110. How to Think: Why It's Hard, Why It Matters, and How to Do It in an AI World
Episode 110
Thinking is supposed to be uncomfortable. It's supposed to be messy and fragmented and dead-endy. It's supposed to make us feel vulnerable and like we don't know the answer, the solution, or the idea.
That's the nature of thinking. It's SUPPOSED to be that way.
But more than ever, I see students and professionals quit the thinking process before they've even begun it. They outsource their thinking to AI, falling victim to the ridiculous idea that a faster answer is better than the one you came up with yourself.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I dive deep into something we could all use a masterclass in: how to think. We talk about what it's supposed to look like (in our heads and in writing), why it's hard, and a whole bunch of strategies and frameworks to make thinking easier and encourage your thoughts to flow. No AI needed (or invited to the party in the first place. humph.).
What You Learn:
Why thinking is supposed to feel uncomfortable, messy, and slow, and how this discomfort is a sign you're doing it right
The real danger of outsourcing your thinking to AI, including recent studies showing actual brain atrophy in people who use it regularly (!!)
Tool-based strategies for externalizing your thoughts and organizing them on paper
Space-based strategies that create ideal conditions for breakthrough ideas and deeper problem-solving
How to give yourself permission to sit in the "I don't know" phase long enough to generate something original instead of copping out with generic AI slop
And most importantly: why you need to care about this. Seriously. You need to care.
🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:
⭐SchoolHabits University: (SchoolHabitsUniversity.com)
⭐The College Note-Taking Power System (CollegeNoteTakingSystem.com)
⭐Assignment Management Power System (AssignmentManagementSystem.com)
Episode 67 - The Case for Critical Thinking, with Professor Mark Massaro
Never stop learning.
❤️Connect:
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I choose not to spend my time fixing them 😉
How to Think
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie and this is episode 110, and I'm gonna open today's episode with a story. I know I have shared this story somewhere before. I can't remember if it was on this show, maybe somewhere else. This story really captures a scenario that I'm finding myself in more and more lately in various contexts.
And the story illustrates the core concept of today's show. So about a year ago, I needed an MRI. I'm fine. Everything's fine. But, and as the technician was sliding me into the machine, she asked me what kind of music I wanted in my headphones. And you know, the headphones they put on to protect you from the, like, the ding, ding, ding, whatever.
And I said, no, I'm all set. No music please. And she's like, well, you're gonna be in there for a while. We have all the stations. And again, I said, no, I'm all set. I actually have some thinking to do. And she looked at me like I was bananas. Like she gave me the longest pause ever. But that's what I wanted, so she slid me into the machine.
Headphones on obviously for protection. [00:01:00] No music playing. And the best part is that I had a solid 45 minutes to think. Now, that was a time I vividly remember. I actually had some idea that I was trying to work through some creative business thing that I was trying to visualize, and I thought to myself, cool, like I am gonna have 45 minutes of uninterrupted time to think about it.
Like that's the thought I thought process I had going into my MRI appointment. But this woman's reaction revealed to me just how uncommon taking time to think is. And that's not the only time I have been in a situation like this. I am gonna share some more stories throughout this episode, especially when it comes to some of my clients.
No names, don't worry. Where during our sessions we naturally do a lot of thinking, right? But all of that to say, the goal of today's episode is to make the case for thinking and to show you how to do it. Because I'm learning that some people have never explicitly been taught to think just like some people aren't taught how to ice skate.
Some people are not taught how to make [00:02:00] cupcakes or play the piano. People need to be taught to think or they won't know how to do it efficiently. Thinking is a verb, an action word, just like anything else, ensure it is more natural, okay, than ice skating. But let's take running, for example, without ever being taught how to run.
If you're able bodied and you have two legs, you could generally figure out how to run, but there is definitely good ways to run that are more efficient, that are safer, that gonna get you where you want to go more effectively, so that you're not hurting yourself or burning yourself out before you complete your run.
But you wouldn't know that if you weren't taught. Or let's say that nobody ever taught you, Hey, by the way, when you go running, your breathing is gonna get heavy, and your legs might hurt and you think you might wanna die. But if you didn't know that was to happen, like you didn't know that was supposed to feel like that, you'd probably stop after a few minutes thinking like, man, this hurts.
This is terrible. Like something is wrong with [00:03:00] me. And thinking is the exact same way. It is a verb. And although we started thinking naturally when we were really little, so few of us have been taught strategies for doing it better and more efficiently, and that get us where we wanna go quicker. And I highly doubt anyone sat you down and said, Hey, this is what thinking looks like and feels like.
So don't run away from those sensations when it happens. Okay. I doubt anyone ever said that to you. And then of course, with the speed at which AI bulldoze its way into our offices and our schools and even our everyday lives thinking is now being outsourced. And so I think more than ever, there is a sense of urgency and almost an emergency here in terms of preserving our abilities to think, understanding why it's so important, understanding the risks that outsourcing all of our thinking to AI poses, to our brains, and I'm not gonna lie to society, but also to your life.
I think the meaning of our lives is at risk here. And I [00:04:00] might sound dramatic, but like again, I'm, I'm gonna die on that hill saying that I think the meaning of our lives is at risk here if we don't take some measures to protect the act of thinking. Now, today's episode is not just gonna be a giant rant against ai.
I most definitely could do that, and I am sure that I'll have an episode at some point in which I do something like that. I do personally occasionally use AI for pattern recognition and organizing data and things that an executive assistant would do instead of me hiring, you know, a virtual assistant.
I used it just the other day when I messed up the settings on my fancy Sony camera and I had no idea how to fix it, and AI was super helpful for that purpose. But mark my words, I will never, ever outsource my general thinking, my day-to-day thinking and my writing to ai, and I'm hoping at the end of this episode you'll feel the same way.
My intention is also for you to conclude this episode with a stronger understanding of exactly how to think. Because if we're not gonna just pop open the chat GPT window and ask it every little [00:05:00] thing. And how do I write this email and how do I solve this problem? And how do I write this essay? God, don't even get me started on the essay.
Whew, future episode. But if we do intend to protect our thinking abilities, how do we actually do that? How do we think? What are the strategies to clarify our thoughts, to synthesize information and perhaps come up with something unique that's not cliche, robot sounding, AI generated schlop? So that's my intention for today's episode.
I'm gonna do my best to make the case for thinking and to share some frameworks that make thinking easier. I feel very strongly about this subject, and it's probably gonna be obvious in the way that I talk. Remember all the links and the transcript to today's episode can be found at Learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/110, but we have a lot to cover, so let's get started.
[00:06:00] And let me start by making the case for thinking. So why is this one of our most sacred abilities that I'm arguing we need to protect militantly? Without exaggeration, I think it's one of the core things that sets us apart from other species. It's what leads to creativity and closeness and rich human experience and spontaneous ideas and the joy we feel when we figure something out.
Thinking is at the core of every single invention in the history of ever. Thinking is at the core of every single moment of conflict, resolution, and compromise ever. Thinking is at the core of every relationship that got stronger and every single moment of personal growth and insight ever. I mean, if that doesn't sell it for you, I don't know what does.
But I also think that not only is AI poisoning our thinking abilities, literally studies are now showing the [00:07:00] brain atrophy. In the parts of the brain responsible for critical thinking. This is in the brains of people who use AI to think and to write a few times a week.
And I know many people who use it like 20 times a day, so, good Lord, can you imagine what's happening in their brains? And I hope that's not you. Anyway. AI poisons our thinking abilities because it promises ease of thinking, which is alluring, especially to the younger generations who haven't mastered true thinking for themselves yet.
So they're looking at AI stuff that we know, whatever chat produced or whatever, and they think, wow, like this is so good when in fact it's junk and it's basic and it's unoriginal. But they don't know that because they haven't developed thinking yet. But even people of my generation who grew up without AI and had the opportunity to think on their own even we are not understanding, I think what thinking really is and how to do it.
There is a lot of misunderstandings about what it means to think about something or to think through something or to generate an idea. And I'm gonna try to shed some light on those misunderstandings today because those [00:08:00] misunderstandings are what make thinking uncomfortable for some people. And that increases the pull of using AI to think for you because we're like, oh, well I don't know what the answer to this question.
And like, you know, half a second. And I don't like that feeling. It's uncomfortable. So like, therefore I need to ask Chachi PT to relieve this feeling of discomfort. But that is the error right there. And that's actually the first misunderstanding about thinking that I wanna clarify. Thinking is hard. It is supposed to take time.
It is supposed to feel annoying and uncomfortable. It is supposed to make us feel like we don't know anything. It is supposed to be fragmented and disorganized and random, and sometimes like there is nothing but dead ends. It is supposed to feel like silence and sometimes more questions than answers. It is supposed to feel like emptiness and noise at the exact same time, but this is what thinking is.
This is normal. But when we are in a situation that requires us to think, maybe writing an essay, brainstorming an idea, sitting in a meeting, trying to find a compromise with our teammates trying to solve a problem in school or work or life, or come up with the answer to our [00:09:00] solution. When we are in these situations that require thinking and we feel this discomfort or silence or disorganized thoughts or dead ends, we immediately think, well, I don't know the answer.
This is too hard. I don't know. And so we stop thinking. We give it up. We stop before we're even given our precious neural networks, a chance to figure out what we're even asking them to do, or we run to AI for some dose of cognitive cocaine. I see this all of the time with my students that I work with, whether they're in middle school, high school, grad school, even working professionals.
They run from the thinking process because it's unfamiliar, not understanding that that is the thinking process. Let me share an example that comes up all of the time in my private practice, and most notably, I'm thinking about, you know, over the summer when I'm jam packed with students writing their college essays.
And to be honest, the college essay is a big deal, and for most students, it's the first time in their lives where they have had to sit down and explore who they are and then put that into words. Then not only that, but reduce the entire [00:10:00] essence of who they are into just 650 words, right? And I mean, for like a seasoned writer, that is a hard task.
For a seasoned thinker, that is a hard task for someone with profound levels of self-awareness and life experience, that is a hard task. So of course, it's a hard task for these high schoolers who are not used to writing anything deeper than analyzing the Great Gatsby with significant teacher support.
Now, I've been doing college essays for over 20 years now, and I know the kinds of questions to ask students that, you know, elicit their stories and pull out their insights about themselves and get the conversation going. But let me paint a scene here. Okay, this is what it's like all the time. So I'll ask a student a question, something like, what's the coolest thing about you?
Right? I love asking that question. What's the coolest thing about you? And it seems silly. But that is a really, really hard question to answer, and it is supposed to be hard. Like that is so intentional on my part, and sometimes getting to the bottom of that answer, you know, takes [00:11:00] multiple sessions and hours of conversation.
And prodding and emotional excavation. But I can't tell you how many times I've asked this question, and a student will immediately say, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, well think about it for a second. You know, and I might rephrase the question. I might come at it in a different way, but they're so quick to say, well, I don't know.
And just kind of shut down and think that, well, you know, I don't have any stories. There's nothing about my life that's interesting and I don't know what I'm gonna write my college essay on. Ah, this is too hard. Like in a matter of two minutes, they're just throwing their hands in the air and walking away from the thinking.
And I'm like, wait, like this is the thinking part. What do you think? You're just gonna write without thinking first. This is supposed to be uncomfortable. You're supposed to feel like you don't know. You're supposed to have these kinds of dead end thoughts where you go in one direction and then you hit a brick wall, and then you go in another direction, and then that doesn't lead anywhere, and then you loop back to another train of thought you had.
That is all what thinking looks like, but they don't know that [00:12:00] and they don't like that. And I really do my best to normalize the pause and the silence and the emptiness and the discomfort. And I try to model it myself. Sometimes students will ask me a question and like I might know the answer or I might not.
But in either case, I will take a very long pause. Sometimes looking them directly in the eye, if they can handle that level of eye contact. And I'll say things like, huh, that's a really good question. Like, let me think about that. And I will sit in that silence probably because I never feel awkward about silence.
I never have, and I wanna teach people I work with. That silence is where the thinking happens. Or maybe even if I'm supporting a student as they're writing an essay for school, and again, I might demonstrate to them that thinking sometimes looks like starting a sentence, but not liking it, but not deleting it.
When just pressing, enter on the keyboard and starting another one, and you're allowed to stop in sentence and press enter again. Go in a different direction. See where it goes, see what it looks like. See if you like it. See if you like your idea. Never delete what you wrote. Always start [00:13:00] a new line and maybe get 10, 15 versions of some half sentence concept on the page, and then step back and say, okay, what can I pull from this?
What parts of what sentence actually are not so bad? How can I synthesize these fragments and these concepts into something good? That's what thinking looks like in writing. And the more we do that, the better we get at thinking. The more we do that, the better we get at writing. Why? Because writing is a proxy for thinking.
What does that mean? That means that writing is one of the absolute best ways that we can practice thinking. And that is why when we use AI for every single writing task that's asked of us, we are literally destroying opportunity after opportunity to practice thinking. And I can't think of anything sadder.
I mean, what are we plants? I mean, we're given these incredible brains to solve problems and be creative and explore our inner lives with thoughts. Why the heck would we go out of our way to destroy the ability to do that? It blows my mind. Anyway, I think I've [00:14:00] made my case for why it's important to know how to think.
I've covered at this point what thinking is supposed to look like and feel like it is supposed to be uncomfortable and make us feel vulnerable and like we don't know anything and it is supposed to take a long time and it is supposed to be all of that. And my goal with going hard on this first part of the episode here is to normalize that thinking is hard so that we don't run from it the moment we get uncomfortable.
So we don't immediately turn to ai the second we feel like we don't know something. Of course we don't know something. We've only been alive for what? Like, I don't know, however old you are. I'm only 42 years old. There's a boatload of things that I don't know. So anytime I have to think about something that you know, I haven't learned yet and I don't know yet, I have to think about it.
And that is hard and it takes time. And that is glorious and amazing, and it is one of the few things that sets me apart from being a cucumber. Thinking looks like not knowing what to write, not knowing what to say, not knowing the answer, not knowing the solution, not knowing how to approach a situation, but we've gotta give ourselves [00:15:00] time for the thinking process.
We have to stop expecting ourselves to know the answer immediately. You have to sit in it. This is normal and that's why I work so hard in my private sessions to normalize that sitting in it and that pause and that silence so that students are less judgmental about themselves when they don't know something.
You know what I mean? Anyway, so now that we know why thinking's important, now we know the danger of outsourcing all of our thinking to ai. Now we know what thinking is supposed to look and feel like. And now I wanna get onto the meat of the episode, which is, okay, well how do we think?
If it is that important? And I'm, you know, willing to give it space and time and to not rush it. What do I actually do in that space and that time? And those are really great questions and I am gonna do my best to give you some frameworks for thinking today. Again, I don't know them all. I'm sure there's some really, you know, complicated and profound ways to go about thinking that I'm not gonna cover today.
Maybe because I don't know them, but I'm sharing from my [00:16:00] own experience what I personally do when I wanna think. And believe me, there's a lot of things that I am not good at. I am not good at directions. I am not good at cars. I am not good at traveling. But I am actually pretty proud of my thinking skills.
And so this is me lifting up the hood, sharing what I do with the caveat that this isn't the only way to go about thinking, but if one of the strategies or insights I share today helps just one of you, then I think I've done my job. Now I'm gonna separate the strategies into two kind of buckets, tool-based thinking.
And space-based thinking, no one's going outta space. But that's just kind of how I am going to, you know, um, think about this and try to explain these concepts. So starting with tool-based thinking, there are a variety of tools that we can use. No, not ai, that can help us organize our thinking and kind of stroke out the thought.
So let's start with those. The first tool you can use is a mind map. Mind mapping is an incredible way to think about things. I have a video tutorial about how to do a mind [00:17:00] map that's not on my Learn and Work Smarter YouTube channel, which is where I post these podcast episodes. It's on my other YouTube channel, my bigger one, my School Habits YouTube channel.
I will leave that link below, but that is a tutorial where I walk you through this. Steps of a mind map. A mind map is a really terrific way to externalize our thinking, to get the thoughts out of our head onto some kind of thing that you can see. Maybe on paper, a whiteboard, you can use a digital tool.
It doesn't matter. And the cool thing about mind maps is that they can be whatever you make them. They're not linear, which I like because thinking is never linear. Thinking naturally is kind of like a web. If I had to give it an image. It's like you go in this direction and then you go in that direction and this leads to that and that branches off from there.
that's just train of thought. That's the nature of train of thought, right? And if train of thought had a shape, it would be like a spider web and a mind map lets you explore those trains of thoughts without having to remember what they all are. Now, another tool you can use to externalize your thinking is a [00:18:00] brain blurt.
So for example. Whether you're using a mind map or a brain blurt, you would start with the thing that you're thinking about. Let's just say it's an assignment and you have to come up with your own thesis statement about the book, the Greg Gatsby f Scott Fitzgerald. Okay? now.
A lot of students who are faced with this task just immediately use ai. Or they Google, you know, essay prompts about the Great Gatsby, or they ask their teacher to come up with a prompt for them. Why? Again, because thinking is hard and so many people are outcome based. I just want the answer. You have to care about the process.
You have to care about what it's doing to your brain and your ability to be a human. anyways, so we would start with a concept. Okay. Let's say you read The Great Gatsby and you really liked noticing how there are a lot of references to color throughout the book. Um, and you thought maybe there was something there. So you put the color green on a piece of paper. Again, this could be for a mind map or a brain blurt, and you think, okay, green, what does green make you think of?
Oh, the blinking green light that's mentioned like a thousand times. So you write that down and then green makes you also [00:19:00] think, you know, money and green makes you think. Like a novice or someone new to the scene. Okay? So you write that down and then you're like, wait, there's lots of references to other colors like gold and yellow school.
So you write that down and you start thinking about all the deeper meanings of the color gold and what that could symbolize. And you keep going without judging yourself. And before you know it, you have an entire sheet of paper or an entire whiteboard full of all of these thoughts that you gave yourself time to generate thoughts that you created.
But you were only able to generate them because you gave yourself the space, the time, the paper, and the courage. And then from there you can pull out your best ideas and see what you can do with it. Now, another tool you can use to organize your thinking and encourage thoughts is a simple pros and cons list.
So obviously it depends what you're thinking about, but if you have to think through a decision. When was the last time you actually used a pros and cons list and filled it out like on paper and didn't just kind of think through mentally the pros and cons of something, but you actually wrote it out? [00:20:00] I was working with an adult professional.
I'd say, I don't know, about a month and a half ago, and she was contemplating the decision about asking her manager if she could modify her job description. She didn't want a new job, she didn't want a new company. She just kind of wanted to like tweak her job description and we were going back and forth and kind of hashing it out.
And I started to notice that she kind of like kept repeating herself and then sometimes contradicting herself and saying, well, like it would be good if I did this. It would be bad if I did this and whatever. And I said, you know what? Let's make an old school pros and cons list. And we did. And it gave her clarity and that's thinking.
There was a difference between our conversation that at one point kind of just felt like rumination, right? And it was good to start with that conversation, but then there wasn't any forward movement at a certain point I noticed. And she just kept kind of saying the same things over and over again. And then that's when I added in the simple tool of a pros and cons list.
It kind of shifted her thinking. It shifted the conversation. It gave her a different kind of clarity that just the kind of ruminating, [00:21:00] verbalization in conversation wasn't providing her. And then the last tool that can help externalize thinking, or at least some kinds of thinking, is an Eisenhower Matrix.
This is a tool that helps us think through prioritization and what we should be working on and what we should be focusing on. It's not a tool that's gonna help you make a decision like, should I transfer colleges or quit my job? It's not a tool that's gonna help you come up with your dissertation topic, but if the kind of thinking you have to do is about how you wanna spend your time and tackle your tasks, which is a legitimate thing to think about. The Eisenhower Matrix can be helpful. It is really simple to set up. It is a two by two grid, so basically four squares. In the top left square are things that are urgent and important. So everything from your to-do list that's urgent and important goes in that top left. And those are the things that you actually have to do and focus on. And on the top right are things that are important. But not urgent.
Maybe their deadline is far off. Maybe it's a personal goal that doesn't necessarily have a deadline, but by [00:22:00] your own criteria, it's important. Okay? These are things that you would schedule. You would look at your calendar and you'd find time to work on them so that you can work on them on a different date, but you're not neglecting them entirely.
The bottom left is urgent but not important to you. So for example, your sink springs a leak. That is pretty urgent, but I am personally not invested in my sink at all. So that is something that I'm gonna hire a plumber for. Or actually my husband would fix it, I'm gonna delegate it to him. And then the bottom right are things on our to-do list that are not urgent and they're not important, but for whatever reason, they're on our to-do list.
And doing the Eisenhower Matrix shines a spotlight on what those tasks are, and it gives us permission to not do that. You can Google Eisenhower Matrix if you're more visual and you wanna see how this works. But if you're watching this in YouTube, I have put a visual up on the screen, and as I said at the top of this episode, I'm sure there are a million other tools to help us kind of think through whatever it is that you need to think through.
But the mind map, a brain blurt, pros and cons list and an Eisenhower matrix are some common ones. Even simple journaling, so [00:23:00] stream of conscious journaling where you don't judge what comes up. You don't judge your grammar. You don't even need to use periods or complete sentences, and one sentence goes into another sentence and you can kind of just see where you end up.
That can be a terrific way to externalize your thinking as well. Okay, so that was bucket one. Now we're gonna move on to some other ways to think. These are actually my favorite, as analytical as I am, and as much as I love to write and do a good mind map, I find myself personally using the following strategies to think.
And these are the space based strategies. And the first one, it's a little weird. Take a shower. Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's taken a shower. And before you know it, you have the best idea in the world, or you solved a problem that's been bothering you, or you suddenly know how to handle a situation that you were stuck on and or idea for your research paper just materialized outta nowhere.
There is something about the shower that creates an ideal environment for thinking. It has something to do with the sensory experience. You don't hear a lot of things in the shower other than the water, so it's sort of this white noise in the [00:24:00] background. Obviously, you're by yourself, so you don't need to answer to anybody or see anybody.
There's not a lot of visual stimulation because you can only. Stare at your shampoo bottles for so long, and then there's something automatic about taking a shower. You don't have to think about it. Even if you need to wash your hair or shave or do whatever you do in the shower, chances are that you can do it, you know, with some automaticity without thinking about it at all, which just frees up your brain to think, now I wanna make the case for deliberately taking a shower to solve a specific problem.
And to do that, I'll sometimes go into the shower and intentionally put an issue in my head. It's almost like putting a coin in a slot machine and pulling the little lever thingy as you get into the shower and then inside the shower, everything just kind of ping pongs around and rotates around itself.
I have literally no idea how slot machines work because I've never gambled a day in my life. But the key point is this, you take a specific issue that you wanna think about and you put it in your head. You like frame it. [00:25:00] I need to come up with a thesis. I need to solve this problem. I need to do this thing.
I need to decide whether I'm doing this right. And when you're in the shower, you keep coming back to that issue, not intentionally trying to solve the problem or you know, find a solution. Just keeping the issue front and center. You don't start thinking about what you gonna have for dinner. You don't start thinking about the email that you have to write.
It's kind of like a meditation where you keep coming back to the problem. So, for example, let's say you need to decide whether to take AP courses next year or get a part-time job. That'd be a great case for a pros and cons list. But let's say you start by putting that issue or that problem to be solved or that decision to be made inside your head and you get in the shower.
And you see where you go with it. See where your thoughts take you. No judgment, and you follow that train of thought. You follow the stream of consciousness, you follow those incomplete thoughts until you can't go any further, and then you start over and you just keep coming back to AP classes or part-time job.
Your brain might wander in directions you didn't expect it to go, and that is [00:26:00] fine as long as it's related to the issue that you're trying to solve. And I can't tell you how many solutions I've generated or ideas I've had while doing this intentional thinking work in the shower. You could also do this exact same exercise while going for a walk.
Maybe you can find like a one mile loop somewhere near where you live and it's your thinking loop. And anytime you need to work through something, you go on this walk with no music, no earbuds, and your first step out the door is where you name the issue that you're gonna be thinking about. And then as you walk, you give yourself that, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes to think.
About the thing. It is quiet. You're moving, your blood is pumping, so more blood is going to your brain. You're not talking to anybody. It's a rather automatic activity because walking for most of us is automatic and the magic of this, well, the magic is like all those things, but it's also that you're giving yourself 15 to 20 minutes to just think, versus if you sat at your desk and said, I'm gonna sit here and think for 15 to 20 minutes.
No, you won't. You'd open up a tab, you'd pick up your phone, you'd check your email, you'd get up, you'd go [00:27:00] to the bathroom. But just like in the shower where you're not gonna get out mid shower with shampoo dripping down your back, you're giving yourself this 15 to 20 minutes that you can't escape from.
And I can make the same case for driving. Why are people so quick all the time to get in the car and immediately turn on the radio? I mean, I get it. I, I love that. Especially if you're listening to this podcast. I mean, I do that sometimes, but if there is something that you need to think about. Driving is a perfect time to think about it, because when you walk in the door or you walk in your dorm room or wherever you live your apartment, there's gonna be a million other things demanding your attention.
The dog, the kids, the spouse, the roommates. But when you're driving somewhere or you're in the shower or you're on your walk, you're respecting the truth. That thinking takes time, and we have to do it where we're not distracted, where we're not gonna be interrupted by every kind of sensory stimulation around us.
We're not judging ourselves. We are respecting. The fact that thinking is often fragmented and weird and dead endy and [00:28:00] non-linear, and there's really no better place to do that than in the car, in the shower or on a walk or maybe an MRI machine. And then of course, let's say that you had some kind of epiphany or revelation on your walk or on your drive.
Awesome. When you go back from your walk or arrive at your destination, then you put those thoughts on paper. That's when you can try to externalize it, you know, with a mind map or a list or something like that. That's an extension of thinking.
So instead of saying like, I don't know the answer to this question, or I don't know how to solve this problem, you say, Hey, I recognize that thinking is hard and thinking takes time. And so I'm giving myself some time to sit with this issue, to play with it, to chew on it, to mess around with it. I'm gonna try to get it outta my head on this piece of paper, or in this journal, or on this whiteboard.
I'm gonna limit my rumination about it with other people, especially if I find myself repeating the same issues over and over again. I am going to use this pros and cons list, or this mind map, or go on this [00:29:00] walk or a silent drive. I'm gonna open a Google Doc and try to get my thoughts on paper, and if they're weird or dead endy, I'm not gonna delete them.
I'm just gonna start a new line and see where it goes. And that my friend is thinking, that's what thinking looks like. That's what it feels like. That's how to do it. At least those are some of the ways that I do it. But we can't expect ourselves to think deeply about something or find the answer to something or solve a problem or find a solution if we're constantly surrounded by noise.
If we always have our AirPods in, if we're always like go, go, go. And if we expect a revelation to pop in our heads on demand, none of that is how thinking actually works. And then going back to ai, why? Of course, I'm gonna go back there. Every single time you tell yourself, oh, thinking's too hard. I'm gonna have ChatGPT think for me, you ruin an opportunity to develop your thinking skills. And I already spent, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes at the top of this episode, episode explaining this, but I feel like it is so darn important. The ability to think and generate and create is gosh darn magic. And I [00:30:00] can't think of a single reason on the entire planet why you would wanna give your magic away to a machine.
Anyways. I have an episode too where I interviewed a college professor Mark Massaro, about critical thinking and he has some really good strategies for how to think as well, particularly when it comes to an academic setting. That is episode 67. I will leave it linked below. One cool tip that he shared was that if you are reading a book, um, and this applies to not just reading a book but thinking about something too.
But I'll explain it in the context of how he explained it. When reading a book and you're trying to think about it, right, which is a task many students are required to do, try to come at it through different lenses. Like literally picture yourself putting on a pair of glasses that somebody different would wear.
You try to imagine someone with a different perspective, maybe the opposite view with different experiences. Reading that text or facing the same issue, then I think that's a really helpful strategy for thinking as well. 'cause you can ask yourself, okay, what would so and so say about this situation? What would so and so think about this problem?
How would so and so come at this? [00:31:00] And sometimes that just kind of unlocks avenues of thought that were closed when we only came at that issue from our singular lived experience. So check out that episode for more of an explanation of that strategy. And then, as I said, there's other ways to, you know, approach thinking and kind of prime the pump or encourage yourself to think deeply.
These are just the ones that I think are practical and easy to do anywhere and any day. They're not really a heavy lift and really anybody can do them. But the bottom line is no strategy is gonna work unless you give yourself time to think. Normalize it. If you have to get an MRI and someone asks you what kind of music you wanna listen to, it's okay to say no thank you. I'm gonna think.
All right, my friends. That takes us to the end of the episode. I hope that our conversation today gave you something to think about. I'm so funny. If you have questions or you wanna share your own thoughts on the matter, you can always email me, katie@schoolhabits.com, or if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment.
I read them all. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work, [00:32:00] keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning.
