Lots of ideas flow through your head every day, some inconsequential, others hold water. Thoughts that come into my mind sometimes pass by, while others I have to quickly jot down. I had to learn how to go through a full thought cycle. I’m certainly not the one who coined the term “thought process”, but I know the feeling of a thought left hanging, I feel like there is something missing or hanging. I had to create a framework that allows me to go through the whole process of a thought, from start to finish.
The process goes as follows.
Step 1
Analyse the thought.
Is it an independent idea, is it building from a previous thought, is it a statement or is it a question. Is it directed to me or is it about another person or is it around as a solution that I am thinking of. Being able to label the thought creates clarity and clarity makes the path to your desired outcome easier to find. I like to think of it like I’m cleaning a data set that has so many things happening, data that is not relevant, missing values etc that would affect the time it will take to arrive at my answer and the kind of answer i will get.
Step 2
Label based on the characteristic of the thought and expand based on that characterisation.
Think about this step as the real starting point of the analysis. Once you have put the thought into its designated container, then investigating the idea and pulling back the layers of it becomes useful and targeted. You are no longer opening and wishing for the best or going in blind, you are now able to explore an environment that you have a general understanding of, you are not going in blind.
Step 3
Observe your findings with the least amount of bias and run the process of elimination.
Critiquing your thoughts is non-negotiable, being able to poke holes in your idea and finding solutions or bypassing that critique with answers allows you to either stand more firm on your idea or ditch the idea completely.
Ditching an idea that holds no water to you is important, and ditching it as fast as possible is exactly what you want to do, this falls in line with failing fast.
Being able to see that something will not be profitable or beneficial to you in any way is the best way to go about life, it frees you to find what actually works for you and leave what doesn’t.
Too many times, I’ve found myself in projects and spaces that initially seemed beneficial, but with closer reflection, I would have realized they weren’t a good use of my time. As a result, I had to step away sooner rather than later, which created its own set of complications. So instead of having to come up with an excuse to back out of a project, run the thinking process over the thought or an idea and know from the get what it means to you and if you want to proceed.
These steps will range in time or and space depending on the size of the thought, some can go through the process in 5 minutes, others may take days.
Learning this method opened my eyes to some much time I was not using effectively with pending thoughts all over the place. In my mind thoughts are like threads, once complete it’s cut into 2 boxes. Useful and further exploration or that’s cool but not for me. If a thought is not complete my mind feels clogged with strings.
I’m a writer and I jot lots of things down. This is a way I’m able to clear the backlog and help me faster label the thoughts that come up if they are going off a thought or idea that I have already confirmed is useful to me. I believe everything is a process that has a definite beginning and end, being able to pinpoint a start and a definite stop point is the key to moving into action.
In my first and second year a friend of mine and I were thinking of building a system that would help us and our classmates access past papers. The idea was grand and at first glance practical, with the thinking process applied we went through the idea again and we realised this good idea was not the best for us at all.
We had to ask…..
How would we collect the past papers ?
How would we upload all the documents into a database for storage?
How will the students query the papers ?
Would it be free and if we were to charge how much and would students pay ?
How would the ai model be trained, and how much would it cost?
And as the critical quotations started pouring in and thinking had to be applied at a micro level, we saw that this is a splendid idea but application would be so difficult.
The idea died.
It’s a great idea but maybe not for us, someone else will probably be able to execute but it’s just not us.
And thats ok .
That’s the thinking process in action.
Being able to eliminate things as fast as possible helps you reduce the time you would probably have wasted. It helps you flex the mussel so when an idea that’s yours comes around you are able to get to it fast.
Building this muscle is important, and there is no set way to do it. Anyone can add their bits into the process and make it theirs.
What does your thinking process look like??