Busy Hands and Wandering Minds
The Scripting News had a piece about evolution and the need for our hands to be busy or holding something all the time, and it got me thinking - do I always need to be doing something with my hands? Did I when I was a kid?
Dave Winer is right in that most people have their phone in their hands now when they have idle time. That's certainly true of me these days. For me though, it's not my hands that need something to do, it's my brain. I am the quintessential Johnny 5 - I always need input. For a while, my input came from doom scrolling Facebook or Reddit. But, I've pretty much broken those addictions. (Raging at your fellow man in your head all the time is just not good for the soul.)
The Kindle Reader app on my phone was a game changer. It made me able to read a few pages of my book during down time. My RSS reader app Reeder 5 is even better because it gives me short dopamine hits. (Gotta laugh because Johnny 5 is placated by Reeder 5)
So yeah, smart phones took away a LOT of my idle thinking time. But, certainly not all of it. My brain craves roaming free almost as much as it craves input. I read a technique in an online course, and my brain immediately tunes out the rest of the lecture and starts thinking how I could use what I just learned and do "X" with it. I watch a scene in a movie or television show, and my brain is off thinking about what I would do in that situation.
As a kid, I couldn't turn my brain off to go to sleep at night. (Still a problem but helped greatly by a touch of THC a couple of hours before bed) I would lie awake for hours after bedtime - making up stories or dreaming up mischief and other plans. I didn't lie still while doing it though. My mother would have said that I bicycled my legs - but that wasn't quite accurate. My legs were moving with me in my mind as I ran or danced, or did whatever.
Turns out I have ADHD. Medication has saved me from myself in many ways. But, when it wears off and my brain is free again - I like to let it run free. My crazy, fast, rambling brain has always been my greatest asset. It helps me see connections and its also a pretty quick problem solver. (It has to be because my brain has always gotten me into a lot of sticky situations, too.)
But no, I don't think I am or was a fidgeter, per say. Not with my hands anyway. I'm more likely to be looking off in space and imagining living on a 50 acre homestead. Or, I could be stepping through some code in my head and trying to solve a problem.
I guess I'm lucky, because the distractions of the world never took away my idle daydreaming and thinking time. It's just always given me new fodder for my thoughts.