[harryf]

> Spending those ten minutes in the morning reduces my ability to do my day job because I've used up a significant fraction of my day's useful thinking budget.

Like the term “useful thinking budget” - will steal that if I may. To me that type of thinking is usually deep and involves much lateral thought than logical. It’s usually where I establish “focus” on something I’m working on and usually where creative breakthroughs happen on things blocking me.

But it only happens when I’m alone, relaxed and undistracted which is usually the shower in the morning. Going for walks also helps. Also it seems to require feedback “did this idea work in practice?” which creates positive reinforement that my ideas are worth having. Just endless producing ideas without testing them is undermining - used to do that in my early 20’s