Actionability
Unless you are lucky enough to earn an adequate living as a professional philosopher, most thinking tends to fall squarely into the “what can I/what must I do with this insight, learning, or decision category. The real value for most people is not so much in the thinking going on in your skull as it is in the applicability of the thinking to what changes “out there” in the world in which you actually live.
Clarity
Clarity is the moment when thinking crystallizes into a wholly new understanding. It doesn’t have to be an earth shattering “aha” moment. It is, equally as much, that special moment when some tumblers fall for not their correct spaces and things just make total sense.
These three thoughts need to be sort of the “guide rails” that keep Fast Track Thinking on course and headed towards a productive destination. They deserve frequent attention as checks and guides on the road to that progress. Without focus there is no progress. Without actionability there is no value. Without clarity there is no change.
FTT: A snapshot
Fast Track Thinking is about staring at a LOT of information with the intention of reducing that information to a single, overriding understanding that lets you make sense of it all and actually be able to do something with it. At first blush that seems like a tall order—but the truth is there is always a way to tackle life’s challenges no matter how big, how daunting, and how overwhelming. All you need is a place to start.
It is often difficult to know where to start when we’re facing what at first looks to be a daunting challenge. Certainly, making sense of Hyper Information falls squarely in that category of challenges. The simple truth is that there really is a place to start tackling even the most complex challenges. When it comes to information, that place is a framework – one that serves to gets the thinking started.
The Rule of Three
The Fast Track Thinking app for your brain is built around this notion that three ideas are the core of most, if not all, understanding. This part of the process is essentially intuitive – what some of the experts call fast-track or thin-slicing thinking – so I feel safe and comfortable that three ideas are a great way to start any thinking process.
If you start with the knowledge that out of all the things you might know about any issue all you need concern yourself with are three, then simply committing to that intuitively brilliant truth gets things going. Immediately, the task becomes less daunting and more manageable. Your thinking engine rapidly builds up ahead of steam, you slip the breaks and move forward as you go from “there’s an awful lot of stuff here” and “this is really hard” to “OK, this is something I can get my arms around” and “I think so, therefore I can” – to borrow from the Little Engine that Could. You engage your brain in filling in the blanks and before you know it, you come up with the three things that just “feel” right to the fast-thinking side of your brain and fit “right” into the three blank spaces that fostered the thinking. You write these ideas down as they come to you. Welcome to the Rule of Three!
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