When we do math problems, we use paper. But when we think about other problems, we often try to do it without paper, digital notes, or anything to write or draw with.
The capacity of our short-term memory is actually really limited if you think about it. We can only hold a few thoughts in our head at a time. When we try to limit our thinking to our head, we are limiting our thinking to the limits of our short-term memory. Whenever I write my thoughts or draw diagrams for them, I’m always surprised by the quantity of ideas that would have otherwise faded into oblivion. When I start recording them, I can review them better, build off of them more, and see them from a new angle or notice things about them that I wouldn’t have been able to see if they stayed in my head. I’ve collected a few techniques that help me do more of my thinking outside my head:
Everyone has done some brainstorming at some point or another so I’ll keep this brief. The goal is to generate as many thoughts and ideas as possible, so it’s important to ensure that you don’t have anything holding you back from getting your thoughts out of your head. I find it helpful to remember two things: first, many of the ideas that are eventually discarded in the end usually inspire or influence other ideas that don’t get discarded; second, even if an idea somehow contributed absolutely nothing, rest assured that every thought that is written down will increase the momentum, making it easier to write other ideas down.
The goal of diagramming is to harness the power of your visual cortex by creating something you can look at. If you have a hard time wrapping your head around something, diagramming it is probably a good way to gain a metaphorical vantage point from which you can gain a more useful perspective.
There are an infinite number of ways to diagram things, but here are some of the most common and useful methods:
Mind-mapping starts with a central idea, which is then broken down into smaller ideas. Write the main concept in the middle of the paper/screen, and write related ideas around it. Connect the related ideas to the main idea with lines, and then repeat this whole process with each of the related ideas, and so on. The result is a visual map that explores all aspects of the central concept in detail. This is a good way to get a big-picture view of something.
If you’re trying to design some sort of system, it can be hard to wrap your head around all the different parts of the system and how they interact with each other. That’s where an entity relationship diagram comes in. Each part of the system is drawn as its own box with a name (and maybe a description too), and arrows are drawn between all the boxes to represent how the parts of the system interact with each other. Each arrow should have a description (phrased as a verb) that reminds you what the arrow represents. Arrows can represent anything from ownership, to flow of information, or anything else you can come up with.
Like entity relationship diagrams, flowcharts have pretty specific use-cases. Assuming you’ve already seen flowcharts (they’re pretty common and simple), I would just suggest that you try finding more ways to use them such as using them to analyze how you make decisions in specific situations.
If you don’t know of any particular types of diagrams that would help with the thing you’re trying to think about, just free-style it. Do your best to draw what you’re seeing in your mind. That’s how all the previous methods evolved before they were given a name.
Journaling is the ultimate self-reflection tool. You can really learn a lot about yourself, change how you think, and understand what motivates you and what you want out of life. Journaling is also a very flexible tool because it can be used to think about pretty much anything.
When most people think of journaling, they probably picture something like dusting off the old diary and writing a few pages about what happened that day. In reality, journaling can mean a lot of different things. Some of the most common methods of journaling include finding and answering prompts, and stream-of-consciousness writing. Some of the best journaling sessions I’ve had have been typing a bunch of thoughts into a digital note onto my phone, writing what I learned somewhere else, and then deleting the note from my phone. I’ve also found it helpful to ask myself a few questions about a project I’m working on, answering each question in writing, and then re-assessing the direction I want to take the project in.
A lot of what I’ve learned about journaling has been from Struthless’ YouTube channel.
Lists are really the most versatile tool for collecting, organizing, and storing your thoughts and ideas. Especially since they are compact and compatible with any technology. I like to keep many themed lists for a variety of things. That way, as thoughts of all kinds come to me as the days, weeks, and months go by, I have places to collect all those thoughts. Over time, I end up with quite the collection to work with! I have bucketlists, todo lists, packing lists, goals, habits I want to build, and more. I also keep a list specific for each project I’m working on. Even my journal consists of series of lists, one for each day. I’m a pretty big fan of lists. My favorite type of list is an indented list which is replaces the role that mind-maps would otherwise play in my thinking and planning. The great thing about an indented list as opposed to a mind-map is that it only uses text which makes it compatible with more note-taking tools and apps. It’s also easier to add lots of items to a list than it is to add items to a graph (generally).
I’m not sure where I heard about this technique, but it really helps me to overcome writers’ block and start getting a better idea of what I want to say and how I want to say it. The trick is to just write everything that comes to mind, making one giant, messy paragraph without any flow or structure. While it’s not the sort of thing that could ever be published, it gets the creative juices flowing, and gives me an opportunity to try out lots of different ways of saying the same thing. You could even try going back over the mess and highlighting the parts you like.
There’s really no way I could ever list all the ways of moving your thinking out from your head and onto paper or whatever, and I’m sure you could find a lot more techniques if you did some research about it. I just hope you can find a way to use at least one of these methods to improve your capacity to think in some way.
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