Now that I am narrowly focusing on my dissertation, I have noticed that my tendency to generate ideas has slowed. While this is useful both in my current situation (I don’t need distractions while working on the paper that ultimately forms the basis for the beginning of my career as a scholar) and from an evolutionary perspective (if you’re in a situation that requires focus, such as gathering food, unrelated ideas probably don’t serve as well as focusing on the solitary task at hand), it represents a fundamental divide (which is temporarily bridged) between my primary breadth-first mode of thought and the rest of depth-driven society. What is more interesting is that it says something about the operation of society as a whole if the majority of its thinkers are depth-first.