“No, think about it…” For most people, those words are meaningless because once we have an opinion, it becomes difficult to change it. That is because we are not trained to think.
Having images in your head is an awareness of thoughts but it is not thinking. Thinking involves moving those images around, bending them, bashing them against each other. It’s like staging a gladiator fight in your head to see which idea is the strongest.
The trouble is that we can only hold very little information in our conscious minds at any given point in time. Try to memorise more than 10 random numbers while doing sit-ups and you will see. What more trying to solve an existential crisis; a business problem; the challenge of raising children?
That’s why we write. It’s like downloading those gladiators onto an open arena – a piece of paper – and allowing them to fight to the death using weapons of logic… with the surviving idea being the strongest. Armed with strong ideas, not only will you become a more confident communicator, but you will also save yourself the cost of many foolish mistakes.
No, seriously… think about it.
