Are you thinking, or are you farting?

In the thought example about the "Milk" in the article I found myself asking "Who does that?" and now I'm wondering if that helps further explain to me how women tend to think into things.

I'm curious to know here who would have gone onto thought #3 in the milk example? If I'm enjoying something I'm simply enjoying it... I'm not trying to determine if I'm really NOT enjoying it and thus trying to convince myself that I AM enjoying it.

I totally agree with your premise (there must be balance), but I do disagree with your interpretation of my essay.

There's a difference between paralyzing yourself with uber-analysis, and digging deeper than level 1.

And there's a reason I didn't have "What's the meaning of thought, anyway?" as an example :)

You don't know me, but I'm exceedingly practical and a pretty emotionally integrated person. And a large part of that I attribute to exactly what I wrote about. If I want to just sit there and wank off mentally forever, and not act, well, I'm aware that I'm doing it... because I am present in my own thoughts.

As Pema Chodron writes, if we pay attention to ourselves, "even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance."

As a bonus, it helps me innovate in design/development where other people just copy one another, working off the same tired old templates.

That's really why I wrote it. I'm tired of every piece of software not just looking, but acting the same, with the same components, and same shortcuts. With people thinking they have a new idea, when all that they really have is the same idea other people have had, but it feels special because it's in their head -- and lacking the framework/habits to judge "Is feeling special to me the same thing as feeling special?"

This problem is rampant everywhere, even on HN.

No. Before I ever enter a situation I already know whether or not I need to convince myself. I'm pretty aware of my own intuition, and the more I need to "talk myself" into doing something the more I'll question myself before I skip over my gut instinct.

It's been extremely rare when I've come out of a situation where I trusted my intuition and been unhappy with the result. On the other hand, I've had many times where I overrode my intuition and thought "damn, should have trusted myself"

-- It's important to not get high on your own supply.

I don't. It's called being proactive and is functionally similar to the techniques of mindfulness. Steven Covey writes about it in his first chapter of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". And please, entrepreneurs ignore reality more than most people I've ever known. Start up a business against all odds... convincing yourself to keep going with an idea even though you haven't succeeded after years? How is that NOT being high on your own supply?

-- If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes.

This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and intention. If only I could just monitor every thought, every motive, question my every step, then I could do it perfectly -- I would avoid the big mistakes. Wrong. You might have perfectly reasoned every thought, justified every intention, and still fail simply because you didn't have all the information.

So with that in mind, that's why it's much better to simply DO. Ensure one's intuition is in agreement and then DO, don't think into it. Mistakes are going to happen anyway, and that's when you'll do the reflecting.

> On the other hand, I've had many times where I overrode my intuition and thought "damn, should have trusted myself"

That's exactly what I'm talking about. :)

> This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and intention.

I never said question every thought. I also never said that the goal in life is to avoid making all mistakes.

See, you've got a reason in posting this, and for putting words in my mouth and, in my opinion, saying "No" to me while On The Other Hand giving an example of what I meant.

You also left off my real-world example of questioning your own motives, which your Covey anecdote doesn't negate in any way.

Why do you think that is?

The article itself was rather interesting and I certainly didn't mean to imply that metacognition is useless. From my point of view, not engaging in any metacognition ever will eventually lead to what I call problems, among which are unwarranted assumptions and failure to consider alternatives. Those are "problems" that I like to "catch" and correct in my own thinking. However, I do believe that one has to draw a line somewhere; otherwise, one risks indulging in what another commenter named "mental masturbation".

As for personal growth, I believe there will always be limits to our thinking that cannot be (directly) surpassed by more thinking ;)