How to Think

Have you ever pondered how you think about a certain notion or phenomenon or, in general, anything that happens in the world around you?

Guess what, most people I asked seemed puzzled by this question. The inability to grasp the question, though so basic yet novel, indicated that they had never considered it before. It was like encountering a new concept for the first time, leaving them without a ready-made, well-baked answer.

When I first encountered this question, I was intrigued by its depth. It led me to figure the answer out. Soon enough I realized what I actually was doing. I was 'thinking about thinking'. Hmm, that was recursion.

Thinking Through Recursion

Even though recursion is repugnant, intricate, and complex, it is tremendously powerful. You can appreciate it especially if you are a programmer or a mathematician. For simplicity, imagine you are in a queue and you ask the person in front of you how many persons are ahead of you. He reiterates your question to the person in front until the person at the far end receives that question and says "None." This is called the base case of recursion. The person behind him then takes the answer of the person in front, i.e., 0, and adds it to his answer, i.e., 1, and tells the person behind him until it reaches you and you finally evaluate your answer. At the end of this round trip, recursion results in a final answer. Congratulations, you now understand the concept of recursion!

I will similarly employ recursion to thinking now where thoughts in my cognitive thread form a queue. At the back of the queue stands my initiator thought who asks the thought in front of her, "Hey thought, how do you formulate yourself best?" That thought then asks the next one and so on until the thought at the far end of the cognitive thread responds, "I formulate myself best by doing abracadabra." The thought behind her combines this answer with hers and responds to the thought behind her. This happens until the accumulated answer reaches the initiator thought, and a consolidated answer is obtained. The consolidated answer that I received is presented below.

Writing

Have you noticed that I am describing my recursively obtained findings about thinking in 'writing'? Yes, there is a good reason for doing so. Jordan Peterson says:

"Writing is the deepest form of thinking."

In this recursive process of thinking, writing emerges as a fundamental tool. Writing is nothing but thinking in a formalized way. Simply publishing a writing without thinking does not cut it. When we think about something, we jot it down, and most importantly evaluate it afterward. We become a devil's advocate against our writing and dissect it to its core. When we find a problem with the statement, we course correct it. This keeps happening until it becomes a statement that can't be challenged further which leads to the creation of a well-thought piece of writing. By formalizing our thoughts on paper, we engage in a process of reflection and refinement, honing our ideas until they are well-articulated and coherent.

Even a surface-level comparison of the raw idea against the final write-up reveals the magnificence of the idea that if one needs to think about something, the best way to do so is to start writing about it.

Writing is one of the great strategies for thinking. It is the 'abracadabra' we wanted to seek out, but it is not enough alone. It needs to be complemented with a few other elements. Let's discuss those one by one.

Exposure

We can only satisfactorily respond to the questions we know the answer to, and our answer is only as good as the quantity and quality of the written compositions we have exposed ourselves to.

The quantity dimension helps discover numerous perspectives that may unknowingly exist for a certain thing. This exposure broadens our horizons and equips us with a wealth of ideas to draw upon. The more perspectives we learn with an open mind, the more it refines our thinking. It helps us cover more scenarios with ease in our writing. It helps us commit to paper at length, not in terms of words but in terms of the ground covered. Stay curious.

The quality aspect, on the other hand, introduces us to great thinkers (I mean writers, of course) and how they portray their concepts. We start picking up their thinking approach, their writing accent, how they express complex ideas cogently, and how coherent their content structure is. Without consuming what we idealize, we can reproduce it neither in thinking nor writing. Simply put - garbage in, garbage out. Stay observant.

Taming the Wandering Mind

I would probably rate this as the most difficult challenge to deal with, especially on the scale of the masses. In this fast era, endless scrolling leading to instant gratification through the regular release of dopamine hormones is widespread. People find it immensely difficult to focus on one thing for a longer duration of time. The attention span has reduced to alarming levels. This is exactly what one needs to resist.

For example, on a boring day, while sitting in our backyard we may start thinking about why we don't carve some time out to read books. Maybe because we don't have enough time. Possibly because we watch Netflix the whole day. Suddenly, at that moment, we lose attention and without exploring why binge-watching got ingrained in our routine, we start thinking about the last episode we watched yesterday and the next season we want to begin today. We pick up the phone, look at the IMDB ratings, and bid farewell to the lucky chance of inward exploration we started about the absence of reading practices.

This lack of concentration has aggravated in today's digital world. Before looking inward further, we sway and start looking outward. We can't seem to cultivate the ability to concentrate on a single point. We can't laser-focus our thinking process on one idea coherently leading to another more detailed mental construct about the same idea. We fail to look inward as it is not instantly rewarding. Instead it makes us look bad to ourselves as we confront our rough edges. We succumb to the pressure of challenging ourselves. In the blink of an eye, we ride on some other pleasing idea, losing an opportunity to understand ourselves and the world we hold inside. Tame the mind to concentrate.

Critical Evaluation

After accumulating our thoughts, it is supremely wise to condense them into a digestible form for future regurgitation. This condensation requires critical evaluation. It should ideally be free from any biases; selection, recall, conformity, or any other bias. It needs to be self-sufficient warranting no further explanation. Subject it to rigorous scrutiny. Look for any objections that we or anyone could raise. Using the process of elimination, attend to only those that matter and then improve the final answer.

Use logical reasoning. Draw Venn diagrams, mind maps, Karnaugh maps, graphs, or any mental or visual representations that help us analyze. Find a place of isolation. Find a time slot for deep thinking. Do some exercise. Go on a walk. Whatever the approach, the goal stays the same, i.e., to critically analyze the findings and distill them into clear and coherent conclusions.

There is no 'one size fits all' solution here. Every brain is wired differently. Each person is naturally distinct. People have their idiosyncratic ways of solving things, shaped by individual experiences and perspectives. These ways cannot be and should not be mended. The journey may differ, but the destination remains the same. Stay critical.

Summary

Connecting to our recursion mapping, the verdict is that writing is the base case answer returned by the thought at the far end of the queue. The exposure to information, the ability to tame our attention while thinking, and the skill to critically evaluate our thoughts turn out to be the answers returned by the thoughts standing in between the thought at the far end (most dense, i.e., writing) and the initiator thought at the back (raw, i.e., let's think about thinking). All of these combined form the foundation of effective thinking.

Embrace learning, read books, meet smart people, digest quality content, get bored, introspect, accept critical feedback, enhance cognitive abilities, and cultivate a deeper understanding of the world. This is the perfect recipe for becoming an effective thinker and, potentially, a competent writer.

(Since I consider myself an avid learner of the cognitive thread about thinking, I look forward to receiving critical comments on this write-up that could help me revisit my mental constructs. Don't shy from pouring them in.)