thread clash

[cellio]

When praying (which usually means when at services), I've noticed that there's a background thread that runs in my brain. While the foreground task is reciting the words in the siddur, the background thread is analyzing the words (ok, only some of the words) based on what I've learned so far of grammar. Sometimes I notice something new (oh, that's how that verb is put together!). This is good; direct application aids learning.

But... is there a way to prevent that thread from grabbing focus? Its job, most of the time, is to note things to come back to later, but sometimes it distracts me when I ought not be distracted. Like, say, when I'm leading services. I don't want to surpress it; I just want it to behave.

(Please tell me that other people's brains work this way too? Pretty much any time I'm doing something vaguely "intellectual", there are at least two things going on in my brain, the main activity and the "meta" level that's noticing how I'm processing that main activity.)

Comments

[cellio]

Have you ever had the two threads diverge, and then have a sort of 'interrupt' experience when they get so far apart that they can't both run on the same brain at the same time?

Isn't that what happens when you're sufficiently distracted by something that it jolts you? Like, you're trying to listen to a lecture but some problem from {work,home,whatever} keeps invading and eventually you realize you've lost focus on the lecture?

If I could figure out how to make the second thread start and stop, it would be a fantastic fMRI experiment to see if we could see brain activation associated with the second thread.

I can explicitly start threads. Stopping them is harder, as is preventing them from launching themselves.