Depending on what I’m doing at any given time, my mind can wander off a bit. As Kevin Horsley explains in “Unlimited Memory“, though, it never really wanders. As he says:
Your mind never wanders; it moves toward more interesting things.
That’s both enlightening but also frustrating. There are times when it’s fine for my mind to wander, such as in the shower or when I’m exercising, but it becomes frustrating when it wanders while I’m trying to stay focused.
The most common time I see this is while I’m reading, and Horsley’s quote has me thinking about that a good. If my mind wanders while I’m reading a book, perhaps that says more about the book than it does about my mind. If my mind is wandering, it means that it’s not finding the book to be adequately interesting.
Something I’ve been working on is the ability to stop reading a book if it’s not as beneficial as I expected it would be. I was pretty good about that a few years ago, but recently I’ve again been forcing myself to finish any book that I start.
The next time I’m reading and I start wandering, I may consider “why?” for a bit before I go back to the previous page and catch up again.
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