How to prevent negative mind wandering that prevents work?

Productivity
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How can people prevent negative mind wandering that temporally pauses them from taking action.

For example-A student being in front of a mobile phone wanting to get up, open his book, sit down and study but instead of doing it it physically consciously doing it in his imagination and imagining the signals from his brain going into his leg and while that is happening in his imagination no actual work of him sitting up and going to his book, sitting down and studying happens except in the person’s imagination even when that person tries hard for short periods of time for sometime for doing the work in his imagination.

Had some things along the lines of the above story happened to you?

How can it be stooped and prevented?

Mind wandering might lead to unwilful inaction and broken habits along with delaying tasks along with fear and also mood.

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Note the case had been edited in this comment.Twice.

The case of mine is case c. What can a person in each case do.I was writing a more detailed comment to expand the post but now it is no longer relevant,

And,

Have a Good Day.

5

I can not start studying and therefore I can not go to the second case and if I went to the second case I would try not to visualise breifly but then I wouuld visualise quickly,If I will think of not visualising fast I will visualise fast and it will happen so on maybe untill a point and if it is reached it would be dfficult to study even more,I head that the problem which I had written above happens to everyone from at least some people.I also do not fear studying which is a cause of 90% of the procrastinaltion or more than 90% of the procrastination I had heard,the 90% must have been an approximiation,even if the cause of the 90% procrastination is gone some other greater problem will take its place(Paraprased from somebody else’s words in the internet).

If I giving it a descriptive name I would call it context driven involunatary visualisation without voluntary action.It might also happen to childen when they wake up but struggle to get out of bed often getting out of bed in imagination but not in real life sometimes not being able to distinguish between the two with imagination and reality blending and with the user precieving the non occurence of the wanted action-Getting up from the bed after waking up,Only after some seconds and it then potentially spreading to other areas of life like studying.

Leading to some bad habits such as resleeping after waking up for some and not doing revision even after wanting to with for a reason I had forgotten the person’s mind refusing to do the work by making that person feel bored,irritated and angry and that being more effective than that involuntary paralysis itself,

I do not know how many people would have this problem or have had this problem,My problem seems more specific than the problem which I think is faced by everyone and me making little progess form time to time after potentially spending hunderds of hours on solving it and spending time on ChatGPT to find the reasons of this problem there were at least 160 different reasons for that problem and potentially dozens of unique reasons according to ChatGPT upto the number of reasons I checked and I hardly got any value from checking the number of reasons from that and I think that some people experience what I am feeling lesser and some people experience what I am feeling more and it might be able to predict from birth itself who will expericene this problem less or more and if the above cases apply to most of the people in the world then I think if I reduce the factor of smart work compleltely then their marks can be predicted and there maybe genetic differences which to some extent may lead to people being in different cases however I do not know whether it is true.

Some people believe that practice,consistency and hardwork will make them improve I do not know whether practice,consitency,hardwork for long hours without sleep and breaks will make them improve more than the average person day after day but I think and believe it will also make their perfomance be reduced by some points and that would also compound and if there would be improvements in their performance it would be less than the decrease in it(Source:Common Knowlage),

Those with growth mindset may think and belive that practice and hardwork will increase their performance however I have also taken into account that practice and hardwork can also decrease performance due to tiredness and wrong practice,I had heard.It is due to those lessons that I had learnt and the proverbs I have read that I do not have a growth mindset.I have a conditional growth mindset which takes into account the conditions in which performance will not improve due to practice and the result might be that I have very fluctuating perfromance I rememeber some days ago in tests I consequtively got 8/11,2/11, 4/11,8/11,1/5(Rounded off to 2/11) and I did homework that was given for the students a single time,That was my recent performance given for the groups of questions which I know whether they were correct or not fully as due to cold I could not hear whether my answer was correct or not and we had progressed to the next one,There are also people who as said by more people feel stuck with the genes they were born and think that they will not improve at a subject and that their intelligence is predetermined and they may not try to learn that subject but even with me not having a fixed mindset and previously having a growth mindset instead of a conditional growth mindset I feel that I was free only for a point of time in which I could want to study and I would go to study by opening my book most of times but otherwise while I could do what I wanted for some tasks I did them multiple times for many days only in my imagination and at some point I gave up doing them in my imagination.

1 Like
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I don’t think that this problem happens randomly as otherwise I might would have got hit by a vechile while crossing roads and I would have not been able to write randomly wen text would be dictated in the class.

When I walk too much I start imagining about method to get increased marks in less time, How to learn maths with out practicing…

The Procedual parts are few and they repeat just as questions repeat on a test such as how to learn maths without practicing.

I also am unable to stop walking it feels like I am conscious… (As if it is a law that a person has to be conscious and it is so consistent) and since I am not conscious about my exact state of mind and my legs do not listen to me unless maybe my brain involuntarily decides to stop. It maybe that my brain compensates for my frustration in not being able to do anything sometimes except in my imagination(mostly skipping steps to do it such as studying-I imagine myself going out of my room without having walked out of my room and walking towards my sofa with my book being there some or most of the times and me and myself opening it and sitting on the sofa and studying, Although I only vagualely remember how I study in my imagination)

When I am walking I can imagine better. For that level of visualization which is not exactly next level I would have to practise a lot however I get that level of visualization and better ideas by walking and I when I start walking I occasionally walk for more than 1 hour however now I know better than to start walking for a long time in a certain shape most of the days.and maybe due to not walk often. If I remember correctly I used to walk a lot from when I was a child and it at first I think started with sleep and I do not think that in the hostel I was sent to study we had 8 hours of sleep. Me might have had mostly 1 hour 45 minutes less than 8 hours of sleep and that maybe led to most of the children there to sleep more fir a few minutes before they would be punished and maybe shouted at.

A habit of practicing Accountancy made me be able to do that for 60% of the time and then the success percentage of habits gradually declined.

I had thought by myself if I remember correctly that same cognitive behavioral therapy for me and it did not work. I had tried I think every safe advice in the internet but it did not work except for the advice that tell me to do the work, If I could have done the work I would have done it(Combined lines from the internet whose sources I could not remember)

The vast majority of productivity advice has an expiry date for me that expires faster with use. If I did some work to make this problem enhanced none of the productivity advice will work for me. I have watched hundreds of hours of productivity advice on YouTube such for strategies on how to study,time tables… etc.

I do think that even if I will hire an accountablity coach I might one day stop hiring him and no person might be my accountablity partner for very long(Maybe due to lack of action on studying which will bring me marks) and also I had used many to do lists and at one point my phone had more than 50 apps mostly productivity apps and I also did not open them and they could not work even if they worked for long.

I do not think that beliefs will help. I had also used to listen to upbeat instrumental songs without mostly without mostly looking at the screen thinking that I know everything and that I would get full marks in my exam. Maybe my Brin tricking me and after some results in which I think I got below average to average percentages I realized too late that my brain had been tricking me but I do not know why and I would believe I would get 100 marks in the exam and I studied lesser during the exams(not board exams) because of that and also it might have a shared mechanism with overwriting as I even overwrite in my board exams with 4 over writings per page in my board exam except to save time(Maybe to sub subconsiously I overwrote less to complete the paper on time)

Overwriting may happen faster than even my sub conscious and conscious mind can quickly identify as it feels that my conscious mind and sub conscious mind has overwriting my overwriting after my action of overwriting.

If it is true that I sub consiously overwrite lesser to compile my board exam paper on time then why did my sub conscious mind or any one’s sub conscious mind make me overwrite lesser.

Do you know whether all people you now that have developed their own methods had also experienced the same problems.

If it had been true then those people might have made their own methods to compensate for their performance in some areas and such problems might make people make their own method to compensate.

If it is true then it may lead to a test to identify children and people who had already made their own method(s) which can help. However the chances for that might be extremely low.However if it happened to be true then it might lead to more better methods maybe due to a quantity tm which may be very few of different methods,perspectives and also pre solved problems.

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I’ll admit I have not read all the posts, so I might miss some context; but I’d like to support the “meditation” argument. To me it seems like you lack discipline. Meditation is all about training discipline of the mind, and has a massive impact on life.
A (potentially unhealthy) alternative I used for many years, which takes a little bit of practice, is using a trigger with anger to get a bit of a hormonal rush to get going. I would bite my teeth really hard (the trigger; I’d bite them in an overbite because that elicited anger more for some reason) and get angry, and use the energy to get going.

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According to ChatGPT when I asked it about types of mental triggers it mentioned 7 triggers including-

  1. Cognitive Triggers: Our cognitive processes, such as thoughts, beliefs, and memories, can also act as triggers. Certain thoughts or memories can activate specific neural pathways, influencing our perceptions and behavior. For instance, recalling a past failure might trigger self-doubt or anxiety.

For me the cognitive triggers based on the cross filtered information from ChatGPT might be Cognitive Overload, Emotional Distraction(That lead to this problem),Task Complexity and Mental Fatigue.

I was a day ago was able to start work that I was procrastinating on(Not getting done useful work) when it was time to go and submit it. I do not think I had any of the problems I mentioned above then along with potentially any new problems. What was the cost-be if it analysis of my subconscious mind. How can I ensure that it remains that way for useful work. Will making my cost-benifit analysis for work the same as the cost analysis of the students who start studying the day before exam after knowing that their exam is tomorrow make me more likely to do work without the problems.

You had also mentioned a method that allows you to recall forgotten information that had worked everytime. Will it work for procedual memories and facts and how can I use ridicolous thinking with those facts to ensure that I recall those facts as soon as or after sometime I see the problem(question), not after seeing the answer.

When I start solving questions I have to think a lot and I feel frustrated trying to solve them but when I am in a coaching, I am expected to finish the questions in limited time and I can be inaccurate and they are solved in much lesser time. That speed maybe can not even be replicated by a timer and maybe that is why speed reading classes in person lead to higher reading speeds than speed reading classes taken online(I am assuming this based on the difference on increase in speeds in advertisements and books).

You had also mentioned the reason for the Parkinson’s law and the reason why we break habits even after 300 days of following them.

Can that cost benifit analysis be exploited to allow people to break their time wasting habits such as using their mobile phone for 4-6 hours which might be the average amount of time mobile phones are used if I remember correctly.

What is the cost benifit analysis of a person brushing his teeth since it happens every day and it takes a few minutes but revising for a few minutes every day also takes few minutes but it does not happen everyday. Is it because of cost-benifit analysis and if yes how much is the impact I’d the cost benifit analysis on our actions and according to your experience of the cost benifit analysis of students who do not study and have the entire day of it is modified to have the maximum benifit at 0 cost then will such students study for many hours.If it is then maybe cost benifit analysis hacking can give some results if that of the entire mind.

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I must be making decisions. That can be explained from two points. Potentially all of them.

  1. Cost-Benifit Analysis(That is sub-consious)
  2. Basic Psychology Rules(There may not be many of them in basic psycology)

The cost benifit analysis might be done by hurestics as it is sub conscious and the sub-consious mind may operate on hurestics and stereotypes.

Even something with the highest benifit and the least cost maybe might be excluded maybe because of hurestic(s) and stereotype(s).

I do not know whether at least the majority of people make their decisions due to them.

Some people say that people will only start doing work consistently(for example-study for 8 hours everyday only when the change will come from inside them-The people who do not do work consistently). That maybe because change is hard and based on a video I had seen I think that change is easy for some people and change from the inside or inner change might be easy for them. A method for inner change might make it easier although it might be hard but the hardness or easiness of a task, method might be subjective. A method that is easy for some one might be hard for somebody else and a method that is hard for someone might be easy for somebody else.There might be ways for somebody to make doing something easy before doing it if that thing was not easy for him him before and the opposite might also be true.

Maybe before attempting to make change come from inside it might be better to make change easier and then use a method to make change come from inside for one taks at a time(Such As-Studying,For a long number of hours with breaks).

Note: It had been indicated wherever on a single YouTube or more than one YouTube video had been a basis of what I had though about that video or multiple videos and then I had written what I thought about that video or in case of where more than one video had been the basis of my thought I had also mentioned what I had thought about it after that, I had not named them to avoid making people think negatively about them based on the information in those videos. I might have known more of what I had written than them because I had been researching on that for hours before and also credit to user_7e for the cost benifit analysis and in a private message its explanation,

And,

Have a Very Nice Day.