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Originally Posted by Selmanito  Hi all,
My question to everyone, and Steve, if hes around and has a free minute in hand, that - HOW do you do it?
How do you come up with this deep level of thinking?
How do you write the articles that manage to help so much somehow?
What can i do, to be able to find answers the way you did? What did you do? Is it really just life experience? and just living it?
Sorry if i sound like a very confused guy, these questions are killing me. I want to also be able to produce such valuable articles on this topic and help people. |
I'm a deep thinker, so I'll share my thoughts. This will be a long post, but it should prove extremely useful. I'm confident that the info I have will prove useful to you.
A few months ago I would have attributed Steve's deep thinking to many things, and while there are some influencing factors (diet, sleep, emotional state, desires, some sort of crazy intuitive link Steve manages to conjure, etc), after reading the book,
Now, Discover Your Strengths (N,DYS), I'd say it's all due to his talents.
Steve's talents are:
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1. Strategic - good at strategic thinking and planning.
2. Input - can efficiently process and integrate large amounts of information.
3. Learner - good at acquiring new knowledge and skills.
4. Focus - able to concentrate well and tune out distractions.
5. Significance - drawn to work on important things and avoid succumbing to trivialities.
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Source:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...our-strengths/
My talents are:
1. Strategic - I focus on the important; in any situation, I observe, process, then act.
2. Learner - I love the process of learning
3. Individualisation - I love to know specifics and figure people out
4. Activator - Although extremely patient, I hate barriers (ie. having to gain knowledge or skill) that block efficient expression
5. Achiever - I always feel I can be doing better and focus on constant improvement
Note that the short descriptions after I name the talent themes (strategic, learner, etc) are personalised for me. N,DYS will give different, more generalised descriptions of them, but what's important is how they all "weave" together to form your unique personality. My talents are somewhat contradictory (ie. I love to learn -- learner -- but I always want to express myself without having to gain excessive skill or knowledge -- activator), but when you blend them together in the right proportions, they make sense.
What does this have to do with deep thinking?
Anyway, as you can see, both Steve and I have talents that are primarily mental (ie. we don't have any that directly involve being good at relating to people) and have to do with how we process information. Steve and I share Strategic as a top talent theme, and also Learner as a general theme. The rest of our themes, while different, lend very well to effectively processing information.
So does this mean that unless you have similar talents, you're doomed to never be a deep thinker?
Not quite. You'll never be as good as Steve and I (and others with similar talents). You'll look at people like us and think, "man, how do they do it?". Our natural way of operation will seem like some sort of supernatural power to you that you can't fathom.
Why some people are just naturally better at some things then others
I experience this when I look at other people who have different talents to me and see their performance. I may understand how they do what they do, but no matter how I try, my natural way of processing information and making decisions is different to theirs, so they'll always have a natural "strength" in their area (ie. I suck at empathy and connecting to people... I can improve, but it's still an alien, unnatural concept to me, relative to my talents).
If you want to become a deep thinker, you need to play from
your unique talents, not the talents of Steve, myself, or anyone else. Often people think that certain people are just exceptional, but the reason their exceptional is because they're using their talents, and most people aren't, or are doing so unproductively (eg. you may use a Learner talent to learn to play music when you want to be an entrepreneur. You'd be better off going on a business course or reading business books.)
What happens when you try to be something you're not
I'll share a short story to explain my point.
Years ago I tried to model a friend of mine. He was/is very intelligent, and extremely good at analysis. I wanted this ability, so I tried to think about things more. After a few years I did indeed become more analytical, to the point where even my friend said I was too analytical (ha!), but even then, I was no match for him.
I learned that it wasn't his analysis that impressed me, but his ability to process information. He can look at an environment and absorb about 5x the information I can. I can only focus on one thing at a time, or focus very generally, but he can focus on his entire surroundings and absorb and efficiently process the information within it. Consequently, he's good at things like navigating, remembering obscure locations by memory, etc. I, on the other hand, am not (understatement!).
What I am good at, however, is creativity, concepts, and abstraction. Since my friend is always focused on the real world, he has a lot of trouble with associating concepts creatively. He's ok at this, but compared to what I can do, he's lacking. Interestingly, we both have good memories, it's just that he remembers specifics, while I remember highly generalised concepts. Eg. He'll remember a street name, and I'll remember our general life situation and what issues we were discussing that day while driving down that street.
My point here is that there is something that you are uniquely good at, and you'll get the most success by focusing on that instead of trying to become good at something that isn't natural to you.
What to do from here
My advice to you would be to read the book,
Now, Discover Your Strengths. When you buy it they provide you with a code that lets you take the StrengthFinder test, and you'll get a report listing your top 5 talent themes. Be skeptical all you like, but I think you'll find that the results end up summing you up so well that any skepticism will vanish.
I've always intuitively known what I'm good at, but I couldn't really put it in words. The StrengthFinder test results helped with that. The talent labels they use (eg. strategic, learner, etc) aren't important; what's important is what they point to -- the natural inclinations and processing ability they test when you take the StrengthFinder test; the things you know as "you" and are probably so natural to you that you don't even know that you do them, or at least, there are times when you wonder why someone isn't as good at you when it comes to a certain area.
Taking a few steps back and asking why
Dipping into my strategic and individualisation talent, I have to ask you:
- Do you just want to understand how Steve does it (which may be a clue as to what talents you have), or do you want to become a deep thinker yourself?
- If so, why do you want to be a deep thinker?
Those are questions to ask yourself.
Try to understand the "why" behind your motivation, and you'll be able to more effectively reach your goal.
Eg. Perhaps I get up one day and don't feel like doing any work. I procrastinate all day, partaking in avoidance activities such as playing video games (or writing forum posts
). If I look to why I'm procrastinating instead of just procrastinating, I'll usually find that I'm avoiding a work project because I think I have to go about it in a way that is boring or tedious to me, when really, there are other ways to go about it.
Knowing why you are doing something will take you off "intuitive auto-pilot" and let you operate more effectively and deliberately; more consciously.