Thinking IS hard. Yes it is.
Thinking clearly is even harder!
It's more than a little ironic that something that all of us do all of the time is so difficult. Clearly, most of us just aren't that good at it, at least not naturally.
Think for a moment about the natural, continuously on-going inner dialogue which comprises the majority of our inner life. What is that like? What would it read like if we could somehow capture it on paper?
If you're anything like me, my mind is always going. But where it's going is completely unpredictable from moment to moment. My thoughts often flit from here to there in seemingly incoherent ways, jumping from one random thought to another completely unrelated one. If I could somehow download the ongoing
stream of consciousness of my never-ending thoughts it would be one uninterrupted flow of a mish-mash of whatever ranging from the sublime to the mundane to the downright kooky. Truth be told: there is a whole lot more of the mundane than the sublime or the profound.
There is no organization, no punctuation, no "spell-check," or even any content check for that matter. It just is: a big, jumbled mess. Probably I wouldn't want you to know most of it and I'm sure it's the same for you.
So maybe I should revise my opening comments. Thinking is actually pretty easy, that is if we define "thinking" as the endless flow of random thoughts that seemingly come and go without any conscious effort on our part. That's easy.
But thinking clearly, now that's another story. That is hard, really hard.
Be we can become better at it with training and practice.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Probably all of us have heard the oft repeated axiom:
"Practice makes perfect!"
Oh, if only that were so!
It is vitally important at this point that I disabuse you of this completely wrong-headed notion. Sadly, it is one of those nice sounding, but unfortunately incorrect, ideas that no doubt originated with and has been perpetuated by unclear thinking. Are you surprised?
You see, "practice," which in its most basic sense is defined as doing "something again and again in order to become better at it," does not in fact necessarily make you
better at anything. It might improve your
facility, but not necessarily your skill. What do I mean?
Mindlessly repeating something will only make you better at mindlessly repeating something. If we want to get good at anything--really good at it--then we not only need a lot of "practice," but we also need to be sure that our practice is beneficial. It needs to be meaningful, thoughtful, problem solving and goal oriented.
Imagine a piano student that faithfully practices their scales every day for years and years. After a few years they should be fairly proficient at playing those scales, right? You might think so, but not if they've been playing them incorrectly, with: wrong notes, poor rhythm, inaccurate timing and bad technique. Now all those years of practice have simply fossilized those bad habits and turned this poor unfortunate music student into an unmusical block of stone.
The same is true of our thinking. How we think from day-to-day establishes patterns of thinking. These become habitual to us. Most of us are pretty much unaware of not only
what we think, but more importantly
how we think. This needs to change.
HABITS OF MIND
“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.” - Horace Mann, American Educator (1796-1859)
Research in the areas of effecting thinking and intelligent behavior reveals that there are definite "identifiable characteristics of effective thinkers" (Costa). Educational researchers Bena Kallick and Arthur Costa refer to these as "
Habits of Mind," of which they have identified 16 different ones, (although they acknowledge that their list is by no means exhaustive).
Midway down their list of habits is the curious entry:
Thinking about thinking.
This seems like a good place to begin our discussion about thinking clearly. If are to indeed develop good habits of thinking, ones which will hone our critical thinking and problem solving skills, then it is important that we begin to learn to pay attention to both
how we think as well as develop an awareness regarding
what it is we think about. When this becomes our practice, then our thinking will definitely improve over time. Such thoughtful, mindful and goal-directed practice will not make our thinking perfect, but it will certainly make it better. And that's a good thing.
Thinking about thinking, or
metacognition as educators like to describe it, involves several things. It should be obvious that it means being aware of our own thoughts, but it also includes more. It involves our problem-solving skills and also our ability to evaluate the effectiveness of those skills both in real-time and retrospectively.
Costa explains the major components of metacognition are:
- Developing a plan of action,
- Maintaining that plan in mind over a period of time,
- Then reflecting back on and evaluating the plan upon its completion
Seems fairly straightforward, no? In fact, these skills begin to naturally develop in the average child around age five and can come to full flower by the tender age of eleven (Costa). And yet, as the Russian psychologist, Alexander Luria found: not all adults metacogitate (Whimbey, 1976). Why not? Where did they go wrong?
As it turns out, it's because of the way that most people "practiced" thinking throughout their teen and early adult years. All too often people do not take the time to reflect on their learning. They don’t take the time to wonder and question. They don’t question the reasons why they are doing what they are doing or the effectiveness of any of it. It becomes routine, mindless, boring. So guess what happens.
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” That of course will only be true if we make it our habit to always do things in an excellent way. For those that simply repeat something over and over again mindlessly, they will become mindless.
If you want to think well and to think clearly, then you will have to repeatedly make sure that your thoughts are coherent and clear. This is not easy to do, in fact it is very, very hard. But it can become easier with practice, as long as it is the right kind of practice.
In our next installment we will discuss various ways to make our habits of mind more effective. In the meantime, take the time to become more aware of your thoughts, including both
what you think as well as
how you think about it. This will become an important step in our development towards thinking clearly.
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Sources:
"Practice." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.
Costa, Art. "The Art Costa Centre For Thinking." The Art Costa Centre For Thinking. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.
Whimbey, A. and Whimbey L. S. (1975) Intelligence Can Be Taught. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
