Contradicting [Jane McGonigal](http:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=5585), Martin Seligman says that [we already spend plenty of time thinking about the future](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/05\/19\/opinion\/sunday\/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?_r=0):<\/p>\n
> We learn not by storing static records but by continually retouching memories and imagining future possibilities. Our brain sees the world not by processing every pixel in a scene but by focusing on the unexpected…<\/p>\n
> Even when you\u2019re relaxing, your brain is continually recombining information to imagine the future, a process that researchers were surprised to discover when they scanned the brains of people doing specific tasks like mental arithmetic. Whenever there was a break in the task, there were sudden shifts to activity in the brain\u2019s \u201cdefault\u201d circuit, which is used to imagine the future or retouch the past.<\/p>\n
Though there are limits:<\/p>\n
> Less than 1 percent of their thoughts involved death, and even those were typically about other people\u2019s deaths.<\/p>\n
I’m surprised this was found to be mostly a positive phenomenon given the stress it causes, but the absence of prospection would cause much bigger problems. Makes sense that this is baked into our natures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Contradicting [Jane McGonigal](http:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=5585), Martin Seligman says that [we already spend plenty of time thinking about the future](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/05\/19\/opinion\/sunday\/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?_r=0): > We learn not by storing static records but by continually retouching memories and imagining future possibilities. Our brain sees the world not by processing every pixel in a scene but by focusing on the unexpected… > Even…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369,374],"tags":[358],"class_list":["post-5612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-mindfulness","tag-tagged"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-1sw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5614,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5612\/revisions\/5614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}