Cognition
My journey of thought
The last 6 months have been challenging for me. I have been having a bit of an early mid-life crisis. During this time I have also noticed a decreased ability to process and recall information. I have always prided myself in my memory and the ability to recall the most mundane of details. I know there isn’t one reason for it, but I wanted to learn more about it, so I can understand how to combat it.
I’m 35 and very mentally active. I read, nearly all day, every day. I am always consuming knowledge, thinking creatively, and writing regularly. That is until the last few months. At first, I thought I was burning out due to my consulting work, but that didn't feel right. Then I thought it had to do with my migraines, and while it does affect my thinking abilities, it generally doesn't affect them that long. So what is the cause?
Before figuring out my issue, I needed to wrap my mind around the concepts of thought. I narrowed it down to general cognition. This then got me fascinated by the human mind, but we'll stick with cognition for this edition.
How to define cognition?
Cognition is defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.’
– https://www.cambridgecognition.com/blog/entry/what-is-cognition
I see this as the overall process of thought, at all levels. We perceive the world around us, process what we take in, form thoughts and opinions on that information and store it for later. We then retrieve that information to make decisions in the future.
Yes, I know this sounds like a very broad topic, and while it is, it provides us a basis to work upon.
What's the issue?
I feel the most impact while taking in information and the retrieval of it.
I have written about it in the past, I am dyslexic. This inherently makes it challenging for me to take in different types of information. While what I am going through does feel like dyslexia, it also feels like a flareup of it. It seems like cognitive fatigue is adding to my dyslexia. Cognitive fatigue, similar to mental exhaustion, is taxing your brain for extended periods of time until it gives up. Generally, after a traumatic event, but not limited to one. It can also be from a culmination of things, leading to a tipping point.
I think my tipping point, was spreading myself a bit too thin. Not by taking too much on, but rather cognitively stressing myself. I have been a full-time Notion consultant since December 2021. During that time, I have also been writing this letter and Async Chats, my interview edition. I enjoy all of this and generally feel energized to work on them. But, my Notion consulting was not yielding enough revenue, so I started to hunt for day jobs a lot. If you have looked for a job in recent years, especially a remote one, you know the process is taxing, to say the least. That, plus consulting, plus my passion projects, plus my need to absorb knowledge at hyper speed triggered a cognitive collapse.
What I learned
I have felt this in the past, but never while doing what I love. So I took some time off from this letter to reset. This time was for introspection. I have been learning a lot about cognition, different forms of neurodiversity, and what works well for me.
I have learned that my neurodiversity directly impacts my cognition and that in order to push forward in all aspects of my life, I need to balance them. Since I am dyslexic and likely have a bit of ADHD, I have learned that I can only think and learn effectively when I am energized to do so. Forcing it frustrates me to the point of just giving up, which then makes me feel unfulfilled. I also admitted to myself that I can never be the general 9-5 worker. While I crave getting back to my old salary++, I need to find my way to make that happen. Not only is the idea of working for someone else appalling, but the process is also exhausting and broken.
What I am doing
Firstly, I am betting on myself. As of last week, I am officially a Certified Notion consultant. This means that I am on the Notion website as one of 50 people in the world that is certified by Notion to build with their platform. While this is great and I am proud of myself for getting it, it is just the first step in that journey. I still plan on consulting with the agency I work with, but also plan on freelance consulting in addition to that. Combining the two should provide me with my monetary goals and still fulfill me creatively.
Secondly, I have adjusted some of my tools to better work with how my brain thinks.
For tasks, I was using Things3, Notion, and Apple Reminders. I dropped Things3. It is a great tool, but I was stretching my cognitive load a bit here. I was either not getting personal tasks done, or forgetting to check on tasks in Notion entirely. The stress of getting them all done bubbled up daily and felt stifling. Using Notion more allows me to see my workload in different ways, which really works nicely for planning my days and weeks.
As for Notes, well, this is where I am still testing. Admittedly, I have spent the most time on this. I have been searching for a better way to augment my cognition, better known as extended cognition.
My second brain has been exclusively in Notion for the better part of two years, and while I love using it for that, I have been trying a different tool for capturing, processing and distilling ideas. Enter Obsidian. I will likely go into this in further detail in a coming edition, but in general, it flows like: web -> Obsidian (clip, distill, create) -> output (social post, newsletter, video). I also use Matter to capture and highlight content, before going into Obsidian. Matter works well for my brain, as it provides a tactile experience with the information. I use Matter on my iPad, with Apple Pencil, to read and highlight information. It then gets synced to Obsidian directly, and then I complete the process above.
This can be done 100% in Notion, but the speed and simplicity of markdown files are really jiving with my brain lately. It is still very much so in the testing phase, and my minimalist tendencies make me second guess the addition of another tool. I am going to try it out a bit longer and report back. Hell, I might end up just sticking with Notion.
This situation has been frustrating, but enlightening. Not only have I learned more about myself, but I have also crafted solutions to combat the problem. It is still ongoing, but I feel like the solutions I have in place have been helping.
The biggest immediate solution was to allow myself to stop hunting for a day job. That whole situation was stressing me out and using up valuable energy.
Once I learned more about how I think, I was able to craft a solution for extending my cognition. This reduced my cognitive load and allows for explorative thought, which leads to deep thought and idea generation.
If you want me to go deeper into cognition or theories around it, drop me a comment or email me. I'd love to share my learnings with you!
Have you ever felt this way? Was there a tipping point that triggered it for you? Do you have solutions that have helped you?
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