Your mind doesn’t know how hard it’s working while it’s still working. It has to stop that first in order for it to realize how heavy the lifting it was engaged in previously was. Most likely this is due to a natural focus on actually doing the work instead of looking at itself while it’s doing the work. Evaluating its performance and how hard it’s working at the moment is a distinct task in and of itself, which when fully focused on whatever exercise you’re performing at a maximal level of mental workout, your mind cannot engage in at the moment because you’re fully occupied already, or cannot afford to give it any of your attention. That might make sense theoretically, but it seems that your brain cannot know what was being turned on until it has the luxury of turning it off and on at will in order to feel the difference. Either your brain has no idea what’s going on, has no chance of paying attention to it while it’s doing the heavy lifting, or takes it for granted to the extent that it doesn’t notice the difference until you decide it’s okay for you to rest now or do something easier. Another reason could be your mind is pacing itself in a way that makes it seem like it’s doing something average so that you don’t feel overwhelmed prematurely and quit the exercise before any real benefit starts to happen.

The point is, don’t judge yourself as having not exercised hard enough during the mental improvement session, only afterwards, when you can have a real grasp on what was really going on in the previous exercise session, and that means you should also not try to stop during the exercise to assess how good you’re doing, because you might not be able to switch back on again as readily, even though you could’ve continued for hours more if you didn’t pause or stop to determine how good you’re really performing.

When you are lifting weights for example you feel like you’re pushing your muscle to the maximum. You are using the muscles to their full capacity. At least this is true for vigorous physical exercise.

This, for reasons I don’t fully understand, does not take place when you’re doing the same with your mind. This is because your mind is not trying to push something external to it. Also, at many occasions, you’re not forcing the same centers to work harder, you’re incorporating new centers in the process to work alongside the business as usual centers or areas. You definitely feel the fatigue and pain when it hits, but you don’t feel like you’re increasing the level at which you’re operating. You feel like you’re the same person doing something heavy, not a better person doing something heavy. Nothing new feels going around in your mind. It doesn’t seem like your performance is peaking in any way. It might even feel like you’re doing less work with your brain, although the exact opposite is what’s happening at the moment. All evidence points out to the fact that your brain activity is significantly higher than normal.

The interesting thing is, you tend to notice how heavy the exercise was, and how intensely your mind was working, after the exercise is over. Never during it, at least to an accurate level of detection of how much effort and focus were being spent earlier on. That should be totally distinct from assessing how much you’ve intensely exercised based upon how fatigued you are because of that exercise. And this is much better because you can always feel tired, even right after waking up from a good night’s sleep, well rested. At best, assessing how much benefit you’ve gained from a mental exercise in terms of fatigue will almost always be misleading. Assessing it according to how difficult the task is should be fair enough. But assessing it according to how much your brain has actually worked is closest to having hard evidence for having exercised in the first place.