I often summarize what I've learned before walking and going to bed, thinking about the problems left behind, and after a period of reading and thinking, a general knowledge framework will gradually emerge in my mind. Then I will write it down, However, I am often very surprised to find that when I write, the new content is still streaming out, just as my keyboard will think the same.
Half a year ago, I wrote in an article "with the Polya learn to solve the problem" in the thinking process to write down the benefits, and now recall again, at that time the list of points in fact not only for problem solving is a great advantage, for the usual thinking is the same truth.
The benefits of writing include the following points:
- writing is a reminder of thinking : When people are thinking about a problem, it's like walking in the dark with a flashlight (in fact, our working memory resources are limited, and studies have shown that we can only hold 7 plus minus 2 items in our working memory, and there are limits to cognitive load), Every deduction moves us one small step forward, however, the brightness of the flashlight can be limited, we walked a few steps to find behind and black, think back on the front, think of a branch to forget another branch, we often want to think about the bifurcation, want to fork also just, the problem is once want to fork too far, It's hard to get back to where we were. Sometimes, we try so hard to come out very far, but also always afraid to forget the progress and important conclusions we have made, and the light of consciousness is spinning in a very small range, and can never go forward very far. The thought process is recorded, which gives us the possibility to retrace our own thinking trajectory completely. To give a specific example, usually face a problem we often first come up with a few major, key thinking direction, but this time if there is no notes, you can only one to start thinking, the results began to think about one, but forget the 2nd is what. If I take notes, I will start with 123 of the key points of thinking, and then start each. Think of any one branch of the process of new discoveries, but at a time without the rest of the thought to think about it, first with the key words in the side, a will go back to think carefully. In a way, the notes here play a role of memo.
- writing is the caching of thinking : Because our working memory is limited, so when we think about problems in our minds, we tend to keep only a few of the most important core concepts in our working memory, which leads us to think about a limited range of things, thinking always goes not too far. In this respect I have a strong feeling, usually while walking while thinking about the problem, but always feel that the breadth of thinking is limited. We might as well imagine that if mathematicians had no paper and pens, there would be a lot of obstacles to the development of mathematics, and perhaps Einstein could conceive the most critical link in the brain, but could you conceive of the intermediate steps of "caching" thinking without a pen and paper, and proving the Flt theorem entirely in the brain? Sometimes I even think that the middle result of being able to cache thinking with paper and pen is the most important condition for the light of human reason to go so far. In fact, I had only half of my original précis-writers, and the other half (more important part) came out when I wrote the article.
- writing is a conversation with yourself : in writing, you constantly observe the information flowing out of the nib, and once a line of text has been written down by you, you will no longer have to struggle to keep it in the brain's temporary memory, because this line of black and White will continue to be active through visual stimuli to remind you of its existence, You can then use the empty mind to reflect on your own point of view. Do not believe you can see for yourself, if you do not use pen and paper, only the brain, it is difficult to think about a problem at the same time to reflect on their own thinking?
- writing is to communicate with others : Everyone's thinking has some blind spots, blind spot is the blind spot is that it is difficult to detect, although I used a long time to train the objective and clear thinking, but always constantly find their thinking is still occasionally unconsciously into a blind zone, The more I learn about the characteristics of human thinking, the more humble I am to realize how important it is to discuss with people, the blind spots of everyone, the blind spots that can be added to others, the blind spots of others can be corrected by you. Three Stooges the meaning of a Zhuge Liang is this. Write down, communicate with others, the most important value lies in this. In addition to the blind spots, we are generally very difficult to understand the gaps in our knowledge system, if our own thinking because of an important knowledge of ignorance, made a serious mistake, it is difficult to reflect on the general self-if you do not know a thing, a great possibility is that you do not know that you do not know it. and write their own thinking to let others find loopholes, it is the good of their knowledge system.
- Sometimes, the language itself will think : In the absence of nib, thought in the mind of the existence of the form is often more vague, abstract, and sometimes even the form of images, however, if you need to write out, or even write out to others to see and communicate with others, you must use the text symbol, Text symbols actually have their own set of systems, the computational linguistics called the Semantic Web, the same concept, the blurred feeling in the brain, and the clear surface to reach a particular word, is not the same. You can think of another word because you use a particular word, and you write it and you find words that are like spirituality and bring out all the other words. Sometimes, this effect causes writing to become a word game, but the good side is that sometimes it is beneficial to broaden or inspire thinking.
Before you begin to write your ideas, I know many people do not write because I feel that there is nothing to write, in fact, this is a vicious circle, the more you do not start to write, always take a limited mind cache to meditate on a problem, the less content can be written, if you force yourself to write some immature ideas, Looking at their own content, trying to further expand them, it is possible to go very far in the rational way, very far.
I wish you all a happy writing!
Writing is for better thinking.
