Ask HN: Where does your mind wander to?

Oh I got the perfect answer for this one.<p>As someone who (now after about a year of therapy a while back) has my OCD managed, let me tell you what my brain still does with a moment of free time:<p>Visualizes the worst possible scenario of any situation I’m in!<p>Standing in line to get coffee: What happens if I blurt out a racial slur randomly in here? Or what if someone walks in with a gun? What if someone put poison in this batch of coffee?<p>Walking with my kids to a park: What if that van over there is about to kidnap my kids. What if my oldest pushes my younger one out into traffic? What if one of them falls off the playground and gets permanent brain damage?<p>Sitting in bed at night: What if that weird feeling in my stomach is cancer? What if I left the heater on too high and it starts a fire that burns down my house? What if a giant sinkhole opens up beneath my house and swallows us whole?<p>All that being said, I used to spend hours compulsing to try and make the anxiety these thoughts cause go away but have learned to better accept them for what they are.

I&#x27;m a full-time (adhd-diagnosed) daydreamer. I have a bulk of projects that I can escape to. For all of them I have notes, so when my mind wanders around and I stumble across something that I think is note-worthy, I write it down. Most of these &#x27;projects&#x27; (non of which ever came to life) are software related. My currently favorite one is a video game. It has about 60k words in the design document and about 35k safed pictures from the internet as of now. I guess this is not healthy, but as I said, it&#x27;s a place that I can escape to. Another thing is &#x27;teaching&#x27;. I imagine myself in front of a group of kids and try to explain them something that I know.

I have been sailing 9 weeks non-stop from Ushuaia to Lisboa. No emails, phones, newspapers, books and the only laptop on board (for watching movies) got broken... It has been rough seas around Cape Horn but pretty smooth sailing later... Watching sunrise and sunsets, stars, clouds etc.<p>The things that had started coming to my mind - like things long forgotten or put away and now coming back as fresh memories...<p>Very interesting experience...<p>Riding a motobike for long hours in mountains (Thailand or Laos or Flores) - similar experience. Your are immersed in the landscape, in the moment. Focused on the road but on the other hand your mind is wandering free...<p>I have been to couple meditation retreats or monasteries as well. But that&#x27;s a bit different....

Sex, booze, sex, friends, sex,family, sex, books, sex, traveling, sex, science, sex, art, sex, tech, sex, movies, sex, art, sex, sociology, sex, anthropology, sex, big problems of the humankind, sex. In that order.<p>Sometimes I wonder if an Eskimo girl would wear a pink finger ring while listening to Irish folk music while traveling between Mombasa and Easter Island for a conference about mouses who wear green umbrellas.

Whatever is currently going wrong the most...and I hate it.<p>When I don&#x27;t have something to focus on, I usually dwell on whatever problems I&#x27;m aware of that are the most emotionally troubling. That&#x27;s often challenges I face as a business owner, relational conflict with someone I care about, ways I&#x27;d like to improve myself or change but can&#x27;t&#x2F;won&#x27;t, etc.<p>This results in a significant toll on my mental and emotional faculties&#x2F;health. Simply resting, bring at peace, doesn&#x27;t seem possible. I chalk this up to my analytical mindset, which helps me greatly in my development efforts, being unable to disengage despite knowing full well there is nothing I can do to change most of it. That and&#x2F;or being prone to anxiety. Not sure it even matters why, it&#x27;s clearly baked into my &quot;wiring&quot; somewhere.<p>Due to this dynamic, I almost always prefer to have something to engage with. Programming, phone (usually here or news), TV, cards with family, books, etc. I don&#x27;t like that I compulsively reach for my phone now and have to &quot;escape&quot; to these distractions, but as I&#x27;ve weighed the pros and cons, this seems better than the alternative of incessantly dwelling on the negatives.

I am almost always considering &quot;what did it take to make this thing work, and why did they do it this way?&quot; Sometimes it is at a high level such as UX design or architecture, but more frequently it is akin to &quot;gratitude&quot; strategies where you look at a random object in your life, examine it and consider all the labor and materials and knowledge that went into it. It can get overwhelming: how many screws are in this window frame, what are they made of, where were they made, what does the screw factory look like, what were the logistics of getting that factory set up, what equipment is involved in making sure the screws are to the correct specifications, how are people trained on that equipment, who designed it, how many screws were needed to make that equipment in the first place, and how did THOSE screws come about? and on and on like that.<p>It&#x27;s often a fun thought experiment, and really helps me appreciate all the little things that let me lead the life I do, even when that life is not going as well as I&#x27;d like.

- On the malleability of culture, and the absolutely temporary nature of the world order that we think is stable.<p>- On interstellar travel, and how completely bonkers it would be to ride on a steadily-degrading spaceship for a decade, with just enough fuel to stop when you get there, and no more. And what it might take to get our civilization to care enough to try (seems like a terrible calamity is the only way).<p>- I firmly believe that there is a sequence of words that, if constructed properly for an individual, (perhaps even less than 1000 words), would convince anyone of anything. I try to think of short sequences of very-convincing arguments, mostly to no avail. I think about this a lot when politicians ramble on and on -- just not creative enough. I also think about this a lot when people talk about why they believe something, and I try to see why it is so convincing to them.<p>- The future of robotics and AI. This one I think about a ton. That future is biology, I&#x27;m afraid, but metal-bots will always have a place.<p>And, like chewz said below, I also have a list of projects I can bounce back to.

Away from screens, I&#x27;m doing hobbies I picked to actively keep me away from screens. On a motorcycle, I think my ego gets sufficiently preoccupied with keeping its physical host alive, and so then the rest of my mind can wander. Depending on flow state, the mind speaks language, symbolic memories, or in sufficiently intense activities, those disappear entirely and it&#x27;s just sub-second sensory immediacy.<p>In language, it&#x27;s a lot of comedy (e.g. How could you tell if someone you already knew was wearing a disguise? How would they respond if you asked them? How would you know they aren&#x27;t? What if they&#x27;re lying? When you solve a catchpa to prove you are not a robot, how sure can you be, and who are you trying to convince, really? etc.) then, it&#x27;s ethical and religious questions about power and politics (What is a just war? Is deception intrinsically more moral than violence? Do leaders have a divine mandate? For what are we accountable in regard to good and evil? What is the substrate of our experience? Is &quot;The Simulation&quot; just language?), and then some of what most closely resembles adolescent metamathematics (What are the most atomic operations and what property of the universe makes their number finite? Is complexity an artifact of geometry? What isn&#x27;t a graph?)<p>The rest is too long to get into, but essentially it reduces to whatever deepity is sufficient to distract me from doing the work I&#x27;m probably supposed to be doing.

Ontology! Since my earliest memories, my mind continuously wanders off to questions like, &#x27;what is the nature of... things? What is the substance of... substance? What qualities of a thing can I think away, and still allow the thing part of it to remain behind?&#x27;<p>For the longest time, as a kid, I was under the impression that it was the same for everyone, and that figuring these things out was what everyone was busy working on - the purpose of human life. I never slowed down - still working on it with nearly every daydreaming moment I have.

I saw a picture a couple of weeks ago about a person on Twitter who lost around 90% of his followers because they were bots. He complained that he had spent the last +7 years building up this &quot;community&quot;, which in the end consisted of bots.<p>As late yesterday I saw two youtube shorts videos using deep fakes models of celebrities pushing crypto Ponzi schemes. I wonder how widespread bot usage is, and their connection to &quot;echo chambers&quot; that seem to echo louder and louder into mainstream media.

I often have made up comedic skits running through my head, often starring friends, family, and myself. And I make myself laugh out loud and probably look a bit crazy to others. People regularly around me know I&#x27;m just making myself laugh though and ask &quot;what&#x27;s so funny?&quot;. I can never explain because the skits often have inside jokes from previous skits. It&#x27;s all in my head so these inside jokes are some serious inside jokes.

Usually it would float to tabletop concepts and whatnot, but lately I feel like I&#x27;ve been stricken with some serious intrusive thoughts and anxiety and now I find it floats to death and mortality (the inevitability to be precise).<p>It&#x27;s honestly a huge issue, I&#x27;ve lost sleep some nights because of it. It&#x27;s sort of changed how I structure things to try and keep myself busy, but if anyone has tips on coping with this let me know!

When I&#x27;m outside, I notice I unfortunately always ends up thinking about race and ethnic issues. How people might be perceiving or judging me, how women might be put off by my bad hair or skin color, how men might be perceiving me as an outsider or poor. These thoughts are very tiresome, and I notice I keep coming back to them unless I listen to music or make an effort to think positive thoughts. It feels very important to me to resolve these thoughts, that&#x27;s why I keep diving deeper into them, until I end up spiraling into the same negative thoughts - I shouldn&#x27;t have immigrated, my kids are going to have shitty lives due to my skin color and emotional anxiety, I will never make good friends, and I will never be loved unconditionally. I have put my life in a cage and will spend the remaining 50 years of life just grinding with only brief moments of materialistic pleasure.

I think a lot about words and meanings, and interesting things I&#x27;ve encountered. Like, what is the difference between catenation and concatenation? Why is unravel a word, when ravel means the same thing, and given that unravel has taken over the meaning of ravel, why hasn&#x27;t ravel come to mean it&#x27;s opposite? Why was the classical Latin pronunciation of &quot;caesar&quot; preserved in German but not English? Why are the common conception of zero as an absence, the scalar zero, and the vector zero all different?<p>Sometimes I just daydream about stuff. Often I remember things that make me laugh, or make me angry, or both. Occasionally I force myself to actually work on some of the projects I&#x27;ve daydreamed and planned out (forced, because for some reason that part is much less innately interesting to me than the planning and conceptualizing, even though I <i>want</i> to finish them).

Lately I&#x27;ve started to dabble with digital art and &#x27;painting&#x27; and learning to draw on an iPad.<p>When away from electronics (and the iPad), I now keep thinking of what I&#x27;d like to paint for my next masterpiece and coming up with ideas for future paintings in my mind. It&#x27;s incredibly refreshing, and also helps me sleep.

After a lot of therapy and treatments I&#x27;ve learnt that my mind wander so much in a lot of topics, that I have a tendency things as a whole, no matter the subject, and communicate so much information is really hard to me. For so long I thought that I was stupid&#x2F;dumb.<p>Today I&#x27;m thinking in solutions on how to deal with public health in my country &quot;pos-pandemic&quot; as we have Universal Care for free tho tons of challenge to overcome the shortcomings.<p>We have the falacy that problems are easy to solve and simplest solutions are effective, begin Cartesian of course they are, however when you see the big picture... Things are not so simple, they take time and lot of effort.

Always, always, always away doing something with my body. Dancing, climbing, skateboarding and after that it drift onto connecting with people. Something that I yearn a lot after. Idk. It feels like I&#x27;m a robot longing to be human.

Europe...always Europe. I&#x27;m literally back in my 20s backpacking through Europe, or dreaming about finally finishing Eurotripr to help inspire others to travel through Europe. My wife literally calls Europe my mistress.

I try to slow down as much as possible my mind (and all the rest), else I&#x27;d procrastinate too much or not be very focused<p>and unfortunately with all the noise in our cities, it&#x27;s hard day-dreaming much

Usually either code, game design ideas for my side project (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.farmhand.life&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.farmhand.life&#x2F;</a>), or a Tool song.

Money, quantum physics, the nature of reality, the nature of consciousness, sex, recent conversations I&#x27;ve had, admiring the beauty of nature, thinking about trips I want to take...

An ongoing rotation of work issues, mental planning of the next steps of my current side project, looking for the next hobby to obsess over (thinking about getting started with FL Studio making beats… previously focused on high-performance electric scooters), where I want to live next in SF, …. Writing this down, I’m starting to realize I might be a bit obsessed with moving forward to the “next thing.” I think I’m afraid to slow down and become content with normalcy.

Unfortunately, I don&#x27;t let my mind wander much anymore. I&#x27;ve got ADHD so my mind races quite a bit by default. For years I&#x27;ve listened to audiobooks or podcasts when I&#x27;m &quot;doing nothing&quot; which is better than my mind wandering in unwanted directions.<p>I lose a little bit of random creativity from my mind wandering here and there but its worth it for the amount of books&#x2F;podcasts I&#x27;m able to get through that help in other ways.

escaping! Not sure where <i>to</i>, but away from here.<p>Also, perhaps not that unrelated, escaping into fantasy worlds, usually the last thing I read.<p>Some times I make my own, and set stories in them.

I watcha lot of youtube lately. a lot of tutorials and politics. If I&#x27;m on a computer I flip the speed to 1.25-1.5x for the tutorials so when they talk to slow I don&#x27;t get annoyed and flip it off.<p>I like to walk and think about things. mostly crap I want to do and never work on. I get way ahead of myself and when I go to start the minimal amount I can get accomplished usually frustrates me. and I switch to something else.

I recently moved to Seattle from England, and when I&#x27;m overwhelmed and fed up with the weather I flick through houses in southern California or Spain. So I guess my day dream is how much money I need to make so that I can go to bask in the sun. Quite the irony considering I left Spain several years ago for my career!

My Grade 8 science teacher gave the class a list of trick questions. One was &quot;How far can a dog run into the forest?&quot;<p>&quot;Until it gets to the centre&quot;, I said.<p>&quot;Nope&quot; said Ms. Fulara. &quot;It can run into the forest as far as it wants&quot;

When I&#x27;m away from electronics, sometimes I feel like my mind is being hijacked by a shitload of information. In those moments, I feel very tiresome. Most of the time, I wander to the most recent thing that I do.

I listen to music and imagine past scenes in my life&#x2F;future scenarios.

Career related stuff like promotion, how do I make like $ 150 k sitting in India, debt at hand, upcoming marriage expenses for the family, getting into FAANG, finding a girl friend, mortgage

Fear, problems I gotta deal with (family related)<p>Dread from debt<p>Cool stuff like future personal projects<p>&quot;Freedom&quot; I think of an open field and a sunny day<p>space&#x2F;what happens after death

Lots and lots of things but I&#x27;m having more and more trouble remembering them..