Food For Thought

Is Thinking a Business?

There are many ways to look at thinking. I believe the most practical and realistic way is to consider it a business, essentially the business of living.

Thinking business My premise is that thinking is the central business of us humans if we're going to progress and accomplish anything. I'd say that most people, including people who think very well, treat thinking as an automatic process. If you're born with a good brain, people believe, you can think well. Otherwise, you can't.

Now what other serious activity do we treat so fatalistically? If you want to start a business, you study business. If you want to build a bridge, you study engineering. Reasonably, if you want to think well, you study thinking. Good thinkers are not born, they're built, either from good parenting, good schooling, hard work, or all of the above.

And good thinkers cannot treat their thinking apparatus like a black box. They need to open the lid, check the apparatus out, and most importantly, see what they can do to make the thinking apparatus work better. In other words, treat thinking like your primary business. And why not? Everything we will accomplish is the result of the quality of our thinking.

Leapfrog Thinking

Critical thinking seems so formal, so basic. Many of us prefer to leap into creative thinking or its business equivalent, innovation. Innovation is obviously where the action is.

I’ll argue against the value of this leap; creative thinking and innovation can't be reliable products of thought without underlying structure, such as that encouraged by critical thinking.

Unfortunately, we don’t produce consistent innovation by trying to be innovative. Yes, there will be moments of inspiration, but where do you go from there? How are you going to find innovation-on-demand?

Thinking is a skill. Its application is like most of our efforts: 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Do we understand how to invest the 90 percent perspiration? The investment pays off best through structured critical thinking and, later, advanced and more fluid structures in creative thinking.

Just Go with your Gut

If you support thinking skills, you probably have encountered some opposition. Strangely, many people believe that thinking is problematic.

For starters, why bother with conscious thought? Supposedly your gut intuition already has the answer if you'll just listen.

It's true that fast thinking is a Fresh ideas necessary thinking skill. But fast thinking can't replace conscious, reasoned thought, those skills supported by critical thinking.

Example: if you're trying to break free from old ways of thinking, you'll only do it with conscious thought.