Cognitive shuffling word list

What makes a good cognitive shuffling word?

A word that produces an image straight away and then lets it go. In practice that means:

• Concrete. A thing you could see or hold — a ladle, not a plan. Cognitive shuffling works on images, and abstract words produce thoughts instead.
• Calm. Nothing that raises the pulse, even pleasantly. A kite, not a rollercoaster.
• Mildly pleasant. Neither bleak nor thrilling.
• Short. Mostly one to three syllables. Eight seconds after “moth” feels different from eight seconds after “refrigerator”.
• Picturable on its own. Not the stuff a scene is made of — room, air, floor, wall — which gives the mind nothing to hold.
• Impersonal. No names, no places you have been, nothing with a memory attached.

Every word below meets those tests, and every one has been through the same automated safety check as Sheeps’ stories, so none of them is something you hear at two in the morning and have to think about.

How do you use a word list?

Reading a list in bed by the light of a phone defeats the purpose, so a list is best used in one of three ways:

1. Have it read to you. One word, a pause of about eight seconds, the next word — the rhythm used in the research on the technique. You picture each thing until the next one arrives. This is what the structured form, serial diverse imagining, is.
2. Record it yourself. Read a sequence slowly into a voice memo, leaving a long pause after each word, and play it back in the dark.
3. Borrow the groups. Before bed, pick a few groups from the list below. In bed, move between them — a pear, a heron, a lantern, a scarf — without going through any one group in order.

If you would rather generate your own words, the seed-word method needs no list at all: think of a neutral word such as bedtime, and for each letter picture a few unrelated things that start with it. It is described step by step in the cognitive shuffling guide.

The one rule: keep neighbours apart

Two words from the same group side by side — ship, boat, ferry — hand the mind something to connect, and connecting things is the one activity the technique exists to prevent. Three boats in a row is no longer a shuffle; it is the start of a harbour.

Sheeps’ Radio keeps any two words from the same group at least three places apart, and the sequence below follows the same rule. If you make your own, the groups are there to help you do the same.

A ready-made sequence

40 words, in an order where no group repeats within three places. Read them slowly, or record them with a long pause after each.

1. biscuit
2. firefly
3. barrel
4. chisel
5. kayak
6. scooter
7. lemonade
8. drum
9. envelope
10. chestnut
11. armchair
12. teddy
13. typewriter
14. cider
15. pea
16. puppet
17. carafe
18. oak
19. carriage
20. colander
21. taper
22. sherbet
23. frost
24. velvet
25. spatula
26. cello
27. hoop
28. tractor
29. hail
30. rake
31. mortar
32. stamp
33. jar
34. urchin
35. dragonfly
36. donkey
37. bookcase
38. clam
39. ferry
40. waistcoat

All 280 words, in 28 groups

The groups exist to keep neighbours apart, not to be read through. Take one word from here and the next from somewhere else entirely.

Which words should you leave out?

• Anything with your own story in it. Your street, a friend’s name, the dish your grandmother made. Personal significance pulls the mind back into thinking.
• Anything that starts a chain. Email, invoice, dentist, tomorrow — words that point at something still to be done.
• Anything unsettling, however mildly. If a word brings up something you would rather not think about, drop it and move on.
• Abstract words. Freedom, patience, strategy. There is nothing to picture, so the mind reaches for reasons instead.
• Words you cannot picture quickly. If an image does not arrive, skip it. The list is not a test.

If you cannot picture things at all, the same list still works as something for attention to rest on: see cognitive shuffling with aphantasia.