Thinking, deep and wide.
What makes some people thoughtful?
This is a loaded question with an assumption that we can split humanity into the thoughtful and the thoughtless. Noone is thoughtful all the time but there are three things that encourage thoughtfulness: agency, introspection and frameworks. Breaking them down a bit
Agency: It’s hard for a person to be always thoughtful. As an extreme example: being shot at in a warzone or performing surgery. That’s when instincts take over. Agency is recognizing that an external environment can be bent towards deeper engagement. Forcing people to write down ideas is one such act, steelmanning the opposite argument is another.
Introspection: Debating with yourself to figure out why a hard problem is unsolved is tricky. Is it because you haven’t tried hard enough, are you running up against laws of physics, is the solution approach flawed? Zooming out from within a messy situation to identify patterns is hard. Especially when one’s entire success has come from doing things, not introspecting about doing them.
Frameworks: In a dynamic environment,problems shape-shift. A decision log for why an approach worked, what was the main point of leverage and what would happen if the input variables changed codifies problems into frameworks. Reading how others have approached similar problems helps strengthen these frameworks.
People with agency recognize that they can slot most hard problems into frameworks, seek out experts for what they don’t know and keep moving. Thought == action.
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