Gaming and Visualization

There is a study about Visualization and Learning [1] and Mindfulness Meditation [2] that seems to a pretty good mental tool for learning and mental exercise (I’m listing the sources, the MM is in the wiki article that has the sources there).

To the point, it helps to visualize and immerse with your imagination all the details and sensory assumptions about what you plan to hone. To me this gets crazy when I game and when I zone out in a run. Details and nuances appear and come to clear focus and I act, in my mind, a bit faster and more intuitively. In a game, I’m able to draw more details out in the scene that may be relevant in capturing a deeper immersion or realistic feel.

It helps also learn a bunch of skills more quickly as well, but note that its poorer in currency than actual play… where the Hack comes is applying opportunistic use of idle time. Now this is where the mindfulness meditation comes in. The ability to meditate or zone out to mental places where you can be more productive with your time is a alternate use of the meditation skill.

Disclaimer. This is a pretty hypothetical hack and its really hard to observe and test any of the factors and products. Then there is confirmation bias and placebo effect to consider. 

Though if I find my mind wandering, and it happens to be visualizing at great FPS and HD quality I may want to visualize myself doing things I want to do in greater effectivity. Currently trying to remember all my old Kali skills from WAAAAAY back highschool and college days. Hoping that one day we can have Heavy Combat here in the Philippines.

Sources:
[1] Schmidt and Wrisberg, Motor Learning and Performance 
[2] http://www.mindfulexperience.org/resources/brief_definition.pdf

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