SDS 374: Remember to Wind Down

Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast everybody. Super excited to have you back here on the show. Today, I wanted to share something that I’m experimenting with in my personal life, and that is winding down after work. So what I’ve been finding lately is that I get so engaged in my work that as soon as I’m finished, if for instance, my girlfriend and I, we agreed to have dinner at six o’clock. And as soon as I’m finished, I finish at 05:59 and then run or go to meet her and have dinner, often I find myself not being present. And often I find myself not participating fully in the conversation, in the activity that we’re doing, whether it’s dinner or something, something else we’re going for a walk or spending some time together. I’m not fully engaged in that. And that is not fair to myself. Not fair to people around me, not fair to people who I’m engaged with. 

And so I’ve been digging more into that and it just so happens that the book you probably have heard me talk about, Deep Work that I’m reading about also mentions similar concepts more in terms of switching between tasks within work. But the book mentioned a really interesting research paper by… This research paper is by Sophie Leroy from 2009. It’s called Why Is It so Hard to Do My Work? And now full disclosure, I haven’t read the full research paper, I’ve skimmed through it and found exactly what I was looking for. And she talks about a concept of attention residue. So what is attention residue? 

So attention residue. So first of all, we have to define ruminating thoughts, which come from another research paper from 1986. So ruminating thoughts correspond to a class of thoughts that are triggered and recur, even when they are not relevant to the situation at hand and are not required by the immediate environment. So basically thoughts about the past or the future or something that you’re not present with those thoughts. I think we all have those all the time. And then from that definition of ruminating thoughts, Sophie Leroy, well, goes ahead to define attention residue. 

And so she defines attention residue as a type of ruminative thought that… Oh, it’s actually not ruminating, it’s ruminative thought. So basically she defines attention residue as a type of ruminative thought that is specific to the context of task transitioning and the issue of allocating attention among activities. Specifically, it describes thoughts that replace a prior task when working on a subsequent task. And then she also says that attention residue occurs when people’s attention is still focused on a prior task instead of being fully focused on their current task. 

So basically once you’re finished with something, you’re going to have attention residue. And in the article, and I’ve already made a note to read more through it, but I saw that she mentioned that a way to combat attention residue, one of the ways is to complete your previous task, complete the task and move on. And I’m very curious to find out what she will say about that. But for me personally, even if I complete a task, I still have that attention residue. I’m still floating around in that task and thinking about it quite a bit. I think there’s quite a lot of personal things in terms of it’s different for everybody. But my point is often we can’t even complete a task. For instance, the nature of my work, I might be working on a big course that I might complete as a task within the course, but then right away that triggers the next task, the next task in my brain. I’m always thinking about, okay, what’s going to be happening next, what I’m going to be working on next. 

So the solution I’m testing out right now, and it seems to be helping is to have a buffer of time to wind down. So once I’m finished with work to proceed to, rather than straight to the next, for instance, social interaction or a dinner that we have planned together or something where I need to be present where it’s only fair to myself and other people to be present, instead of that, I finish my work a bit… I try to finish my work a bit earlier, like 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour early, and try to go do something that will allow my mind to rest. 

For instance, lately, I’ve been learning how to play the ukulele. And that’s really helpful. By the way, a cool app to use for that is called Yousician and I’m really enjoying that. Another thing to do, maybe meditate, or maybe to go, I love washing the dishes. That’s another thing I can do. To go for a walk, if you’re able at this time, of course, to leave your apartment with the whole coronavirus. But for instance, again, meditation is good. Reading a book or something to wind down, but not get engaged in another task. Something that’s more for recreational purposes and something that’s not going to get your mind hooked on another exciting thing to think about and challenge to solve. And that’s buffer, even if it doesn’t fully remove this concept of attention residue, at least it removes it to some extent. At least it brings it down and then it allows me to be very present with the people around me or in the next task or the next thing that I’m moving on to. 

So there we go. That’s a quick thing that I’m experimenting with. Hopefully that will be helpful. I think it’s very important, especially in these times when a lot of us have moved to working remotely and maybe before in the office, when you’re finished with your work in the office, and then you are on your way home, you have that time to wind down on public transport, or while you’re driving a car and listening to the radio. And maybe before you didn’t find as many situations where you’re not present with your spouse or significant other or kids or whoever else is in your household, whoever else you’re interacting with after work. But now you might be finding a different situation where you’re finishing work, and because you’re working from home, instantly, you get up in the next room, you’re now with the people around you. 

And I think this can be very detrimental to relationships and can in the long-term lead to conflict and misunderstandings just simply because the environment has changed. Before, you didn’t or you had time to wind down to let go of this attention residue, even if it wasn’t a conscious thing. With working from home, this is something that needs to be given conscious, speaking of attention, it needs to be given conscious attention and a specific time needs to be allocated to that. That’s my thinking on that and would love to know what you hear, wherever you’re listening to this, you can always leave us a review or a comment and mention what thoughts you have on the topic. And yeah, so that was attention residue. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then happy analyzing.