Mind in Motion by Barbara Tversky

An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought.

When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words.

In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart.

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Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how—and where—thinking takes place.

Why I Picked It Up

I read most of Mind in Motion a few years ago, and circled back to finish it earlier this winter. The premise—that what we physically do then shapes how we think about it—fits a lot with my curiosities lately about hindsight bias, how the brain can justify absolutely any of our decisions to prove to ourselves we are "good decision-makers," and even the Aristotelian behaviorialism I tend to lean towards: that who you are is what you do.

I'm a straightforward person, despite the recursive nature of my brain; although I have plenty of layers for someone to excavate, what you see is largely what you get because what I do and say reflects what I think and feel. Any contradiction is at least an honest one. My actions match my intentions (as closely as I can possibly get them, at least, because I do make mistakes) and I find comfort in the dignity of that coherence. In other words, I don't consciously shift myself to appease various others; I'm always operating from a place of genuineness.

But I know plenty of people who talk a big game but don't back up their words with action, and I've never had been able to understand the mismatch much. I get along best with those I respect for their pursuit of principles that matter to them. That's a specific quality that defines me and those I love, so it's no wonder I appreciate perspectives that honor that, like Stoicism or brain science supporting what our actions do to our sense of self. Be an active participant in your own life.

Mind in Motion gives appropriate credit to unconscious influences and muscle memory, and fits with my personal ADHD-ish lens of needing to hit the ground running in the morning or else I might lose momentum; my brain (obviously, at this point) thrives in periods of devoted intensity, so my work schedule tends to be characterized by these tunnel vision bursts and sprints.

Still, I don't think I can emphasize enough how revolutionary this framework and concept was for me: that the actions we take and the ways we physically move shape the way we perceive ourselves, our trajectory, etc,. If you ever took a neuroscience or psych class, you've probably heard the phrase: "Neurons that fire together wire together," etc,. It's what makes experiences seep into us and warp who we are, and explains how easily our days become our lives. Thought follows action. Not action follows thought. We learn often in a way that's nonverbal.

Anyway, I use this book as a shorthand, frequently, for these kinds of discussions I have. When I roll over at 5 or 6 A.M. and really do not feel like engaging with my day, I know that I need to get going anyway. I'm so physically wired to the core to follow the simple rule: things in motion tend to stay in motion. Things at rest tend to stay at rest.

Rhythms and streaks and cadence are all good for me. Graces in motion tend to stay in motion.

About the Book

The book essentially argues that movement, not language, is the basis for thought. It's a helpful lens to realize what we sacrifice when we spend all day typing.

I've always felt like a "full" day for me is that which hits all my proportions. I used to have a note in my dorm room in college with a little checklist of what made my "perfect day," and I think of it a lot too in how I thrive when scheduling myself to the max, or expecting high output. Writing / exercise / social / chores / hobby / responsibility / reading / etc,.

I thrive in a hobby ecosystem because it's better for me to pursue so-called energy givers and switch activities when I'm tired than to still entirely. Then I lose my momentum and just feel sluggish and down.

The premise of movement being the base layer for our vocabularies and evolutions fits also with this emphasis on the expressiveness of the nonverbal—an appreciation for other "languages" I developed in my studio art background. Those who thrive on the visual, or the athletic, or have a specific instinct difficult to translate into words. I loved being in dance classes when we used very linguistic-heavy words to describe how to piece together a dance: texture and vocabulary. (Ironically, I'm fumbling for the right words to describe this concept now.)

The book talks about how expert predictions are more accurate when the commentator has physically been in the same position as the person they're predicting (i.e. an ex-basketball player consistently predicting whether someone would make a shot long before other experts.)

Mind in Motion talks about gesture and marking within dance studios (hell yeah, choreography mention) as being a placeholder for memory, and why specifically that works. For example: on long walks, I'm nearly always marking the songs I'm listening to, so if you ever happened to see me out and about on island with my headphones in, my hands are probably twitching.

The book discusses metaphor and cognitive architecture and how we remember faces or routes. (If I had a dime for every psych book that mentioned the London cab driver study...) Feeling within our body comes first, and then our brain shifts to putting that into words for the sake of justifying that sensation, essentially.

That means you can also harness that for the reverse: try to rewire your nervous system, go do something you don't feel like doing, force yourself past your gut sometimes when it's lying to you. It echoes in my head when I'm leaning too far into what I do or don't feel like doing, because I know I'll get a boost and reward by just rewiring my brain through action anyway.

Perfect example of this: when you're sad, don't listen to the sad playlist! Listen your giddy one instead and soon, everything will shift. Or sometimes, when I'm wiped, that's the exact time I should go to the gym instead of lounging. But, of course, it's hard to know when to trust yourself versus when not to. It's also a case for doing the things that scare you or that you're avoiding, and leaning into the fear inoculation (or exposure therapy, I suppose) of it all.

It's a good book for plenty of ol' fun facts.

Voice & Tone

I love this book as a springboard. It's interesting, and has good studies. Admittedly, it's a bit dry to me based on how chunky it is, because twice now, I've wanted to put the book down at the same sort of lagging middle.

Normally, I don't have that issue with nonfiction, but certain portions are less riveting than others. Certain explanations are thorough to the extent of monotony. Still, I find the science and the breakdowns so fascinating that Mind in Motion still piques my interest.

Overall Thoughts

So, of course, Mind in Motion was an interesting and oddly comforting read for me as a "very productive person." In essence, some of the concepts buried in its pages help me figure out when to force it versus when to actually scale back on whatever I'm doing. As I'm writing my review, there aren't many specific moments, studies, lines that strike me entirely, but I think of the book in a broader sense frequently. It recontextualizes my ideas of what is conscious vs. unconscious, "real" and unreal in terms of perception. It might also explain why doing something with my hands at the end of a long workday feels so comforting, tuning into a different technology of thought for me that soothes my various networks.

I'd read if you're fascinated by habit, behavior, action, neuroscience, language, etc,. But maybe library it if you're not someone who relishes getting deeply in the weeds of the graphs, studies, analysis, etc,. because it definitely leans into its academic flavor more so than breaking it down vividly enough for the random reader to be engaged.

For fans of:

Exercised by Daniel Lieberman; Drunk by Edward Slingerhand; On Muscle by Bonnie Tsui; The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin; The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli; Let's Get Physical by Danielle Friedman; The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene; etc,.