Practice Visualisation

I watched a TED ed video last night, which outlines how the nerves that carry the signals to our muscles get strengthened due to practice. This happens because of additional layers of fat, called myelin, deposited around the nerve fibres to prevent loss of information. This works much like insulation around an electric cable. The more we practice, the thicker the layer of myelin that is deposited around the specific set of nerves. 

The talk also outlined the surprising power of visualisation, especially for honing skills that we already posses. It showed an experiment where basketball players were divided into two groups, where the first group practised shooting hoops for a week, and the second group merely visualised the act of landing shots into the basket, in vivid detail. It turns out that, after a week, both groups had shown the same level of improvement.

The advantage of practising visually is that it can help improve performance without the risk of physical injury. Considering there are limits to which athletes can practice physically, do top level athletes use visualisation to up their game way beyond what regular practice alone can deliver? Visual practice also unlocks so many possibilities in the lives of regular folks - it is now possible to play the guitar better while staring out of a bus window. 

I wonder if the same technique could be used to related areas, such as improving will power. I have tried, with some success, to use this technique to wake up at a stipulated time in the morning - I picture in vivid detail, how I would scramble out of bed as soon as the alarm clock rings, going through the motions of waking, trying to imagine how every single muscle would protest, and groggy eyes would burn.

I am not sure if it was the power of visualisation, or my enthusiasm for getting this technique to work that finally got me out of bed. While I did wake up, I did not experience the same efficiency and sense of purpose about my movements as I had visualised. Just like any other skill, it seems like this would require a lot more practice (the title of this post could both be interpreted as both a noun and a verb). I am going to give visualisation a fairer shot at trying to improve certain aspects of my life. One effective application I can readily think of is for delivering presentations.

The reason for this blog

In recent times, I have found myself consuming books and podcasts quite regularly. As a result, I am exposed to several ideas of varied kind - the remarkable, the useful, the simple, the elegant, and so on. At times, it pains me that these ideas can be fleeting, and slip away before I am able to grasp and appreciate them fully. 

Enter writing. The written word is an unassuming disciplinarian. It forces one to wrestle with ideas, confront them, fine tune them and describe them succinctly, in a manner that makes later consumption easy, as well as effective. This rather unconscious exercise of having to fine tune every idea is akin to sculpting - chipping away at the excess, while retaining the essence. However, every idea is only as relevant as the spirit of its presence. Even scientific ideas purported to be timeless, such as the laws of gravitation, are fundamentally revisited and reconstructed. One art form that I have observed with quiet fascination, is that of sand sculpting - one that forever strives to capture the beauty of the present moment, while humbly accepting its temporal limitations.  

Also, this blog has been started with a selfish idea. Kurt Vonnegut famously quipped, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.". The one person he referred to here is one's own self. Initially, I mulled with the idea of keeping these posts entirely private, and started off on that footing. Nevertheless, if putting some of these posts out could form conduits for conversations, the exercise would be worth its while. I am grateful to anybody who makes a meaningful contribution there.