My bike ride to work is usually when I get my best thinking of the day done. During my bike ride to work (home is a bit different: I'm tired, need to focus, and just want to get home to my loved ones) my mind wanders all over in a sort of broken, but perceptive way. I have to pay attention to the road and drivers, so my little thought narratives necessarily must be circled and returned to again and again, and each time from some kind of different angle. I think about bike culture, today's topsy turvy world, gas (oh, the manifestos I compose), my life and my family, plans for the day, week, weekend, future, stories and reactions to what I've read and am reading; and so much more. The other day I ruminated a blog post about why employers should employ bicyclists: they organize their time well, pay attention to details, and must care for their things; they are curious about the world, humbled by their experiences but confident in themselves to master their own fates; they must be able to sort and organize information very quickly and make real-time decisions that are literally (sometimes, hopefully not often) life and death and then learn from their mistakes; and so on and so forth.
Of course, then I get to work and it's straight into my day to day and the manifestos and blog posts wait for tomorrow.
When do you get your best thinking done?
That's great, I do the same thing during activities that have become somewhat routine, my best thinking time is probably when I'm swimming, but often when I'm hiking and running too.
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