Are you thinking, or are you farting?

Thought 4: How would I recognize the right tool for the job? What does communication mean? How does this change on the internet?

I do this, but unlike the author I've come to regard it as generally a bad habit. Too much thinking gets in the way of doing. These days I try to avoid over-thinking everything, and concentrate on just making something - anything, and seeing what happens when I launch it.

I'm not convinced... It's an interesting article, but it seems to me this cycle can just as easily devolve into mental masturbation. "I'm thinking X. Am I thinking this because Y or Z? What's the meaning of thought anyway?" Keep doing this for too long and you might turn into some kind of philosopher.

Now, I agree that some self-examination is essential (as Socrates put it, the unexamined life is not worth living), but I'd argue that what's needed is a balance between thinking and doing. And doing requires putting aside all those fabulous thoughts and focusing on the task at hand for a while.

The two are not exclusive, nor is one superior to the other. They are a bit like Reason and Passion in Khalil Gibran's writings (http://www.katsandogz.com/onreason.html):

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house. Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows -- then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason." And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky -- then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion." And since you are a breath in God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.