Wearing different hats in a post-production environment is inevitable. It just is. But how that hat changing occurs is critical.
How that hat changing occurs.
In a piece written a coupla years ago titled “Our Brains Are Not Multi-Threaded”, Cal Newton, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, explains it with the following analogy.
“In computer programming, it’s common to split your program into multiple different threads that run simultaneously, as this often simplifies application design. ... Something I’ve noticed is that many modern knowledge workers approach their work like a multi-threaded computer program.”
“The problem with this analogy is that the human brain is not a computer processor. A silicon chip etched with microscopic circuits switches cleanly from instruction to instruction, agnostic to the greater context from which the current instruction arrived: op codes are executed; electrons flow; the circuit clears; the next op code is loaded.
The human brain is messier.
When you switch your brain to a new “thread,” a whole complicated mess of neural activity begins to activate the proper sub-networks and suppress others. This takes time. When you then rapidly switch to another “thread,” that work doesn’t clear instantaneously like electrons emptying from a circuit, but instead lingers, causing conflict with the new task.
To make matters worse, the idle “threads” don’t sit passively in memory, waiting quietly to be summoned by your neural processor, they’re instead an active presence, generating middle-of-the-night anxiety, and pulling at your attention. To paraphrase David Allen, the more commitments lurking in your mind, the more psychic toll they exert.
This is all to say that the closer I look at the evidence regarding how our brains function, the more I’m convinced that we’re designed to be single-threaded, working on things one at a time, waiting to reach a natural stopping point before moving on to what’s next.”
Professor Newton’s words have applications all over the place, of course. For me, however, I spark to where those words touch what I know to be my best creative process. It’s a process that isn’t simply about switching hats from editor to designer to composer over and over again sometimes at random. It’s a process that relies on work I undertake both physically and mentally. Work that takes place inside and outside the edit suite or studio, if you will.
My best work is guided by thought... not through reflexively pivoting to What’s Next.
Wearing different hats in a post-production environment is inevitable. It just is. But how that hat changing occurs is critical.
More on that... tomorrow.
