danard

Currently working on (yes, yet another one) Todo app that has a lot of neat keyboard shortcuts and a useful hotkey window on Mac.

I built it because all the Todo apps seem bloated and mainly, when I am working on something, I don't want to ruin my focus, so I wanted some quick way to add/cross tasks off.

https://simplythings.app/

And also, currently building a "clone" of Apple Music app for macOS because Apple's native App is horribly slow and has many UX shortcomings.

I guess coffee helps. But yes, the line is thin, I also often feel like sleeping. It's much easier to enter this state while well-rested, i.e. in the morning or afternoon, not before bed.

But I think what psychologically helps is also doing this not in bed, if possible, because we have bed mostly associated with sleep.

But yes, it certainly requires some focus on not allowing oneself to sleep.

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing, but I too am able to get into this "visual state".

I have started meditating a couple of years ago to better connect to my emotions and manage my ADHD and at one point I started seeing some colors (mostly yellow and green) and then a couple of months later it even became full-blown lucid states where I knew I am consciously awake, yet at the same time could view imagery and symbols that were deeply personal and helped me cathartically understand many things about myself.

But to your question - I have a recipe that works for myself, and I am curious if it will work for you too:

- ANC Headphones + listen to things like (Music for Psychdelic Therapy by Jon Hopkins)

- Ideally lay flat on a bed/ground, in a position where you can entirely relax all your muscles

- Cover eyes with a dark T-shirt or a pillow so that NO light gets in

- if you have trouble with nose breathing like me, use Nose strips (that helps for me)

And now the more challenging part, what happens in my head:

- consciously relax all of the muscles in the body, if I have some kind of pain somewhere, try to not think about it

- just as meditation goes, try to not think about anything, focusing on the music like I mentioned above helps. If some thought occurs, some emotion comes, really just observe it and let it pass. This is of course easier said than done, but I think it's very important to learn to not be always reactive

- to intensify the focus and for me, this is how the colors start (later becoming symbols), try to not even move your eyes while closed. Imagine looking as if on some object that is as close as 5 inches away from your face and don't move the eyes until you reach the "colors" stage

As for me, I start seeing colors and shapes around 10-20 minutes into this. But I am pretty confident that in the beginning before I realized this was happening, it took even longer.

I don't know if this will work for you, but I will be happy to answer any questions :)

Sometimes it might be too technical, however, I would strongly recommend "Modern Operating Systems 4th edition by Andrew Tanenbaum". (Chapter 11 is about Windows in particular). It provides a great technical overview of most common operating systems as well as hardware and the connection to operating system on the low level.