How many thoughts do you have per day?
The New York Times reported that Alex Rodriguez’ “performance coach” is working with Alex to reduce the number of thoughts he has per day. Most people, he says, have 2-3,000 (that works out to about three per minute, in case you were wondering), whereas highly trained professional athletes get rid of negative and useless thoughts, reducing their total daily thought count down to 1,200 or so. And they hold each thought longer.
I’m sure Dogen would agree that this seems very logical so far, but I still have two questions. First, how do the athletes reduce their thought count? And second, exactly how do you define a “thought”?
March 24th, 2005 at 4:57 pm
I occassionally think about my thoughtlessness.
October 25th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Taken in context, if an athlete (or anyone performing) has a thought in their strategy it often acts as an extra step that slows them down enough to lose.
IE: A fighter will see an opening in an opponent and, without thinking, throw a punch. It’s two steps that happen so quickly it appears to be one and the fighter may not even know that he saw the opening. Where as if that same fighter sees the opening in his opponent and has a thought, I should punch now, he may miss the opportunity to be effective with the punch and may even get punched because he was caught thinking instead of doing. So to sum it up you need to have a see and do rather than a see and think and do.
January 19th, 2008 at 7:02 am
think a person driving a car in rush hours, how many thought he may be entertaining per minute ? we need to stretch our thought to get an indicaive answer.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
[…] LOOK at how I am thinking - am I moving toward or away from what is good. It is believed we have between 2,000 - 3,000 thoughts per day. http://www.numenware.com/article/268 […]
June 15th, 2009 at 10:33 am
If we have a flow of thoughts that lead from one subject to another does that mean we only had one thought? If we are thinking while we are driving about where we are going, how to operate the vehicle, anticipating the actions of other drivers, determining the physics invovled in simply merging into traffic, and this doesnt even mention the road condition or weather factors, are we still able to think about what we are going to have for dinner when we get home?
I submit that we can think about several thoughts at once, then we can take action on the ones we choose. Some of the actions require only the thought of a muscle memory response such as turning on the blinker or pressing the brake. Others require cognative thought to articulate the body or change the thought or idea into spoken word.
So now I submit what about those people who listen to the radio while driving? Does that mean that they are not thinking about driving when the radio gives them a thought? How about those invovled in conversation while driving? Are they distracted to a level of unsafe driving? I submit that although it may be different for each person, the longer they have been driving the more “extra” activities can be done without compromising safety. However, as the situation on the road changes from one that simply requires muscle memory to one that requires actual cognative thinking, (such as looking for an address or driving in a busy unfamiliar town) your “extra” activities should be limited to keep the safety level up.
These are my thoughts and I am not currently driving.