Think more
Are we too busy to think? or we don’t want to?
We know that one of the ways to get smart is to think more actively. By actively, I mean thinking as we want to think about something in particular, not the thoughts that are generated by inputs we take in from our senses.
Thoughts are generated all the time in our minds. It’s a constant process. So how does the phrase think more make sense? How can we think more when we are always thinking? Are we aware of what we are thinking?
Yes, we do think constantly. The thoughts generated without us being conscious. That could be because we saw something, read a line somewhere, watched an ad, talked to someone, or a thought generated by another. These can be termed as passive thinking. We can not stop it. Is natural.
Active thinking is the process of thinking as we decided to think about a particular thing and the thoughts are generated accordingly. When we play brain games, solve puzzles, coding(programming), studying, working, etc. When we do focused work, we think about the work. We think of an idea, Brainstorming. That’s active thinking. We’ll speak more about active thinking here.
Making a habit to think actively
We can’t stop thinking. It’s natural. What’s not natural is volunteering to think. Think about something that really matters to us, that we care about. Dedicating time to think about it. It could be our career, relationships, friends, family, nature, society, history, people, forests.
Any action that is done by us originated as a thought in our head before we did it. If we want to do any work, thinking about it is the first step. So actively thinking about what are the things we need to do, or what we want to do, will help us in actually doing it faster and better. We are all busy. Doing something always. But how much time do we actually dedicate just to think, doing nothing else, on a daily basis?
Let’s assume we spend 20–30 mins just thinking, daily mornings start from today. We’ll think about the work we need to do. We become more aware of at work we have the entire day. It helps us be more productive, less lazy or less distracted. Most of the time we do not do the work we are supposed to do unless we are forced by external factors because we forget, or we are too confused to prioritize stuff.
Thinking about our goals on a daily basis helps us make better micro choices throughout the day. The choices we make would always be inclined to our goals. We eventually start thinking about long term happiness over short term satisfactions.
Dedicate some daily in the morning to think about things bothering you. Understand those worries. Resolve them with necessary logical solutions. They will not bother you during the entire day. You can work with full focus. Always fully present at the moment. Enthusiastic with a higher level of energy and passion.
Before starting any work, spending a few minutes just to think about the entire process, helps. We are more aware of the problems and obstacles while doing. We do the work with a higher level of focus and creativity. Complete the task faster and better.
Active thinking makes every day count. We live every day to the fullest. We become more productive. We get closer to our goals every single day. Being more aware of our daily actions and thought process. We learn, get smarter, better every day. If we don’t dedicate time to think, we might end up skipping a few days not being aware they passed by. Time is too valuable to spend it without being aware.
Naturally, we tend to think when we have nothing to do. It has become really hard for us to spend some time doing nothing. We always have notifications on our phones demanding our attention. Messages, all needing an immediate reply. We are always preoccupied in our modern technology enabling lives. The overall amount of thinking actively has decreased drastically.
All great people, world-class performers, walked upon this earth, were great thinkers. Thinking big starts from actively thinking. It is the greatest ability humans possess. Our minds have the ability to evolve faster than anything else in this world. It has no limits. Evolution of minds starts from thinking and being aware of thoughts. Without using this power of thinking we are nothing more than animals.
Let’s start spending some time during the day doing nothing but thinking about the things we care about, meditating, and keeping all our devices aside. Evolving into smart beings. Always getting better than our previous selves. Eventually making our world a better place to live.
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