How to Think About What's Important

Four rules:

1. Think about it as much and as often as you can.

2. Avoid thinking about anything irrelevant or time-wasting.

3. Take 10-20 minute naps.

4. Get a good night’s sleep

This is all to do with the way the brain works. If you think about something a lot your brain cells will make connections and those connections will get strengthened. So if you think about things which are important to you your brain will automatically produce a web of connections. 

The trouble is that if you think about irrelevant time-wasting stuff, your brain cells will be producing a web of connections about that as well. And there is a limit to how much stuff your brain can deal with at any one time. Do you really want your brain to be full with a web of connections about why x said y to you at the party last night?

Central to the whole process is sleep because it’s when you are sleeping that your brain strengthens the connections of what you have been thinking about, It’s also when it clears out unnecessary stuff. How does it know what’s unnecessary? It’s the stuff you haven’t been thinking about.

Comments

[Brent]

This is timely. I was discussing with my co-workers today about what is the proper amount of time to devote to "thinking or pondering time" at work? Some said 20%. Which to some sounded like a lot and to others ridiculously low.

Put one way, 20% is 1 out of every 5 days spent simply thinking or pondering. On the other hand, I don't think you save up thinking time to one day, and I certainly would never tell my team, "you don't have time to think, just get your projects done". So maybe 20% isn't enough.

Obviously, it depends on how you define thinking or pondering but it is worth pondering even the question of how much thinking and pondering time do you need in a day or a week?

One "rule" I would add to Mark's, is the idea of going for a walk or something similar while thinking. Einstein and Darwin were notable proponents of going for walks to aid the creative thinking process.

[Mark Forster]

Brent:

Of course actually working on something requires thinking about it while you are working. So that counts as thinking time. At least it does unless you are day-dreaming about something else while you are doing it, which is usually a recipe for disaster.

Writing an article or report requires a lot of thinking, and I personally do a lot of my thinking by writing in Roam Research or in Evernote. Or by writing replies to comments on my blog posts!

[Alan Baljeu]

To add to the walk suggestion which is very warranted, if you want to process what's important, it's necessary to forgo other mental stimulus. I like listening to podcasts or music, but if I do these then the Think About What's Important doesn't happen very effectively. (Music that's strictly background instrumental music is an exception that doesn't hinder free thinking.)

I wonder how far you might take this. Maybe if you want to get the most out of your thoughts, the only time you should seek external input whether podcast or videos or books is after you are done thinking through things [for now]. Conversation is another matter entirely.

[Charles]

As has been mentioned, I've also found writing and talking with someone good ways to think, although the focus of the article is on how to think about what's important.

I was almost expecting something like writing a list of topics and scanning down until you come across a topic that just grabs you in.