The thinking machine
For me, there’s nothing more exciting than spending time in quiet thought. Hear me out. I know it’s not on par with paragliding.
If you ever read a crime novel dying to find out who did it or watched a film that kept you glued to the screen, you’ll know the feeling I’m talking about. It’s that natural desire to find out what happened, to explore unknowns, to know what goes bump in the night. It’s at the basis of storytelling, it’s the hook or the inciting incident that gets you interested in something.
Sometimes, it looks like something that catches your attention while passing under everyone else’s radar.
‘Thinking’ might include:
Entertaining inarticulate thoughts you just can’t seem to push aside
Daydreaming
Finding relevant articles
Making notes out of what I noticed (this also reinforces memory, especially if the notes are handwritten)
Taking a different point of view
Going back and forth
Making new connections
Learning from available case studies
Testing out concepts
Digging through academic sources
Making hypotheses
Making projections
Being aware of what I know
Being painfully aware of what I don’t know
It’s very similar to what we think ancient Greek philosophers were doing when they were trying to make sense of the physical and the metaphysical world. Only you don’t get to have philosophical discussions on the streets anymore. Today, you have to get a job and go to work for that.
The best thinking machine today isn’t a calculator or an AI computer. It’s your own mind.
The common thread to producing great work, whether it’s an oil painting, a philosophical thesis, or a piece of code is the thinking that needs to be invested for the work to get made. Whenever I see people trying to skip the thinking part, which is the hard part (naturally, because using your brain makes you tired), it doesn’t end well, ever. The road to hell is paved in shortcuts.
Humans are natural thinkers, it’s what helped our ancestors survive and got us to where we are today. Maybe you’ll get an adrenaline rush when you jump out of a plane, but you’ll also get a dopamine reward when you get to the bottom of something you pursued because of your natural-born curiosity.
