As we imagine the incredible amount of information, we humans are confronted with, it is interesting to imagine how much of that information actually serves us and how.

It is assumed that our senses capture about 11 million bits of information per second. Tests have shown that of these only 50 bits are processed by the conscious mind. How the compression is done is a mystery.

What is understood is that an incredible amount of information is processed unconsciously or without interference with conscious thinking. That is true for many of our physical activities that we wouldn’t be able to perform while thinking about them.

Learning, training, and practice contribute to habit-building and enable our unconscious to process existing information accordingly. What this seems to teach us is how effective our mind is when it is left alone to do its work.

It would seem that our mind uses the least energy when left to process the information that appears second by second – that is when the mind is left to be present. Thinking about the past or the future interferes with that scheme and can be hypothesized to use additional energy. That energy would serve to further compress the information received through our senses to enable more processing power to the mind’s quest to process either past or future.

Another hypothesis one might make is that an essential element of our habit-building concerns our thinking itself. That is, the elements in our thinking that are considered relevant enough to cause further thinking. Most probably the ones that appear as worrying, or the ones that are experienced as an effort.

However, as we are humans, and as that ability to worry is there, a good guess is that nature invented it for some reason and found a way to allow it to happen.

Paying attention to my own experience of these moments of worrying, what appears is the reduced ability to notice other things. It’ll feel as if my thinking is impaired in some way and as if my capacity to be present is reduced. Or said differently: As different senses contribute to the 11 million bits per second processed, shutting some of these senses down frees energy for other processing needs. On some occasions, it’s the noise that isn’t noticed, on others it is the smell or taste. And when one enters a state of flow, it is even more apparent how much external information doesn’t reach the conscious mind anymore. This may explain why our existing reflex system may prevent us from reaching a state of flow as long as it considers itself as our guard and perceives a variety of stimuli as signaling danger.

What appears here is how our body and mind are capable of filtering information and adapting to those filters. If there is such a processing power, one can imagine how learning and practice can be the means that enable self-awareness as an instrument. One that helps us appreciate uncertainty and the unknown as indicators of potential blind spots we may need to uncover. A blind spot then simply being information that we’ve not yet learned to make accessible to ourselves. Or habitually prevent it from becoming apparent as it would require too much processing effort.

To me, this is an invitation to consider how to train our ability to be present and remain open to new and unknown information.