Open and Closed Loops & More

Today’s high-signal drops:

• Makes-You-Think Tweet: Add texture to extend life
• Mind-Expanding Concept: Open and closed loops
• Cool Quote or Question: About analogies
• High-Signal Content: The Last Question, a short story

Makes-You-Think Tweet

Mind-Expanding Concept

Open and Closed Loops

There's this concept of "open loops" by David Allen, the old-school productivity guru. Open loops are like open tabs in a browser but for your brain.

These are things running in our minds' background, stealing processing power and attention from what we should be focusing on at that moment. Some of my current open tabs:

• Buy my wife a present - no idea what, as usual

• Schedule my daughter's vaccines for next month - all three on the same day?

• Schedule a touch base with my boss on a specific project

• Write down notes from the pediatrician's appointment

Because our mind craves ticking boxes and finishing stuff, it keeps coming back to these unfinished tasks, draining our mental energy. So David's suggestion is to close these loops. The first step is to take stock: write down all the current open loops you have. Knowing that you have them written down and that you won't forget them frees a meta open-loop which is "I must get to all these things in my to-do list". I do that myself on a notebook that I carry everywhere - if it's not there or on my schedule, chances are it will slip through the cracks.

After many years of doing that, it hit me: can I do the inverse? Can I prompt my unconscious to work on important stuff while I'm doing other hopefully important but more likely urgent things?

Well, apparently that's a thing. Josh Waitzkin (chess master, world Tai Chi Chuan champion, and author of The Art of Learning) describes in an interview how he taps into his unconscious by thinking deeply about a problem or asking a complex question before going to bed, and then writing whatever comes to mind the minute he wakes up. The trick though is letting it go between thinking about it and going to bed to avoid rumination on the subject.

We all had experiences where we were stuck in a problem, but after making a pause and doing something else, when we were back, the solution or an alternative was right there. It's funny that I've never tried to run this process on purpose.

I’ve been closing loops to increase focus and productivity for a while. It’s time to open some to help me with complex problems. I'll report back.

Cool Quote

High-Signal Content

“The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…”

See you next week,

Filipe