A while back I read an MIT study on how our brains process code. The finding surprised me: it doesn’t activate the language centers the way reading normally does. Instead it lights up something called the multiple demand network (frontal and parietal lobes), the same system used for solving complex problem. The researchers said reading code is “not the same as language, and not the same as math.” It’s its own thing. I read that and thought, oh! that’s also how I process everything else!
My default with instructions is: receive all of it first, then act. No partial inputs. It’s almost literally how an HTTP request works, as in, the client sends the complete request, the server doesn’t start until it has the whole thing (oversimplification, I know). As a mental model for how my brain operates, this was uncomfortably accurate.
I’ve been reading and writing code for over a decade. Somewhere in there, apparently, my brain stopped treating this as a work habit.
The clearest example is the gym. I need my full workout mapped out before I walk in. Not roughly planned, I need everything. If one thing is missing I feel it at the door. I’ve actually stood outside a gym for a few minutes, fully ready, pre kicking in, because I hadn’t figured out my last two exercises. It’s a ridiculous thing to do. I was aware it was ridiculous while doing it.
Cooking is the same thing but I can at least explain it more charitably: the recipe is a spec, and I don’t want to start compiling against missing dependencies. Every ingredient has to be in the kitchen before I begin. No substitutions mid-process. Improvisation, if needed, happens before I turn on the stove.
Writing is where it gets weirder. I can’t start without an outline that already basically contains the essay. Not just a rough outline but the actual structure. The note-taking habit I’ve built over the past two years only works because I force myself to have that skeleton ready first. Without it I’ll open a blank document and stare at it for an unreasonable amount of time before closing it.
The obvious conclusion is that this is why I procrastinate. If my brain needs a complete spec before it can execute, then every ambiguous or open-ended task creates a stall condition. I’m waiting for instructions that sometimes never fully arrive… and when the routine does get interrupted - the guilt that follows is its own thing.
But the more uncomfortable version: maybe thinking through all of this is itself the procrastination. I need to fully understand my own instruction-processing before I can act on it. I need complete instructions about how I handle incomplete instructions. The recursion is not lost on me.
One thing that’s actually been useful: some people don’t work like me. They can start on half the information and figure out the rest while moving. I used to find this baffling. Now I find it… “strategically interesting”. If I don’t have the full plan yet, I can get someone like that started on the parts that don’t need a full plan. By the time they need more information, I usually have the plan sorted.
I realize this makes it sound like I’m describing people as components in a system. I don’t mean it that way. It’s more that understanding how someone actually works makes it easier to collaborate without my own wiring becoming the bottleneck for everyone else.
I still stall on open-ended things. Still ask for the full set of instructions before I can make sense of a task. I’ve gotten better at noticing when it’s happening, which helps sometimes.
Or I may be getting better at narrating it. Could go either way!