Thinking About How You Think

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius.  You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”                  

                                                                                                               ~Gertrude Stein

When it comes to metacognition or thinking about your thinking, many unique travelers ultimately do one of two things: they learn early on not to be too revealing about the workings of their mind lest they be deemed odd or judged to “think too much,” or they come to assume that their thinking process is nothing out of the ordinary.  Being aware of our thinking, however, is crucial to understanding the choices we make and the potential we hold.

Last year I had the rare delight of sitting one-on-one with a gifted third grader who amazed me with his awareness of his own metacognition.  With his parents’ permission, I’m going to give you a peek into the conversation in which this young student revealed his metacognition—thinking about how he thinks…knowing how he knows—to help you better understand what it means.

He and I were talking about his work habits.  He sometimes seemed to be not paying attention and he wasn’t getting his work done despite being very intelligent and capable.  His teachers and I were working together to try to figure out how to keep him on task and productive.  When I asked him if he could help me understand what was going on, this is what he said, verbatim.

“Your brain and your body are attached.  Your brain is the controller of your body—without it your body would just be an empty shell.  I am ¼ brain, ¼ thinking and 2/4 imagining.  The imagine part is the biggest part of the brain.  The mind is what helps you think.  [When I’m working on an assignment], my body keeps doing what the brain told it to and then my mind gets lost in space (I start thinking about other things I’d rather be doing) and then my brain forgets to tell my body to stop.  And then once I realize that I forgot to stop, I realize that I still have other things to do, and I’ve given myself more work and then I get frustrated.  I want to focus and get it done quickly but the more work means it’s gonna take longer.  When thinking takes over completely, that’s when I do very, very good work.”

I was so impressed with this student’s awareness of his thinking process and his ability to articulate it very matter-of-factly and thought how much we underestimate what the young mind is capable of.  I began to think about my own thinking as a young person—could there really be nothing?  Isn’t nothing something?  If God created everything, then who created God…and who created whoever created God?  What if what I see as a tree, someone else sees as a dog and what is real to me is totally different to everyone else?

What happens to the young mind that wonders and questions freely and in the bliss of innocence?

What if thinking about how you think and knowing how you know and allowing your “imagining brain” to take over from time to time is not a luxury at all but crucial to you becoming fully who you are and creating the life you are meant to live?  If you’ve lost touch with your thinking or you’ve learned to be ever reasonable and logical, perhaps going back to your child mind will reconnect you to who you were and you will find that you’re not so very different a person today.  You don’t have to be a genius to think differently and you don’t have to be a child to use your imagining mind.

How does your brain work?  When is your thinking most productive? What do you do when your thinking is challenged or stops working?  How do you navigate challenges in your thinking?  From where do your thoughts originate?