What Is THINKING

As the Thinker Coach, thinking is what I want all of you to be doing in your lives. But, what IS “thinking”? That may be a question you have never stopped to ask yourself. Fortunately, the very act of asking the question , “What is thinking?” is ITSELF thinking.

Note: the following article is an excerpt from my eBook "Clearly Thinking" (learn more about it below)

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Broadly speaking, thinking is firstly about actively and selectively engaging your focus. It is about asking yourself questions about the state of affairs—both outside around you, as well as the content of your own mind. Then, it is about exploring the reasons for, or lack thereof, contained in that data. Data about the natural world will always have reasons, but data about people (including yourself) always has the possibility of fallibility and irrationality. Finally, and most importantly, thinking is about making and supporting (or refuting) the connections between data in the content of your own mind.

Start With Observations

The first step in any act of thinking is to make an observation. The object of your observation may be external, such as the conversation your spouse is having with you right now about something that upset them. Or, the observation can be of something internal, such as noticing that you are dreading starting your next assignment at work or school.

Once you have made an observation, you can use that as the stepping-off point for a thinking process that can keep you happy and productive—once you reach a conclusion about that observation and relate it to the rest of your knowledge.

…but before we continue, please take a moment to learn about my new eBook "Clearly Thinking":

…and now, back to the article!

Ask Fundamental Questions

The next step in thinking is to ask fundamental questions about your observations. These are the “who?”, “what?”, “where?”, “when?”, “why?”, “how?” questions. But, asking the question is the easy part. The hard work comes in answering them. For some questions, the answers may be obvious. For others, the answer may only SEEM obvious. But, when you press yourself for details in the answer to your fundamental questions, you can identify holes in your knowledge where you thought you knew something, but that ended up only being a hollow feeling.

In order to rationally know something you have to have a solid answer to fundamental questions about it. Now, this does not mean that you have to know the sum of all human knowledge in order to be able to think rationally. After all, there is specialized knowledge, such as your medical doctor’s, and it is rational to defer to their expertise in most contexts. Indeed, there is great benefit to us all in the lives we are able to live due to the division of labor and specialization of knowledge.

Draw Conclusions

After you have answered your own fundamental questions, you can package that answer up as a conclusion. Think of conclusions as individual bricks in a wall, with each brick representing a conclusion that builds up the sum total of your life’s knowledge.

Conclusions are so important in your life because your mind HAS to make them, whether you are consciously doing it or not. And, if you do not do it actively, your subconscious will do it instead—and that can introduce all sorts of cracks and missing bricks in the foundation of your mind. These flaws can, in time, lead to crooked walls, craggy walls, or sections of walls that begin and end with no connection to the rest of the wall. And in extreme cases, no wall at all gets built—just a pile of bricks heaped on top of one another.

Conclusion

Thinking is like building a wall of bricks. We want to have a solid wall, with every brick fitting snugly with the bricks next to it. And, not only do we want those bricks to fit side to side, but also up and down and front to back. Thinking results in drawing lots of little conclusions from observations and then exploring the questions of how that observation leads, most likely, to that conclusion.

The opposite of thinking is to drift, based on emotion. And this will always result in a house of cards or a pile of bricks.

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Thank you so much! I wish you clear thinking, my friends!