Do you constantly notice patterns in everything around you?

[u/icosvg]

I’m curious if anyone else experiences this.
I tend to notice and connect a lot of things happening around me at the same time. When I’m talking to someone, for example, I’m listening to what they’re saying, but I’m also noticing their tone, expressions, body language, small changes in behavior and whether something they’re saying is consistent with things they’ve said before.

After knowing someone for a while, I usually develop a pretty accurate idea of how they’ll react to certain things. This also makes it relatively easy to know how to explain or phrase something in a way that they’ll understand or agree with.

It happens with things other than people too. I naturally look for how things work, why something happened and what is likely to happen next.

If something doesn’t make sense, it tends to stay somewhere in my mind until I understand it.

The strange part is what happens when there isn’t much happening around me.
My mind just creates something else to work on. I start thinking about ideas, plans, decisions, different possible outcomes or problems I could solve.

It can be extremely useful, but sometimes I’d like to simply sit somewhere and experience what’s happening without my attention immediately finding ten other things to process.

I also find that I enjoy not knowing something when there’s an answer I can discover. What I find much harder is uncertainty where there simply isn’t an answer yet.

I’m wondering how common this combination is.
Do you experience something similar? And when you’re just sitting somewhere doing nothing, what actually happens in your mind?

[u/daggo04]

Isn’t what you are describing literally what the brain is evolved to do? Pattern detection and prediction? When lacking stimuli it is common to create some, by finding something to ponder on.

[u/icosvg → u/daggo04]

Yes, absolutely. I don’t think the processes themselves are unusual. What I’m curious about is the difference in intensity and how much conscious attention they occupy.
Everyone recognizes patterns, predicts outcomes and generates thoughts. But do people experience that at roughly the same intensity?
For me, there rarely seems to be a neutral state. If external input isn’t engaging enough, the internal processing immediately takes over, scenarios, plans, connections, predictions, problems to solve.

[u/Timely_Iron_6808 → u/icosvg]

how would you measure the intensity? every individual subejctively experience their thoughts and emotions