The Art of Thinking

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

Part II

Continuing from the previous article of how to come up with effective ways of thinking through problems and issues in life by Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn, here are their last three ideas.

Fast Thinking and Slow Thinking

Fast thinking is the kind of thinking we do when we are weaving through traffic or playing sports.  We just let our instincts take over and don’t do much thinking because we need to act fast.  Slow thinking is the thinking required when the activities to be done or decisions to be made have long term consequences.  It’s when you are thinking about your career or how to plan your day, or how to finish your projects.  The big mistake some people do is using fast thinking instead of slow thinking.  Business people for example make haste decisions in investing or doing collaborative business with a friend, not examining much the details of that business or the past business performance of that friend.   Or when young people enter into relationships and even into marriage using only their heart or their feelings of attraction instead of using their head too.  The longer you take a decision the better that decision will be.  Lord Acton once said, “When it’s not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide” meaning buy as much time as you can or put off that decision because the consequences have tremendous effects.  Put it off for a day, a week or a month if necessary.

The rule of thumb is that fast decisions are often wrong decisions especially if it involves people or money.  Hiring people for your business, entering into relationships, partnerships in business, or investing money into too good to be true schemes (also known as “scams”) are examples of quick decisions that have been statistically proven to be wrong because people did not give more time deciding about it.

Solitude

To accomplish this slow thinking try to sit down for thirty minutes in solitude to think things over an important matter.  Some people do it through their everyday prayer or conversation with God which is a good practice because you ask God to help you make that important decision.   Solitude has been discovered and rediscovered to be the most powerful thinking tools of man.  Solitude is like having silt or some floating matter in a glass of water. The water is not clear so you need to wait for it to settle, then you can see clearly through it.  The best decision is arrived at and become clear when you think it over in solitude as you look at the situation from different angles.

At first few instances this practice of solitude is not easy.  But through discipline and perseverance once you get used to it, it becomes a powerful tool in your life.   The beauty of this practice is that after much thinking and reflection the solution pops out.  It may take days or weeks but it surely comes out.  Some would even call it a miracle.  When you practice solitude, you actually make use also of your subconscious mind that has been working constantly when you don’t think about the issue.  For people who are religious they let the grace of God help them with their decision and it indeed becomes a miracle.

Thinking Through Paper

Another effective practice is to write down the problem.  Try to put in every detail of that problem or situation, the cost, the people involved, etc.  Putting it on paper helps you see the problem with all the details as well as seeing it in big picture.  Here’s what Jim Rohn says about this practice, “Becoming an effective thinker on paper is a sure way to becoming a more effective person.  There is something magical about writing down a problem.  It is almost as if though the very act of writing what is wrong, you start to discover ways of making it right.  Perhaps the magic of this lies in the perspective objective writing affords you.  Even though you are describing your problem, your challenge, your life, your uncertainty or your indecision, that fact that you are writing about it as oppose to mentally pondering it creates a space between you and the problem.  It is within this space that solutions begin to grow.  Writing about events, and circumstances that occur helps you to clarify exactly what is happening.  When we describe to ourselves things happening to our minds, our imagination tends to feed false or distorted information about how things are.  When we describe things in writing however, we become more factual, more accurate and certainly more realistic.  And as we reread what we have written, we create a new picture in our mind to replace the distorted picture we have been working with.  And as we finally see things as they are, rather than what we think they are, we can then see our way clear to make them better.

As you begin to develop the habit of writing down your problems, your observations, emotions and reactions to life’s events, you will undoubtedly find yourself both posing and responding to a whole new set of about your past, present and future.  Questions such as ‘Why did I say that?”, ‘Why does he always make me feel that way?’, or ‘If I follow this course, where will I be five years from now?’  As you begin to ask and answer yourself on paper, you will be amazed at the incredible leaps in personal understanding and self-awareness you will experience.  Remember that any positive change that happens within you it will manifest outside of you, in your social circle, in your work, in your attitude, in your bank account, your habits and even your appearance.”