On Subconscious
For me at least, unstructured thoughts and time to do unstructured cognition is important. By definition there's not much subconscious that we can be conscious about and one might rightfully ask why setting time aside to do nothing just so some subconscious magic can happen is important. And that, in the end, is really to each their own; yet in my experience (and not worrying about the neuroscience on this topic1) there's something fundamentally different that happens with subconscious cognition that cannot be emulated by regular thinking.
As examples of the sub-conscious doing stuff, sometimes I'll be doing things and just remember things out of the blue or get hit with a jolt of thought. And where did those come from? I speculate they're from the subconscious -- after all, thoughts and ideas have been brewing there for quite a while. Or sometimes I'll feel a deep urge to do something, something that feels more than instinct or impulse -- like the need I felt to go outside and walk and hike and breathe when I was at PAIR (great place to be btw) a few days ago. Now I of course can suggest rational reasons why I felt the need to go outside -- I was in a new place, seeing a new city, a new country, a new landscape; maybe being outside fundamentally feels good and maybe I was just inside for too long; or maybe the sheep outside lured my brain into going outside. Nevertheless, I think there was still some deep driving force that pushed/forced me outside which I can only attribute to the subconscious.
I should note that what I'm referring to as 'the subconscious' and 'subconscious cognition' is not at all well-defined -- I'm also not too sure exactly what I mean by those terms. But the core thing that I'm referencing is that sort of churning that your brain does that comes up with new ideas, highlighted in the previous paragraph. It's whatever did that which I'll refer to as subconscious cognition and the subconscious; that thing which our brain does which is kinda like behind the scenes processing that we're unaware2 of.
Obvious question -- how do we get those gears in your brain that you're unaware of to churn and move around? I claim it's by doing some sort of nothing. Nothing here does not literally mean the act of getting to nothing but in essence just some sort of void -- a lack of mental activity. An (extreme) example is meditation -- when meditating (or at least in the flavor that I do it), you're trying to do literally nothing -- not trying to act on anything, not trying to think of/recall anything, not trying to examine anything. That's pretty extreme. Less extreme is something like lying in the grass and staring at the sky and letting your mind wander -- sure you're thinking and feeling and seeing and hearing but in the end, you're not actively doing something -- you're not allocating mental energy towards a specific goal. Activities can also fall into the category of "doing nothing" -- things like exercising or showering are automated in a sense (you're not actively thinking too hard about how to run3 or how to wash yourself) in both cases, you just kinda leave your brain to wander about things and I would claim that in both cases some kind of subconscious activity is going on. Generally thus, I would say you don't have to be 'explicit' about doing nothing; you can find time to let thoughts wander when you're grocery shopping or gardening or gaming -- as long as in each there's no prolonged heavy mental machinery going on during the activity.4
Obvious question #2 -- is all this stuff necessary or crucial? Like I mentioned earlier, I have no clue5. So why do I do subconscious stuff? Why do I set some time aside (granted, not much) to like, do nothing? Well I also don't know. Perhaps letting my brain explicitly roam gives the brain some peace and quiet and allows it to take care of some backend/processing tasks. In the end however, I think I set time aside both because it's important for some subconscious stuff (maybe) and because setting time aside to not do much ends up making me live better. Like spending time looking at plants or staring at the sky or intently listening to music that makes you excited or any other task that brings you excitement doesn't inherently translate to knowledge that is beneficial but does translate (in some sense) to a more relaxed state and a better mental state (happy, excited, ready to tackle something). And if in the process of being excited, your brain can do some silly background stuff that can lead to new insights and help you out in the long run, that's all the better.
So maybe next time you're in a long car ride (or any car ride I suppose), try staring out the window. Some thoughts might spring out from the subconscious that you'll find interesting. Or maybe no thoughts will come but you'll be absorbed6 into the blur of green and yellow and grey and brown which is also really cool. Either way, whether you try staring out the window or not, just go out there and go do some new stuff you find cool. That's bound to help no matter what.
Meta (for me): It took me ~135min to write and edit this piece, and now on the 2nd day, I'm wondering why I even wrote this garbage.
Neuroscience is cool but you can read about that without me. I could give you an introduction to the subconscious or whatever but to that I say 1. other people who are much more knowledgeable do a much better job of that and 2. that would mean I need to do research when writing a blog post. also 3. invoking science makes this whole idea in a sense less 'interesting' as knowing it's been formalized and researched gives the impression that to figure anything out you need to know a lot. Which is true if you're doing neuroscience, but not true if you're playing with concepts on your own.↩
Ironic that I say unaware given that in all those previous examples I was aware (conscious) of something (e.g. a thought) to realize it's existence. The sub-conscious is just a weird thing I suppose; once you're aware of something, by definition, it's out of the realm of the sub-conscious. But I'm also pretty sure the sub-conscious or something equivalent exists and is doing stuff in my brain.↩
Or maybe you are, I don't really know. I'm just considering the general case of exercising to a routine or something. And even if you are thinking about running while running, it's probably not minute stuff like "I have to move my leg slightly forward now" it's usually more like "hmm let's put my foot here" or "let's go slightly faster because we're off pace".↩
And in a sense you can be "left to your own thoughts".↩
Maybe go look into the research yourself and/or try out some techniques or whatever and go experimenting :>↩
For those that are wondering "Well what if I get no thoughts and I'm not absorbed into the scenery?" I ask how do you know if you're absorbed or not? If you enjoy the scenery, you won't think about how much you're enjoying it. If you're not enjoying it, well you'll realize that and boom there's a thought for you to think about.↩