Finalized the Thought

A story from a friend. Tells you something about the capabilities of the brain. A person literally managed to finalize a thought. To hold onto it, and not let himself to spill the attention over.

I can’t help but share a story about the potential of our brain. Recently, I found myself at the Kapitsa Institute’s Physics and Technology Lyceum (https://anoo.ftl.name). The vice-rector who welcomed and showed us around shared an interesting story.

A student stopped communicating with the outside world for two months: he was late for classes, got confused in classrooms, and didn’t react to his surroundings. The school started to worry, sought out psychologists to assess the situation. And then he started talking to them in Georgian.

Turns out he noticed some similarities in the shape of Georgian alphabet with some ancient text. He developed his theory on this matter and, to prove it, decided to learn Georgian. In these 2 months, he learned it independently, without telling anyone.

He simultaneously engaged in three cognitive processes: he continued to study at the lyceum with a serious program, he was developing his theory, and he was learning Georgian. The energy drain was so high, he had to completely disconnect from the outside world. And he made it through admirably.

I’m familiar with a similar state, where you go deeper and hardly communicate with the surface. The fact that there are additional actions to perform outside aside from the main goal helps to not get stretched and only do what’s important. But you can’t stay underwater for long. After the brain gets tired, you start making all sorts of nonsense, without even realizing it. You can’t afford to get tired, it always have to be payed back with interest.