Thoughts on Thinking

Lately, I noticed a lot of thoughts related content on social media. They range from simple mental models, such as Ockham’s Razor to complete philosophy like Stoicism, from ‘hard’ analytical method such as Network Analysis to ‘softer’ method like Business Model Canvas, to vague phrases like “Think Different”. I enjoy reading them. The existence of such posts indicate that people care to improve their thinking. Do they actually help though?

Before we dig deeper, I want to define what I mean by thinking. Thinking in this article isn’t limited to academic pursuit of or specific discipline. I’m talking about thinking in general, “To form an idea of something.” as defined in the English dictionary. The dialogues in your head, information you recall, opinion you have, and images you imagine. They are all thoughts; you are thinking as you do those things.

In short, I don’t think so. Those materials are good, but they don’t address the real problems we face; we cannot express what we are thinking. We think all the time, in fact human brain produces about ~6000 thoughts everyday. Why can’t we express them? Obviously most of our thoughts are subconscious, but there are two more causes from my experience :
1. We are focused to observe the external world.
2. We are not honest with ourselves.

This is my observation in class. When we are learning, we only pay attention to what our teachers say, or worse chatting and playing games; we rarely internalize them because we don’t pay attention inside. Thus, when we are asked to give opinions or questions, we can’t say anything. If anything students tend to say what they are thinking once the class is over.

Not to mention that the class tend to be judgemental. Student who asks weird questions or different opinion are often made fun by others, and worse, labelled as ‘difficult student’ by the teachers, hence “Dawg I really want to say it but I just can’t.” is a frequent line students say.

Thankfully I’m different from other kids. I say what I’m thinking, so I ask questions even made a controversial statements freely. Even so, there are times where I felt doubt, almost held back what I say, even changed my mind to fit in. This is why having an non-judgemental environment is important.

And sometimes there’s so much thoughts going on inside my mind. There are times where I feel overwhelmed that I escape with games or exercises. I can hear my inner dialogue clearly so it’s like being in a very loud party, except the sounds are inside my head.

How do we improve our thinking? The solution is “simple”, but not so easy to actually do this; take your time to focus and notice what you are thinking. Get a piece of paper and set a timer say, five minutes. Write whatever comes to your mind. If you will, make it a habit and keep a journal.

This is called “free writing”. It’s nothing new, neither I invented it. I saw this technique on Farnam Street article years ago, yet I was not convinced because it looks so simplistic. “No way it can be that simple”, I said to myself, because I believed the key to think better lies in esoteric philosophy or ground breaking neuroscience.

Finaly, I heard it from Professor Patrick Barry during my Writing Specialization in Coursera. He talks about how writing is mapping your mind and brought up the free writing as an exercise. My writing improved greatly ever since then. I don’t need to think what I want to write (or type in this article), but I can simply write as I speak without thinking. Thus, I can ‘see’ my thoughts much clearer.

Unfortunately since I’m not an expert, I can’t clarify my claims. Take my claim -that writing freely can improve your thinking- with a bucket of salt. Yet even if it’s bogus, free writing has its benefits, although this is something which impact can only be felt. Also, that is not to say the above contents are useless. They work, only if you can think clearly.

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