On Thinking
Thinking about thinking can either be one of the most important things one can do, as any incremental improvement to thinking ability will have exponential compounding effects, or it can be a meaningless navel gazing exercise.
Where your thoughts are on that spectrum on this subject, only you can know and control.
no such thing as overthinking
Far too often I hear the criticism that I or others "overthink" problems and therefore by implication have more difficulty solving or understanding than if we thought less, and perhaps "felt" more.
Intuition is a powerful tool and should be developed.
However, there is no such thing as overthinking.
There are simply exaggerated probabilities assigned to multi-order interpretations.
Considering distant interpretations is not a problem. Only the assigning too much weight to them.
develop deep thinking skills
You should cherish and develop your "overthinking". The first step is to reframe it positively, perhaps as "deep thinking".
There are only two keys to developing effective deep thinking skills.
probability and time
- rationally evaluate probabilities
- focus thinking time proportionate to probability
Assigning appropriately rational low probabilities, the more distant an interpretation and having the discipline to spend only as little time on considering/dwelling on such interpretation according to their low probabilities.
Train yourself to do those two things, and there is no limit to how much you can develop your deep thinking as a powerful positive analytical tool.
The rational probability evaluation is the easier key. Spending time appropriate to probability, rather than fear, is much more difficult. Overcoming fear is thus an important step to developing effective thinking skills, and that requires reflecting OnFear.
enabling deeper thinking through physical workouts
Anecdotally I have found that the afternoons and evenings after extended physical workouts, say 2 hours or more, bring many more insights into tough and otherwise difficult problems.
The effect seems to grow linearly with the length of time spent working out, from 2 to 3 to 4 to even 5 hours of working out, e.g. climbing.
It appears BodyOptimization may help mental optimization as well.
understanding and solving complexity
Nearly all of us face and must deal with a complex set of problems and challenges nearly everyday, both short/immediate-term, and especially, long term.
Traditional Western education teaches us to think and consider complex problems sequentially, in terms of ordered dependencies, from square one in kindergarten hopscotch to prerequisites in college. Corporate waterfall processes are simply a continuation of this methodology. And yet, as many have determined, rarely produce good solutions to complex problems.
And yet, we face questions like what do we really value, want to do, to be, as well as (perhaps seemingly) fundamental things as facing fears. We can be easily overwhelmed by the complexity, and search for the simplicity that sequences provide, for that square one.
But these things are related more like a network, rather than a sequence. Thus there really is no square one, except to start.
These variables (of what you really value, what you want to do, to be, and fears) are all related. solving for any one helps solve for the others. even increasing your understanding of one without reaching a complete solution, will give you insight that will help understand and solve the others. Agile workflow illustrates this approach in contrast to the aforementioned waterfall processes.
Another way to think of the elimination of dependencies and assumption of sequences is the enabling of virtually parallel processing.
sequential vs parallel thinking
Besides origins in general education, sequential thinking is also a habit of mathematical training. Proving a theorem.
Learning a lot of math early on, sequential assumptions took a while to unlearn. I think the exposure to neural networks in a Harvey Mudd Artificial Intelligence class I took as a highschool senior helped.
Oh and *programming*, that also makes you think sequentially as a habit. Computers can only be told to do things one a time, in a certain order. Things happen in parallel in simulation with one processor, or with multiple processors. Everything else is sequential.
Of course our brains are fundamentally massively parallel - each neuron is its own processor. The more we can learn to think in massively parallel ways, the more we can develop our thinking skills. Even if that parallel thinking takes place at a near subconscious level.
iteration
Iteration is one of the ultimate simplification catalysts.
teaching
The teacher learns more than the student.
questioning intuition
Many appeal to intuition and personal experience (especially if/when common/shared) to justify beliefs in the otherwise nonexistent. Many (most?) conclusions reached due to intuition/personal experience can often be explained by the phenomenon of patternicity, the tendency of people to overly pattern match/recognize, erroneously seeing patterns where statistically/scientifically there are none.
process vs outcome
New York Times 2009-01-26: Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy - "Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth."
process more than outcome
journey more than destination
etc.
thanks
to Katiepoche for letting me bounce thoughts off her and sharing her insights.
related
Return to SpreadPositivity \ FrontPage
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.