Pair programming would be interested to try with someone I could relate and whose skill was on par with mine. Not that I think I’m the most fabulous coder or anything, it’s just my pair programming experiences have usually resulted in me doing most of the work and explaining algorithms the other person isn’t aware of. I guess this is a good thing, as it ensures I understand what the hell I’m on about, but it feels unproductive at the time.

Code-brain, though I’ve never used the phrase, is something that’s familiar to me in the coding form, and in various other forms, as well; a week spent writing a research paper makes me more literate, more attentive to detail and more curious, but much more conservative in what other tasks I’m willing to take on – I get this whole “OK – I’ll do that when I finish the paper” thing going on that I distinctly don’t get with coding.

Basically, it seems logical that different focused activities over a period of time result in heightened attention and faculties in those areas, and thus less in others. Switching, obviously takes time.

Solutions? Not sure there are any firm ones or if they’re desirable, but I definitely think forcing oneself to interlace different activities can result in a greater level of mental agility, at the cost of higher rates of exhaustion and less focus.

It’s always a tradeoff, I think. Improved cognition seems mostly to be about conscious meta-cognition – knowing your own behaviours, reactions, and the ways you get into them, then consciously applying those (as best you can, while still being subject to them). I’m really interested in tools for automating / enhancing / understanding meta-cognition. There’s really not many general purpose tools, as far as I’m aware, though of course there’s planners galore for things like dieting, exercise, and the like. Plus the humble alarm clock.

(After several years of pairing for my day job, my attitudes are significantly biased. If you’re at home alone, you may not have a viable pair; I haven’t experimented with cognitive tricks like pairing with a teddy bear, but I suspect they’d have a non-zero effect.)