Pathways to Best Thinking
Whether you choose the western way or the eastern way, or a blend of the two, to manifest the future you want there is a process. The central part of that process is thinking; something which we understand less than we should and to which we devote considerably less time, energy, and attention than we might.
Most of the time, when we say we’re going to “think about” something, we actually don’t know what that means, and we are rarely aware of the process as it occurs. If you don’t understand something that you do often and which can be of high importance and value to you, then you have little hope for getting good at it; much less – better, or exceptional. And in the same way that we physically operate at different levels and each level has a different way of doing things.
The same goes for thinking. Just as a naturally good athlete can become an exceptional champion by developing and building on what nature put in place, so it is with our thinking. To get better at tennis, or golf, or fly fishing – you first learn the fundamentals. Then you learn the fine points. Then you practice, practice, practice. It’s no different with thinking.
If our future is the product of things we do or fail to do well, decisions we make or fail to make correctly, or dreams we actualize or fail to actualize consciously, what are the practical steps we can take to get where we want? There are three potential pathways to achieving a vision:
Calculation – which is essentially an exercise in arithmetic aiming to determine the “weight” of one argument versus another.
Choice – which is about identifying the best out of several possible alternatives.
Perception – which is the “fuzziest” and most challenging way of thinking, and often the most rewarding, once it “happens.”
Calculation
Calculation is defined by the lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries as: “A mathematical determination of the amount or number of something.” In the judicial system, calculative thinking aims to assess the preponderance of evidence as the best way to come to a verdict about something. In practical thinking, calculation is about how much “weight” (be that in terms of believability, or usefulness, or actionability, you might assign to each thing being considered.
It’s difficult to do that kind of assigning unless a) you first establish the criteria or criterion that will serve as the basis for assessment and 2) that the criterion is somehow measurable or at least assessable. There’s no point calculating things that have no intrinsic measurable value.
When meaningful measurement of each thing being evaluated is neither feasible nor possible, we tend to default to binary lists to make a judgment. One such mechanism would be listing the Pro’s and Con’s (literally translated as “for” or “against”) the choice we seek to make.
In the absence of “weighting” criteria, the longest list “wins.” The truth is that calculation is not as “clean” as we would like it to be because, all too often, there exists the probability of subjective weighting in addition to, or in place of, objective value.
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