Partially Formed Thoughts and Ideas

Nothing begins fully formed.

Are you sitting on a chair, reading on a device?

Those started as partial ideas in someone’s head. Then, maybe through trial and error, refinement, sketching, conversations and collecting feedback and input from others they became…

…Another idea. Another Chair. Another device. A more useful device.

Eventually several partial ideas connected into what you’re sitting on and reading on.

Each is a prototype the others build upon.
Unedited partial ideas is where they began.
And that’s what this particular space is for.

This article is an incomplete idea. Everything I write here is an incomplete idea because an idea is never complete.

Everything you’ll discover here is partial, waiting to be expanded, elaborated, built upon.

Sometimes the ideas will be more complete and sometimes less. Very little polish (in writing known as editing). No particular ‘copy’. Only concepts worth exploring and combining from books, podcasts, conversations, journaling, and note-making. They may go somewhere or they may not. Most likely they’ll shift, combine with other concepts and become something else.

The reason for this is synthesis and thinking. We ‘think’ that thinking happens inside our heads. Or tuning in happens somewhere in our body, moves through the brain and that’s thinking.

An alternative is to think of thinking as active.

Real thinking happens when we translate from the inside to the outside, through a draft, through journaling, through art, through a prototype, through a model, through an experience.

Externalizing thinking, goals and ideas moves them forward. Adds life. Acts like an invitation for others.

No matter the quality of our thinking, we can only have one perspective – the perspective formed as a (mostly unconscious) aggregation of experience. Externalizing opens for perspective sharing.

This invitation and perspective sharing is crucial for getting a ‘whole systems view’. It’s the only way you can sense the whole system.

This active thinking, is when you get to see if something seems to work or not. You get to see if the prototype, even a sketch on paper or a collection of post-it-notes, is worth exploring further. It’s where you find out if the thought can be put into a sentence or a drawing.

Externalizing gives you another advantage.

It helps you extend your thinking outside the brain, tapping into intelligence contained in physical, environmental, and social spaces.

Crucial for whole-systems work. And any work you’re doing is interacting with a whole system.

A you-client system.
A you-audience system.
A you-team-organization-industry system.

Thinking is what we do when we put something into the world. Because then you can play with it. You can examine it.

Because you’re choices, mostly unconscious, can only be as good as the thinking you have. And your thinking can only be as good as your perception of the system.