Oh, I’m just thinking out loud.

We say this all the time.

We know that thinking outside our head has benefits.

I’m wondering whether thinking is meant to take place much in your head at all.

When you do it together with others, thoughts and ideas expand and grow exponentially.

When you do it by yourself but out loud or on paper, it’s easier to keep track of where you’re at. It’s easier to connect dots. It’s easier to make space for more new thoughts or ideas or creative solutions to appear.

And if (like a lot of my thoughts) it’s really ruminating, then doing it outside of the head will remind us to get outside of our head. Clear a little space and attention, to be able to focus somewhere more useful: the emotions that the thoughts are causing and being caused by.

So, a new experiment: what if I don’t do any thinking in my head?

Any time I realise I’m thinking about something, I’m going to write it down (if I’m at home—I don’t like writing long things on my phone) or audio¹ record it.

I’ll keep you posted with how it goes…

1. Could do video, but I still feel self conscious about selfie video. Maybe a valuable thing to layer in later (to increase growth, and shareability), but not in v1 of the experiment. ↩