Speaking of loops, John Maeda wrote recently on infinite loops over at Our (and Your) RISD. He posted a looping photo and suggested staring at the photo as long as you could while picking up nuances in the image. My eyes and brain are not well-wired for this, so I didn’t do so well the first time out.
He pointed out that machines will never bore of infinite looping like this. That got me thinking about a paper I read by a sports psychologist (of course I can’t find it now — don’t you hate that?) about excellence in sports and games. The researcher studied outstanding athletes and performers to look for a common trait or set of traits. One thing that many elite performers had in common was an abnormally high threshold for boredom. If I remember correctly, they actually don’t get bored while performing.
Much like Maeda’s looping machine, they are able to do the hard work of repetitive tasks without getting bored. They have the added element of a constantly adapting mind, though. There were many high-profile athletes in this study, but one of the “best” was Tiger Woods. Tiger will sink 200 straight putts from two feet, then do it again with one hand. To me this sounds like novocaine for the brain — my golfing experience begins and ends at the mini golf course at the beach — but Tiger evidently learns something new each putt.
What are the loops in your life? I will post mine in comments as I discover them (and will also track down the author of that paper).
Speaking of loops, John Maeda wrote recently on infinite loops over at Our (and Your) RISD. He posted a looping photo and suggested staring at the photo as long as you could while picking up nuances in the image . . . [just kidding]
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I found the author: Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. I haven’t found the article, but he’s written a number of books on ‘flow’: http://snurl.com/2wt0x