We think all the time. We can’t help it. From the moment we awake to the moment we sleep, the thoughts go tumbling by, one after another. Sometimes we bring intention to our thinking: we furrow our brows and concentrate on a problem. Mostly, we think without thinking—we’re just ambling down the pathways of the mind.
Only rarely do we give thought to thinking itself.
A few (too few) people have studied “critical thinking”—a tool for protecting oneself from falsehoods. Others have learned “mind mapping”, which is effective for generating tons of content from a single starting point. There are popular techniques for “creative thinking” which are designed to provoke unexpected leaps of the imagination.
Rarely is anyone taught how to engage the entire thinking process: tackling a mental challenge from beginning to end, both systematically and creatively. In this blog I’ll be introducing Cognitive Mobility Training (CMT), which is one way to fill the gap. As the name suggests, CMT is all about moving the mind. Sometimes I call it “zoom thinking.”
Picture a radio-controlled airplane in your local park: movement that is completely free yet finely directed. That is how we want our thinking to become.
The proof of CMT lies in the results, not in the process itself—results like clarity of mind, clearer decisions, fresh insights and exciting new inventions. Needless to say, these can only be achieved by putting the process into practice. I’ll be describing specific CMT techniques in future posts.