Cameron Conaway's Blog - Posts Tagged "thinking"
Screen time
Imagine a new kind of screen time, one where your inner thoughts are displayed on a real-time billboard for all to see. Would you be proud of how you think about yourself?
The distractions of today make it easier than ever to neglect three critical aspects of understanding our inner worlds:
1) getting distance from our thoughts to realize we are not our thoughts;
2) reflecting on our thoughts to recognize patterns, especially negative refrains; and,
3) developing mental habits that serve rather than hinder our goals.
To take back control we must recognize thoughts for what they are—projections onto our internal billboards. Yes, they may be comprised of a dizzying area of complex experiences and signals, but a newfound strength can arise when we realize we are the projector not the projected.
The distractions of today make it easier than ever to neglect three critical aspects of understanding our inner worlds:
1) getting distance from our thoughts to realize we are not our thoughts;
2) reflecting on our thoughts to recognize patterns, especially negative refrains; and,
3) developing mental habits that serve rather than hinder our goals.
To take back control we must recognize thoughts for what they are—projections onto our internal billboards. Yes, they may be comprised of a dizzying area of complex experiences and signals, but a newfound strength can arise when we realize we are the projector not the projected.
How we work our ladder
We’re hardwired to judge and quickly make decisions. Today, however, it could be argued that this hardwiring is more of a detriment than a benefit. Too often, we gather questionable data, believe in it because it fits our pre-existing biases, and then seek out additional questionable data that validates this belief.
The late Chris Argyris, a former Harvard Business School professor, developed the “ladder of inference” to describe the process of our mental reasoning. It looks like this:
While running from predators or assessing the potential for violence of a nearby tribe are no longer priorities for most of us, we’re still prone to walk up and down the ladder far too quickly. This can result not only in miscommunication and broken relationships, but also in the development of increasingly extreme positions—something many of today’s politicians love to exploit.
The next time you find yourself judging or “knowing” something too quickly, first thank yourself for recognizing what happened, then ask yourself where you are on the ladder.
Note: for a more in-depth read on the ladder of inference, check out The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization.
The late Chris Argyris, a former Harvard Business School professor, developed the “ladder of inference” to describe the process of our mental reasoning. It looks like this:
While running from predators or assessing the potential for violence of a nearby tribe are no longer priorities for most of us, we’re still prone to walk up and down the ladder far too quickly. This can result not only in miscommunication and broken relationships, but also in the development of increasingly extreme positions—something many of today’s politicians love to exploit.
The next time you find yourself judging or “knowing” something too quickly, first thank yourself for recognizing what happened, then ask yourself where you are on the ladder.
Note: for a more in-depth read on the ladder of inference, check out The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization.
DMAIC for your mind
I’ve been reading about Six Sigma lately. It’s a set of techniques and tools for optimizing process performance and attaining perfection — defined in this case as no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.
Think of it as a process for improving process. It’s underpinned by an improvement cycle referred to as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control). Here’s a glimpse into how it looks:
The more I read, the more I wonder about DMAIC’s application for improving our habits of thought, the thinking processes we may want to improve.
While contemplative and therapeutic practices are the foundation in this regard, might there be room to embed within those a cycle similar to DMAIC?
So few of us get to the Define stage, where we’ve mapped out which parts of our thinking we want to improve. Maybe it’s a recurring negative thought or a recurring thought that adds no value to our life but takes up a significant amount of our mental energy.
From there, we could move to Measure. This is where a practice like meditation would be critical as it allows us to watch our thoughts coming in like waves. During a 20-minute meditation, for example, we could measure the times this thought enters our thought-stream.
The next step, Analyze, would be about getting to the root cause. Why does this thought capture so much of our attention? This is where working with a trained therapist could be incredibly beneficial. And their influence would be important as well for the Improve phase. Once we’ve discovered the cause, how can we form new mental habits?
Control, then, would be about continuing the practice and working to discover other ways of thinking we’d like to improve.
The idea needs to be fleshed out more (for example, I don’t think it’d be a healthy thing to refer to our natural habits of thought as “defects”), but it seems there could be some potential for those wanting to improve and optimize their inner worlds.
Think of it as a process for improving process. It’s underpinned by an improvement cycle referred to as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control). Here’s a glimpse into how it looks:
The more I read, the more I wonder about DMAIC’s application for improving our habits of thought, the thinking processes we may want to improve.
While contemplative and therapeutic practices are the foundation in this regard, might there be room to embed within those a cycle similar to DMAIC?
So few of us get to the Define stage, where we’ve mapped out which parts of our thinking we want to improve. Maybe it’s a recurring negative thought or a recurring thought that adds no value to our life but takes up a significant amount of our mental energy.
From there, we could move to Measure. This is where a practice like meditation would be critical as it allows us to watch our thoughts coming in like waves. During a 20-minute meditation, for example, we could measure the times this thought enters our thought-stream.
The next step, Analyze, would be about getting to the root cause. Why does this thought capture so much of our attention? This is where working with a trained therapist could be incredibly beneficial. And their influence would be important as well for the Improve phase. Once we’ve discovered the cause, how can we form new mental habits?
Control, then, would be about continuing the practice and working to discover other ways of thinking we’d like to improve.
The idea needs to be fleshed out more (for example, I don’t think it’d be a healthy thing to refer to our natural habits of thought as “defects”), but it seems there could be some potential for those wanting to improve and optimize their inner worlds.
