This week will be about Time & Space.
Recently, this conversation has risen multiple times. The idea, our minds are molded by 2 things.
Time
Space
What does each mean in relation to Mind Space?
Time: There is a certain amount of time that your mind needs to achieve a certain state, level of thinking. I recently casted on Farcaster:
Everyone has the ability to rise to the moment. Do you give the time and space to arise. Every 🥖 rises at a given temperature and time. Undercooked, overcooked, or just right. Which are you?
Unpacking what’s already in our mind is one thing. Then transition. Finally, enter the desired state of mind. How long does that take? Different every time, I’d bet. One day, 30 minutes of unpacking, 5 minutes of transition, and 10 seconds of desired state of mind. Not that productive.
Other days, 10seconds of unpacking, 5 minutes of transition, 30minutes within the desired state of mind. I’d call this a productive session.
So, how much time do you allow yourself?
To enter the right state of mind?
Next.
Space: This is mental space & physical space. Physical 3D structures embody ideas and thoughts that are not obvious. They become obvious when a certain mind set has been attained.
Attaining the right space has proven to be one of the more difficult task, of molding the mind.
The variables that impact space are wide and deep. Money is big. Time is even bigger. If we don’t control our time, the only other way is money. Certain mind sets can be tapped more quickly through exposure to the right physical & mental space.
Some of my thoughts on applying time & space:
Time: Do not set a timelines on certain activities if the desired states is exploratory. Do it till the sense of that exploration has ended and your attention naturally shifts to something else.
Time: Set a timeline on activities if the desired state is exploitative. Do it till time is up and move away. You may not achieve the desired product but its time aggregated to the overall task at hand. Next time will likely be better.
Space: Identifying what objects the space requires for a desired outcome. If I want to be explorative, I want people or access to people and outside information. Do these objects or things reside in a standard space? WeWork vs. walks on calls vs. in mind pacing around house vs. pitch wedge in lawn (Digital space vs physical space).
Space: Identify the mental space of any given idea. If I need to execute on a specific idea. I must try and learn what type of mental space that idea embodies. E.g. Writing code requires my mind to be in a different space than when I’m trying to create a slide deck on the big picture of how web3 is an emergent economy.
Allow me just 1 full example: Colleague X is wondering why his script that I tested many times, and recently used, was not returning any data, when ran. My mind was on different things but I promised to look at it by EOD. When I sat down to look at my terminal and cd my way to the land of hero-dom. My mind wondered. First to writing about something completely unrelated, short-form note taking as usual. Then my mind shifted to an NFT project that I want to buy (the NFT + the project itself, royalties). It took me a near 30 minutes to unpack my thoughts to only find out that the API keys were wrong, I just needed to update the API key.
commit and done. Voila.
Let me wrap this up by talking about learning & education.
We never stop learning. It’s not a natural process - to be stagnant. Not learning is intentionally choosing to be left out of evolutionary history. Information structures, humans, want more and more information. Just do.
My biggest lesson, through having kids, a child interacts with ideas of time and space very differently than us “adults”.
Children have no conception of time. They only have conception of space. As we become older we become more aware of time with a greater ability to manipulate space. Yet, as the “adult”, I limit my child’s time within any given space, directly impacting their learning path, constantly.
I bring this up because children aren’t consciously optimizing for a state of mind, they are defaulted to a curious mind, moving from one idea to next, regardless of time. But, we as parents control their future state of mind by how we limit their time in any given space.
As “adults”, we need to learn how to leverage the same ideas for own Mind Space.
Leverage time & space for your mind, like a child.
