After loading up with info from researching and noodling and googling, why do many people feel a need to play, say,  jazz or Bach on the piano, or maybe just take a walk outside?

For the quarter of the population who are introverted – unlike the extroverts – their brain, not only keeps open a larger funnel for data, but also processes the data along a longer pathway.  It’s not a consciously controlled gate.  And they can’t help it.  Simple overload.

Are introverts abnormal? Well, mathematically, yes – since the extroverts are the majority. But the point is that’s just a statistical fact, not a disability.

Is it also a process of tossing the data between the pattern-seeking right brain and the linearizing left brain?

Even for me, when I’m exploring a new topic I like listening to cool jazz or Bach’s repetitive, horizontal arabesques; and when the data seem to be emerging into a structure, I like pursuing the endpoint with the more vertical, directional frames of Beethoven or Brahms.

So I tell my son it’s more than ok that he takes breaks from the mindmaps and word processing, and he goes to just play on the piano, or YouTube’s for a jazz piece or some goofy comedy.

And how about we call a truce, and just call it Attention Decompression Dichotomy?

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This entry was posted Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 6:13 am and is filed under Decision Making. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.