kbrecordzz
Art & entertainment
Home - About - Contact - Overview


Mental efficiency

by kbrecordzz February 10, 2025 general thoughts

I read the book "Mental efficiency" by Arnold Bennett, a really good book from 1911 which I first thought would be a technical description of the inner workings of the mind's energy consumption, but it wasn't, it was more of a loosely connected collection of essays where the first one was called "mental efficiency". So I thought I'd steal the title for this post instead and try to make that technical description I was looking for myself!

This knowledge comes from me being burnt-out and going through each day with extremely limited energy, where every large outtake of energy was felt clearly at the end of the day. I had to adapt and use the least energy possible to get anything done at all, which in the end has generated a mental map over how much energy various tasks take from my brain. So this is incredibly biased, but I still tried to pick out the things that felt more general and not just tied to my personality (doing things you like takes less energy than the opposite...). I also think it's interesting to show that we humans absolutely have a limited brain energy, in the same way we have limited muscle power, and that different things - in a very obvious way - take very different amounts of energy. Here are (some of) my findings:

• Morning vs evening:
It seems like you have more energy in the morning, or at least the first half of the day. I'm in a bad mood when I wake up and the opposite when I go to bed, but still my complex problem solving capabilities sink rapidly in the evening. Maybe it's only me. But I think it's you too.

• Creativity vs logic:
Creative thinking takes less energy than logical problem solving. Maybe because problem solving by definition puts a pressure on you, and forces you to think of certain specific things instead of thinking completely freely? Or because problems you haven't solved yet are probably pretty complicated and therefore requires you to take many things into consideration, which brings us to the next part...

• Focus vs multitasking:
Focusing on one thing for a long time takes less energy than doing many different things during that same time. You don't necessarily think about less things because you focus on less things simultaneously, but it takes less energy.

• Habit vs variation:
Doing things by habit is almost completely automatic and takes almost no energy at all. Doing something new takes more energy, of obvious reasons, but can also be much more fun and for that reason alone still be the better choice! Creating a habit takes much energy, because it is doing something new, but following that habit after it's been created doesn't.

• Thinking vs doing:
Stopping what you do to think and reflect, without trying to advance, progress, finish, develop or execute, takes less energy than doing all those mentioned things. Maybe because _not_ doing anything also actually _gives_ you energy by putting the body in resting mode, and because just wandering around with your thoughts conciously and unconciously ties up mental knots so that you have less problems, less plans and less to worry about after this period of thinking than you had before, even if you didn't really do anything? Reading and writing also seems to create this effect for me.

• Curiosity vs requirement:
It takes less energy to follow your curiosity, enjoyment and interest than to do something because you, or someone else, has decided that you should. Let the interest form, and then follow it. Focus on the process instead of the result.

Also: Worrying takes unreasonably much energy. Not sleeping enough takes unreasonably much energy. I couldn't put these two in any "vs" scenario like the ones above, so... just don't do them?

Don't use any of this as finite advice for how to go through life as efficiently as possible. These aren't ideas from a normal person's perspective, and I'll probably change my mind in a year or even in a few months about all of this. Also, many things that take energy from you also gives you energy, motivation and happiness back, so striving for as low energy consumption as possible probably isn't a good philosophy. Use the knowledge responsibly (if at all).

(Left out of this post: Silence vs noise, information & impressions. Meaning & progress vs forcing yourself with willpower. Calmness vs stress. Focusing on the process vs the results. And the usual pile of non-understandable notes.)


Subscribe to Golden emails