of the mind as a whole. ”
WHY?
Our brain loves to reflect on things. Even better, it likes to reflect on things when not tasked to do so. It will turn ideas over and around in our minds, mostly in the background and without us being particularly aware of it. This could be when we’re walking, pulling petals from roses, or indeed, doing any other relaxing activity that isn’t too cognitively demanding. In fact, that’s the important bit. Psychologists have found that we are more likely to gain the benefits when our brains are allowed to wander off-task and when doing something relatively undemanding**. It's this that can help any ideas that are swirling around come together and re-form in a more complete way.
The implications? It's simply this - when faced with new information and ideas, particularly those which are more complex or intricate, we should give ourselves some time to process them. Often there’s an urge to go with a gut response, yet when it’s not life and death, there’s a benefit of pausing long enough to let the dust settle in our minds. While we can’t dictate what ideas will come, we can choose to deliberately give ourselves some space to see how the ideas settle. It’s only then that we can look to see what floats to the top.
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