For a few posts now, we've been discussing how to organize your thoughts. I've loosely sketched out the need to generate information, embrace your mental mess, zoom out to identify patterns, and find and test your root causes. While working through this process, I realized that I had taken for granted someone's ability to "brain dump" - that is, their ability to get the thoughts bouncing around in their head onto paper or to express them out loud.
In reality, it's often incredibly difficult to know what we're thinking. After all, if we knew what we were thinking, we wouldn't be so confused as to need to process through our thoughts!
Knowing our own mind is hard.
Our minds are frequently preoccupied with processing sensory inputs from light, sound, smells, touch, or internal senses like hunger, sleepiness, and low blood sugar. They're also busy reacting to situations with gut instincts and intuitions - reactions that are pre-rational and rooted in sensation. We shouldn't underestimate the significant role that feelings and emotions play in shaping our general disposition towards a person or topic, often without relying on rational or logical explanations. Supposing we manage to keep calm and carry on through all these sensations, we can also access the rational, thinking part of our mind. This part can make sense of things by intentionally structuring and organizing information into a mental representation that carries meaning: knowledge.
Humans face the incredible task of juggling all of this if we want to truly know our own minds.
This brings me back to the ability to "brain dump" effectively.
Writer's Block Exposed: A Relevant Tangent
Writer's block is shorthand for not knowing what to say or do. It's the experience of looking at a page or a task that needs to be started and not having a clue where to begin.
From the perspective of knowledge-making as a craft, this happens when the knowledge-maker doesn't have enough information at their disposal to create anything. Before building, the builder needs supplies and resources. It's like going to a building site without any lumber or nails - not much is going to happen.
A knowledge-maker's craft involves organizing information into beautiful concepts, well-engineered ideas, and sincere knowledge. This means the knowledge-maker's first task is to find and accumulate a stockpile of information they can use to build. Second, they craft that information into something of value.
Writer's block occurs when the knowledge-maker is trying to organize but has no information to pull from. Again, it's like showing up at the work site with all your tools but nothing to build with.
The Mental Stack
I discuss writer's block to demonstrate the immense value of having a pool of information to draw from when trying to make sense of something.
Through this lens, part of knowing our mind involves obsessively gathering all possible information relating to the thing we want to think through. This applies to all information across the "mental stack."
The mental stack is an analogy that borrows from the IT industry's term "tech stack," which originated in software development. It refers to the combination of programming languages, frameworks, databases, and other technological tools used to build and run a software application or platform.
The mental stack is a cognitive architecture that begins with the foundational layer of raw sensory input, where our five senses gather data from the environment. This information then moves up to perceptual processing, where patterns are recognized and objects identified.
The next layer involves emotional processing, triggering immediate responses and activating the limbic system. As we ascend the stack, we encounter memory access, where relevant experiences are retrieved and working memory engages.
Language processing follows, interpreting linguistic input and forming structures for expression. The associative layer connects current experiences with past knowledge, leading to the analytical layer where logical reasoning and critical thinking occur.
Executive functions like decision-making and planning form a higher layer, topped by self-awareness, which enables metacognition and introspection. At the pinnacle of this mental stack is the inner voice layer, where internal dialogue and conscious thoughts emerge.
This model, while simplified, illustrates how our minds might process information from basic sensory reactions to complex, conscious thoughts, with each layer building upon and interacting with the others in a dynamic, interconnected system.
A crucial skill that knowledge-makers need to develop is how to mine information from each layer across the mental stack.
Some individuals excel at observing and analyzing raw sensory information, others at the emotional and linguistic level, and still others at the metacognitive layer. Regardless of your natural preferences, it's important to gather information from each layer.
Only once we have a pool of information can we organize it to the best of our ability, test it out (probably by discussing our thoughts with someone), and then refine and iterate.