The Mind That Won’t Turn Off
There are few meetings I resent more than the ones my brain schedules without consulting me. They tend to occur sometime after midnight, when every useful office in America is closed, everyone involved in the situation is asleep, and I am wearing pajamas that do not suggest I am prepared for serious negotiations. Nevertheless, attendance is apparently mandatory. The meeting begins with a review of something I said earlier that day, moves briskly to a decision I made last week, circles back to whether someone seemed slightly quieter than usual, and concludes with a special presentation titled Things That Could Potentially Go Wrong Between Now and the End of Time. My brain comes prepared. There are exhibits.
The strange thing is that much of this feels like work. I am reviewing, comparing, analyzing, anticipating and occasionally composing an absolutely magnificent response to a conversation that ended eleven hours ago. Surely this much mental effort must be accomplishing something. But effort and progress are not the same thing. One of the distinctions I make in Thinking in Circles is that useful thought develops as it proceeds. It adds information, corrects an assumption, narrows a question, produces a decision or points toward an action. Circular thinking can be extraordinarily busy while doing none of those things.
This is especially difficult for people who are generally good at solving problems. Thinking ahead has probably served us well. We remember the detail everybody else forgot. We anticipate what might go wrong. We prepare for the meeting, make the list and catch the mistake before it becomes expensive. The trouble begins when that perfectly useful ability refuses to clock out. As the book puts it, vigilance can remain on duty long after the available work has ended. The problem may still matter, but importance cannot manufacture another action.
Nighttime is particularly hospitable to this nonsense. During the day, the world keeps interrupting us with actual life. There are people talking, dogs barking, errands to run, messages to answer and things requiring our attention. At night, the competition disappears. Suddenly the unanswered question that occupied a small corner of the afternoon has the entire auditorium. Fatigue doesn't help. A concern that seemed manageable at four o'clock can arrive at 1:17 in the morning dressed as a five-alarm emergency. The facts may not have changed at all; what has changed are the conditions under which we're examining them.
And then we make the situation even more efficient by worrying about the fact that we're worrying. Now I'm not only thinking about tomorrow's problem; I'm thinking about why I can't stop thinking about tomorrow's problem. Then I notice the clock and begin calculating how much sleep I could still get if I fell asleep immediately, which of course is famously conducive to falling asleep immediately. Before long, the original concern has acquired a spouse, several children and a small family business. The mind began by trying to solve Tuesday and has somehow concluded that Wednesday is ruined too.
What I find most useful is not trying to force the whole operation to shut down. “Stop thinking about it” is spectacularly unhelpful advice when your brain has already demonstrated that it has no intention of cooperating. Instead, I have become more interested in asking a smaller question: Is this round of thinking giving me anything I didn't have the last time around? Did I remember something important? Has a new fact appeared? Is there an action I can take? Has my understanding changed? Or have I simply arrived at the same conclusion wearing myself out along the way? That distinction is central to Thinking in Circles: mental effort isn't proof of progress.
Sometimes the answer really is that something needs doing. Send the email. Write down the question. Make the appointment in the morning. Apologize if an apology is due. Other times the concern is legitimate but simply cannot be handled now. The office opens tomorrow. The test result comes Friday. The other person hasn't answered. And sometimes—and this is the category my brain finds particularly offensive—the information I want does not currently exist. I cannot know tonight how someone will respond tomorrow, whether a decision will eventually prove ideal, or what another person privately meant by a three-second pause. Thinking harder cannot make unavailable information arrive.
That is why I like the idea of giving a thought a destination instead of demanding that it disappear. The Five-C Mind Reset in Thinking in Circles ends with Close: act on what can be acted upon, schedule what belongs to another time, or return your attention to the life in front of you. Closing the loop doesn't mean the thought will obediently pack a suitcase and leave. It means deciding what the thought requires from you now. Sometimes the answer is action. Sometimes it's Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. And sometimes the answer is, with all due respect to the emergency committee, absolutely nothing at 1:17 in the morning.
I suspect my brain will continue calling meetings. It is committed to the work, and apparently nobody has explained retirement benefits. But I don't have to attend every meeting simply because an agenda has been distributed. A returning thought isn't automatically a new problem. A familiar doubt isn't new evidence. And an unresolved question doesn't require my continuous mental supervision in order to remain important.
Sometimes the most responsible thing we can do with a thought is admit that we have taken it as far as it can go for now. We have considered the facts, identified what belongs to us, made whatever decision or plan is currently possible, and reached the boundary where more thinking will not produce more information. That does not mean the concern is unimportant. It means continued mental occupation is no longer the same thing as responsible attention. As Thinking in Circles puts it, responsible thought needs a stopping point based on evidence rather than waiting for discomfort to disappear completely.
I suspect my brain will continue calling meetings. It is committed to the work, and apparently nobody has explained retirement benefits. But I don't have to attend every meeting simply because an agenda has been distributed. A returning thought isn't automatically a new problem. A familiar doubt isn't new evidence. And an unresolved question doesn't require my continuous mental supervision in order to remain important.
There may always be something I could think about one more time. Another angle to consider. Another possible outcome. Another imaginary conversation in which I am extraordinarily articulate and everyone else responds exactly as rehearsed. But at some point, I have to decide whether I am actually solving something or merely keeping myself company inside the problem. That may be one of the most useful distinctions I've learned: thinking is not the same as solving. Useful thought eventually changes what we know, decide, or do. When none of those things is changing anymore, perhaps the meeting really can be adjourned.
The problem may still be there tomorrow. If something new happens, I can think about it again. If an action becomes available, I can take it. But until then, there is also dinner to taste, a conversation to hear, a dog demanding something unreasonable, a book to read, a bed to sleep in and an ordinary life occurring while my mind is busy trying to solve things that cannot yet be solved.
And I would rather be there for some of it.
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