Role of Emotions on tasks

Intro

I've always been fascinated by psychology ever since I took AP Psychology in High School. I've always wondered whether I should have studied more psychology and less architecture. But because I studied architecture, I actually learned more about human behavior. Because human behavior occurs in space. And architecture accommodates for human space as shelter. That was what motivated me to get my Bachelors in Architecture. 

Honeycomb Space, Kengo Kuma

But not being able to fully understand all of architecture, I've read a lot of books about human consciousness and how we perceive as a result of our selective attention. At one point, I became really interested in the psychology of color and how that affects the conscious and the unconscious mind. But it seems like it only has a limited application because most of the time we become so self-absorbed with what we do that we actually don't look enough at our surroundings to think about it. We do pay attention to our surroundings to an extent, however, if the surroundings are too complicated, it seems like the unconscious automatically disregards the complicated details that surrounds us and fixates on the surrounding as a whole. But as time passes, this same fixation seems to evaporate even further and the space becomes just shelter without regards to the surrounding. This means we become so accustomed to the space that we really don't pay attention to it anymore. This is specially true for narrow linear confined spaces that are the norm for our current society. 

This is one of the reasons why I want to explore organic architecture and see how human beings behave in organic shapes rather than linear shapes, of course thresholds also definitely play a role, but the curvature role of nature can potentially have an even more significant role. 

But this blog is about emotions and how that affects our process to get things done. So I will explore organic shapes some other time and will discuss how emotions are critical for our performance. 

Fear and Contentment

Content

Fear

Being scared of how other people will perceive you will pump up your adrenaline if you can convince yourself that it is a dire situation. As a result, your body will automatically go in fight or flight response and you will accomplish tasks.

When there’s no outside source to pressure you, you go in content mode. Where easy tasks become incredibly hard to do. Thus if you want to write an essay, you won’t want to because you’re not fearful about the situation, thus you will find excuses in order to evade writing the essay. The process isn’t difficult but convincing yourself that the situation is dangerous if you don’t write will be difficult. But if you are able to convince yourself, then the situation becomes easy to handle, you won’t think about how your body is responding to the situation, but rather you’re just writing because you know internally that you have to. The outside pressure, in this case, is the fear that if you don’t write you will fail. This failure has to be crucial in your mind or else your body won’t accept the argument that you really do have to write an essay. When you actually are able to write, you will notice your body going into work mode, in my case, my legs are crossed and I’m unconsciously using force with my back since I’m next to a wall. However, if the situation somehow isn’t important enough, you will lose this unconscious body focus. If you become unconsciously content, you won’t be able to write the essay. This may seem a little too meta because you may ask, "how does one actually become aware of what the body is doing?"

Explanation

Meditation actually helps in getting close to your emotions. The book 10% Happier, by Dan Harris, has a good outline of how meditation affects the brain. The unrelenting thoughts that flow through can actually be controlled. When that happens, the mind really does expand, and you can become aware of what the body is doing if your conscious allows you to. Thus the power of emotions can be amplified.

However, in the beginning of all this, I didn’t know what was happening to my body. But as I slowly study, reading books, I’ve realized that what happens to your body is actually very simple. It’s your unconscious that controls your body, but if you can consciously control what you think and what you want, your body will conform to the situation. It’s not something that will come automatically. But if you’re certain that the situation demands it, the body will comply. 

Arch Reviews

Arch Review

I know this from personal experience because I was able to do massive amounts of work because my unconscious knew I had a deadline. Architecture reviews are some of the most helpful hardships that one can encounter in my opinion. By spending a semester on analyzing every step that you have to take in order to create a building, your unconscious slowly realizes the potential of what you’re capable of. This potentiality grows as you receive criticism during class. The criticisms help you gain a better understanding of what needs to be done. And the fact that a studio professor is with you for around 10 hours a week only facilitates the process. That’s why during reviews all the archi kids always end up doing all nighters. For the lucky few that don’t, they are able to sleep a couple of hours.

Thank you

If anyone has any questions, feel free to leave comments below, I will do my best to answer.