On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Ben Kovitz bkovitz@acm.org wrote:
Say, does anyone else here edit Wikipedia as "therapy"?
I'm in grad school now, and my head has been spinning from the frequent context-switching: jumping between one in-depth class and another and another, without finishing one thing before starting another, and without having time to dig in enough depth to satisfy the need to "get to the bottom of it". Until a few days ago, the noise in my head (a rhythm of non-stop interruption--"cogitus interruptus", you could call it) had gotten so intense, it was becoming hard to function.
At times like these, I've occasionally turned to Wikipedia. Hmm, something needs doing. Let's just do it. I can work it over until I'm content. Each little editing project is short: from a few minutes to an hour. There are no deadlines. I just follow my inspiration for what to work on as it comes. If I get stuck on something, like not being able to find a fact, I just leave the article in better condition than I found it and call my little project "done".
Saturday morning, I started an article about a topic in one of my classes. Just summarized what was in the book. And then spent the weekend merrily editing whatever I felt like editing. It's now Monday morning, and my head is clear. There is no more noise in my head!
Who needs drugs or doctors when you've got "edit this page"? ;)
Well, that's not really therapy. And I know you don't mean that. But I can't think of the right word either.
What might be happening is that when you have a lot to learn or absorb, and your brain is "full", you need a period to consolidate the learning in your brain (laying down the neural pathways and so on), and similar to the way this happens in sleep ("sleep on it" isn't just a saying) you are "clearing" your mind while doing (relatively) mundane tasks. Some people go and take a walk, others play sport, or clean the house, or sleep, while some edit Wikipedia. :-)
The closest I can find is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation
Though this category has some interesting stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Memory_processes
Carcharoth