Warning: This blog post is a collection of thoughts I wrote down as a brain dump when I couldn’t sleep at 1am (because I was thinking too much about thinking). It’s got a lot of points that I want to make, but I don’t think I make them very well. Hopefully the gist is there though! I have tried to make them somewhat coherent, but if they don’t flow overly well, you now know why!

Introduction.

  How often do you think about how you are thinking? Are you using an internal dialogue (speaking to yourself in your head)? Are you picturing things in your mind? If you didn’t have an immediate answer to any of these questions, I invite you to ponder why that is the case.

  We are all so used to our own way of thinking, that it often doesn’t occur to us that other people may think in a completely different way. I’m not talking about the content of a thought (e.g. ‘this apple is yummy’), I’m talking about what is actually occurring in our minds when we think that. Some people do not have the ability to internally ‘talk to themselves’. Some people are unable to ‘see’ anything in their mind at all (known as aphantasia). Does this surprise you? Maybe one of these describes you, and you find it baffling that some people can do these things.

  If this did surprise you, you’re not alone! I was in my third year of university when I found out that some people lack an internal dialogue; until then, I had assumed that everyone naturally develops an internal dialogue as they grow up, as part of language development. It never occurred to me that some people do not have the ability to entertain themselves when spending time alone by conversing with themself (how boring!).

  I was initially baffled as to how people who lack such an internal dialogue function. Then, I became perplexed by the fact that I had been surrounded by individuals who lack an internal dialogue or have aphantasia, and never before realised it. The fact that their internal world was so different to mine but they could live a similar lifestyle to me, and that these changes were not apparent from outside, was incredible to me. I read many blog posts (like this one) and watched countless YouTube videos interviewing individuals lacking these two traits. Not to mention asking all fellow students I came across whether they were as shocked as I was about this!

  After living in a state of bafflement for a while, my bewilderment turned into shock at the fact that it had taken me until the age of 20 to learn that some individuals lack an internal dialogue or mental imagery. I felt ignorant for having lived so long being unaware that others around me thought so differently!

Education.

  My thoughts soon turned to the education system: the reason it took me so long to gain this awareness was that at no point in my education had I been taught about the differences in the way people think.

  Wouldn’t knowledge of the extremes in terms of the way people think help us considerably in education? If education was based on transferring knowledge into specific types of minds rather than just explaining knowledge, would it not be far more effective? That is, if the way students thought (about the knowledge/what they should do in their mind when thinking about the knowledge) was placed at the front of mind when planning a lesson or lecture - tailored towards different thinking styles - would it not be received far more successfully?

  I remember being given ‘What type of learner am I?’ quizzes in primary school, which provided answers such as ‘visual’ (learn with pictures), ‘auditory’ (learn by listening) and ‘kinesthetic’ (learn by doing). Our answers never resulted in any change to our teaching or lessons. Moreover, at no point was it explained that we may receive different answers from our friends because we literally think in a completely different way! For example, it was never explained to us that some people were better at learning from pictures because they were able to create more vivid and detailed pictures in their mind, whereas others who didn’t learn very well from pictures may be unable to create any mental imagery at all.

  Surely it would make a lot of sense to teach children that people think in very different ways. Not only would this help them understand the most effective ways for themselves to learn, but it would also open the children’s minds to individual differences and what they may be more naturally skilled at. Instead of setting children in school based on ability, we could set them based on thinking style so that lessons could be tailored accordingly. That is, we could tailor education to the way individuals’ minds work. (A caveat with this, though, is that children’s brains, and therefore potentially their thinking styles, are still developing.)

  Given that the point of education is to transfer knowledge from one mind into another, would a focus on what the receiving mind is doing to think about the topic of interest, and how the knowledge is being represented in the receiver’s mind, not make sense as a primary interest? It intrigues me as to why the ‘teaching’ seems to involve the transfer of knowledge from one mind to a delivery format, with little regard as to what the receiving minds are doing on receipt. Is this because those teaching blindly assume that the minds they are teaching to will think in the same way as them? Were the teachers also ignorant of the range in which different minds think? Or is it because catering to a vast selection of minds in one lesson would be too difficult; a single lesson is simply more convenient to deliver.

  When we are taught, it seems assumed that we already know how to think about the knowledge. The primary aim seems to be to present the knowledge, but surely the knowledge would be far better transferred into the recipient's minds if the lessons also taught how to think about the knowledge? A great example is my mathematics degree: I had absolutely no idea how to think about all of the symbols on the page, and spent ages trying to figure this out; it wasn’t until recently that I learnt that turning theorems into images could be extremely helpful! I ended up spending most of my maths degree pondering how I should be thinking about maths, rather than thinking about the maths. This would have been an entirely different story had the lectures addressed our minds, rather than simply lecturing content. Teaching knowledge in parallel with how to think about the knowledge would be incredible.

Mental Health Treatment

  Just as the way thinking works does not seem like the primary focus of education, it too does not seem like the primary focus of mental health treatment. Take CBT for example: a talking therapy that identifies and challenges negative thought patterns and behaviour, used to treat anxiety and depression. It is highly regarded as the most effective treatment for numerous mental health disorders, and yet it still only seems to consider the content of thoughts, not the substance/structure of them in the mind.

  When reading literature to understand treatments for mental health disorders, I remember being baffled by how little focus was put on how thinking worked. Why was this not the starting point, given that it is the mind and thoughts that need to be addressed? If treatment began with an explanation of how thinking works, and if this was used to address how thinking can be effectively healed, then the patient could understand what they need to be doing in their mind to effectively recover. Instead, the literature began at a behavioural level, delved into the ‘changing their thinking’ level, but never got to the crucial ‘employing how thinking works’ level.

  I decided that perhaps the reason for this was because the ‘how does thinking work’ remains an unsolved question. But then I realised that treatments are ‘outside-in’: it is professionals on the ‘outside’ of the patients’ minds, who are blind to the way the minds are thinking, trying to come up with treatments. They are observing the behaviour of the patient, but are unable to know what the mind is doing; a fundamental problem with mental health treatments. When research for treatments began, all professionals had at their disposal was behaviour observation. No wonder a focus on the substance of the thoughts of the patient, and how their thinking works, is not the core of treatments. As understanding of the brain and mind has increased, some of this knowledge has been integrated into treatments. However, it still hasn’t quite got to the ‘employing how thinking works’ stage, and is certainly not putting this at the forefront.

  Would considering how the mind works, and getting a patient to understand that and use it to their advantage in recovery, not be advantageous? Even if the big question of ‘how thinking works’ has not been answered, there does exist some research which at least provides a partial answer. For example, using just two properties of thoughts (combinatorial and associative) I was able to create (for my dissertation) a simple model of thinking that could in theory - with a lot of work - be used to help individuals understand how to use their thoughts to address maladaptive thought patterns. I believe that bridging research about how thinking works with mental health treatments could be highly fruitful for their efficacy.

What do you do in your mind when you think about __?

  Realising that the substance of others’ thoughts can be so different to mine, I started to question what other people do in their minds when they think about certain things, such as arithmetic or time.

  The range of answers I received got me thinking: is there such a thing as the ‘optimal’ way to think about something? For example, when solving a double-digit multiplication problem, what is the most efficient thing to be doing in my mind to reach the answer as quickly as possible? Or when thinking about time, is having a ‘mental calendar’ where events are placed on it more efficient than just having a picture of an empty calendar in your mind and using a physical one? Could these ways of thinking be taught?

  We’ve probably all developed our own way of thinking about certain things that work for us, but is there a better way? You may think that it is not possible to change the way you think about something, but consider this: when I tell you to think about an apple, is what you do in your mind consistent, or has it changed over time?

  If we were able to research and determine optimal ways of thinking about things by collating many people’s ways of thinking about certain topics or concepts, then these findings could be taught and enhance the lives of us all!

Conclusion.

  This gets me to the crux of this post: the potential to design our thinking: ‘thinking design’. We could collate many people’s ways of thinking about certain topics or concepts to research and determine optimal ways of thinking about them. By designing our thinking to optimise for the task at hand, we could use our minds to their full potential. No longer will people be stuck not understanding how to think about something, as this effort will have already been solved.

  If this has got you thinking, let me know! And if you’ve got any links to existing ‘thinking design’ research, I’d love to connect! (Maybe ‘thinking design’ is out there with a completely different name that I’m unaware of!)