Tools for Thought

For an intention to move beyond imagination, it needs to be crystallized into a physical action, or an explicitly defined outcome that begins with a physical action. Without this reality check, the loftiest aspirations will remain inert. That doesn’t mean that dreaming is bad, or even unnecessary, but it’s not sufficient.

Imagination might be insufficient, but our minds are filled with too many thoughts to action all of them, or even most of them. Exerting continuous partial effort on a wide spectrum of ambitions is unsustainable. Since we’re all subject to finite resources, it’s more strategic to work on a few critical projects at a time (one at any particular point in time), while having reliable placeholders for everything else. Without these placeholders, thoughts related to uncommitted projects will continue to hover at the edge of our attention and scatter our focus.

With any endeavor, it’s important to recognize that it’s either an active project, or it’s not. If it’s not an active project, we need to determine what our relationship it is. If a thought, or cluster of thoughts, doesn’t have a specific focus, we need to collect it in order to determine what it amounts to. Let’s look at three strategies for dealing with thoughts that consume attention but aren’t yet actionable.

Someday/maybe actions and projects

We’re constantly exposed to things that might be attractive, but aren’t necessarily worth thinking about more than once. You might like someone’s shoes, and imagine what it would be like to wear them, but aren’t considering actually purchasing them. Skydiving is kind of interesting to me, but not enough to want to do it myself when I could be doing something I find even more interesting. We might see a billboard for a product that we wouldn’t turn down for free, but promptly forget about otherwise. These types of thing don’t need to be tracked.

But some things are more compelling, and consume repeat attention. Taking a trip to Paris, going to grad school, starting an internet business, or trying a new restaurant are thoughts that you know you’re not ready to take action on for some specific reason or intuitive reservation, yet you can’t stop thinking of them.

To prevent them from becoming distractions, they need to be tracked just like active projects, but without the further detail of their component action steps. They need to be mindfully deferred, not haphazardly ignored. They’re things you’ve consciously decided not to make a decision on at this time, either because the right circumstances aren’t in place yet (your children are still at home, you need one more paycheck, etc.), or it just doesn’t feel like a priority.

Instead of keeping a host of potential projects and opportunities under consideration at all times, or randomly reminding ourselves of them, it’s much easier to keep them written down on a someday/maybe list for scanning or revising once a week during a weekly review. Keeping these items in an outboard memory system keeps you from being preoccupied with them from moment to moment.

Research projects

These are sometimes called look-into projects, process projects, or simply the shorthand “R&D.” Research projects are designed to clarify whether or not an intention should become an active project, or to determine what it would take to make a potential project actionable.

The goal is not to simply consume information. A research project has a specific outcome in mind. You’re thinking about learning scuba diving, but have no idea of what kind of commitment is required in terms of time, money and effort. So your project would be something like, “R&D: Taking scuba diving lessons.” You might draft a checklist of factors to consider:

• Cost of scuba diving lessons
• Cost of renting equipment vs. buying
• Hours of instruction
• Local dive spots

You determine the next actions needed to fill in the blanks of your knowledge around this topic. Then you can make an informed decision about whether or not you have the resources necessary to make learning to scuba dive an active project.

As you can see, a research project is just another entry on your project list, with at least one concrete next action on an action list. You may find that you don’t have the time or money available to pursue the lessons right now, in which case you would put “Take scuba diving lessons” on your someday/maybe list; or you might find that you’re not interested enough in scuba diving to pay the price, now or later, in which case you check off the research project as done and move on. Whether you decide to pursue diving, defer it, or delete it, the research project that lead to your decision has a successful outcome.

Edgework

You want to go to college, but don’t have a major. You want to start a blog, but don’t have a topic. It’s not a case of lacking ideas, but lacking enough experience or information to congeal into a singular focus. Some people find themselves drawing animals, but have no idea of what they intend to do with these drawings. Some people like reading business magazines, but have no specific plans for starting a business of their own. These are thoughts or artifacts that hover at the edge of our attention with no focal point.

Edgework is the art of collecting this flotsam and letting it incubate. The point isn’t to impose an agenda on this material but to amass enough of it to eventually examine in one place and identify an overarching theme. You notice a pattern to the types of articles you read online, then create a bookmark folder or an online notebook (like Google Notebook or Evernote) with a label to the pattern. Someone might create a physical file for his animal drawings; someone else might create a file of clippings of entrepreneurial articles, along with any handwritten notes related to them; another person might scan photos of design ideas into a digital folder.

By repeatedly examining these collections, we create an thematic awareness that gradually funnels into a more conscious understanding of what motivated us to think about the source material in the first place. You can either collect this material at an organic pace, or accelerate the process with a reverse mind map: a cluster of free associations where the central theme is left blank until the end of the brainstorming process.

Keep potential projects externalized

Just because something isn’t worth thinking about doesn’t mean you won’t think about it. If you keep thinking about something without processing it into something actionable, it becomes mental garbage that needs to go somewhere. Create drawers, trash cans and compost heaps outside of your mind to keep your mind engaged on the things that really matter to you. A mind is a terrible thing to keep filled with waste.

(Photo credit: Bookshelf Boyfriend)