Thinking vs Doing
By: Roy Cook
Tags: Reading, Thinking, Core Values, Success, Journaling

Thinking vs Doing

Source: Unsplash — Tanya Nevidoma

How much of your day do you spend thinking versus doing? Both can involve personal growth. But often the former will involve much more personal growth than the latter.

What do I mean by thinking? Aren’t we always thinking? Well, yes, if you consider anxiety and worry to be thinking. Not all activities that take place in the mind are terribly productive.

So what am I referring to by thinking? Meditation, reading, journaling and planning. IMO, the best and most personal growth will come from here. Today, I will focus on the first three.

In some cases, personal growth will come from the doing. For example, if you are trying to learn something new, like tennis, chess, gardening or public speaking. Often this doing is preceded or accompanied by thinking.

Often doing involves things that are entertainment. So here I am referring to fun activities, including watching television. Comparatively little growth ever comes such doing.

Tiny Habits, Stacked Habits and Morning Pages

It takes a lot of patience, maturity and discipline to spend time each day meditating, journaling, reading and planning. You can cut back on the discipline significantly if you know how to make habits.

You can start with “tiny habits“ (https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything/dp/0358003326)and these can quickly and easily grow to “stacked habits” (https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking). This allows a lot of daily progress without much discipline, which, as we know, is an undependable ally.

My most important work during the day is, in the order that I do them, journaling, meditation and reading. Journaling allows me to take stock of who I am and where I’m going, where I’ve failed and succeeded. If I use the Morning Pages technique (https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/), I can both free my mind of monkey thoughts and write down important concepts or ideas that may have come from my subconscious while I was just sleeping.

Meditation And Reading

Meditation is a unique tool which I only partly understand. On the other hand, I have a great appreciation for it. It has allowed me to be more at peace and less frustrated by irritations, both minor and major. It has allowed me to be a better listener, friend and husband. It has also taught me who I am and helped me grow in the right direction. I use semi-guided meditation on an iPhone app (https://www.headspace.com/)

It is impossible to overestimate the benefit of reading. I have blogged about this on numerous occasions. But to summarize, I have long felt that when people finish their schooling, they make an unconscious choice of how they’re going to live their lives. They choose either to primarily focus on entertainment or primarily focus on learning.

Learning Versus Entertainment

The learners have the opportunity of advancing significantly and in almost all areas of their life. Those that want to be primarily entertained pretty much stay the same.

When I go to school reunions, I meet people that seem to have changed little since school days. Those are primarily the folks that have focused on being entertained in their life. Entertainment includes all fun activities and television (especially TV news).

Why TV news? Some might respond “I have to be an informed citizen”. IMO, they would be far better educated from reading, especially histories. Television news is better at feeding biases than educating the public.

You might consider testing that by foregoing the nightly news for awhile. Then take a good look at how you’ve changed. You might be surprised, as I was. But that’s a discussion for another time. Let’s just say that it is a personal bias of mine.

The group that primarily chooses to be entertained is large, perhaps 70-90% of all people. You can get some indication of its size when you consider that the average person spends over two hours a day on social media. They also are nearly addicted to television and especially network news. Of course, we all like to be entertained and there is nothing wrong with entertainment. That’s why I use the word “primarily“.

The learners on the other hand will be big readers. An indication of how small this group is would be to look at the fact that half of everyone in this country reads four or fewer books per year. Very little learning going on there.

Again, that’s a habit, but not one that they’ve developed. In all likelihood, those that they spend time with read very little too.

More Reading

In fact, it’s worst than that. Thee million books are published annually. IMO, very few books are worthy of your time if your goal is to learn. Even the best book review sources select a ton of books that are not worth reading for learning.

We all have obstacles in our life. In order to overcome them, we must grow. To grow, we must learn. To learn, we must read. Otherwise we only have the examples of one life, our own, to draw upon. Readers have hundreds, even thousands, of examples to reflect on, to meditate about.

When I speak of reading, I am not talking about picking books just to be entertained. I am talking about reading the best. Books that add value to your life? The best literature, fiction, biographies, philosophies, essays, poetry and histories.

I am particularly including reading the hundred or so Great Books (one good source: The New Lifetime Reading Plan by Fadiman and Major). They even tell you why each of the 133 books was selected.

I have read and taught all of these books. And I am neither a teacher nor a literature major. Some are difficult. Those will result in learning and in growth.

This book also includes a list of 100 additional books that didn’t make the first cut. I can’t imagine a better use of one’s time. There is more learning in these books, in my opinion, then in most other books combined.

Perhaps you’d rather read what Ryan Holiday thinks about this subject: https://medium.com/@RyanHoliday/how-to-digest-books-above-your-level-and-increase-your-intelligence-a11bd134da13. He also adds how he reads for maximum benefit and, critically important, how he remembers what he read.

Here is the best thing that I’ve ever read on how to remember what you read, a problem I’ve had for most of my life: https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-remember-everything-you-want-from-non-fiction-books-df17096d517f by Eva Keiffenheim. She includes this quote:

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” — Mortimer J. Adler

I don’t want to exclude self-help books. They are invaluable. But they should not be the major part of your reading. However, they complement very well the other reading of the best books.

How do you find the best books? Well, you don’t find them by going to book reviews like the New York Times. They review some very good books but IMO they also review many books which are not in the exclusive category of those that you should read in a lifetime.

When it gets down to it, a reader may complete 30 to 80 books each year, so even over a ten-year period we may only be looking at 300–800 books. That’s a minuscule number when we consider there are 3 million books published this year.

It is your job to be as selective as you can. And one more thing: if the book is not helping you, not inspiring you, put it down and move on to another book. There is no value in completing a book which has become a chore. Little if any learning will come from that. But what can result is a feeling that some reading is a waste of time and you certainly don’t want to emphasize that.

As Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “Alas, Madam! How few books are there of which one can ever possibly arrive at the last page”. IMO, this man is one of the greatest figures in English literature.

I’m not going to talk much about planning. If you were doing the other three activities, planning will be a byproduct. Planning can take place as part of your journaling.

It is important to take stock of how you’re progressing and add future goals. This is where the self-help books come into play. Not all of them but those that are written by the best known writers. It is your job and mine to find out from experience who those people are. One very good starting point for me has been Medium.com.

So how do you grow? How do you reach fulfillment and peace of mind? How do you succeed? I believe that will come from meditating, journaling, reading and planning. Followed by doing.

IMO, a very small percentage of all people do those four things. In fact, a very small percentage do even two of them. That is both a shame and a blessing. It is is a blessing because if you are competing, your chances of success are considerably higher since 70-90% of people are not in the game, they are focusing on entertainment. Some of them may succeed but they’re not even using the proper tools to learn and grow.

Thinking and Being Mentored

Why would that be that most people are interested in doing rather than thinking? Well, the latter involves more discipline. It is more difficult. And many don’t see the advantage of thinking. And they’ve never had much training in that area. Nor do they pick mentors to help them.

That has always been a puzzle to me. There are many good people that are willing to mentor others for free. Why is it that only 37% of even professionals currently have a mentor? (source: Forbes). So you can imagine how much lower that percentage would be for all adults.

That is indeed a puzzle. Is it because they feel it’s a weakness to feel the need for a mentor? Or did they just not have the confidence to seek a mentor? I wonder how many have even asked. Or are they lazy? Whatever it is, they significantly stunt their growth by not participating in a mentoring relationship.

The mentee can quit at any time, even half way through the first phone call or meeting! What exactly is the risk?

So we can see that the majority of folks have abandoned the playing field. They no longer compete in a real sense. They are much less likely to lead a life of accomplishment and success.

Some time ago at about 5 PM, I took a BART (a commuter train) from San Francisco to Berkeley. I noted that almost everyone was asleep or dozing. They all looked tired and bored. None looked happy. I often see the same things on flights taken late in the day. Why would that be? Do they not like their jobs and, maybe, their lives? Do they not have goals that excite them?

I suspect that you and I might know the answer. Few have serious goals. Few are doing the thinking (meditating, journaling and planning) necessary to see real life progress and to be excited about their futures. I know that feeling. I was like that at one time.

Of course, they can change this. They can join the lists and re-enter the competition at any point. I didn’t even begin the learning process until my mid-thirties.

So the opportunity still awaits. Significant progress can be made by people who simply change their priorities. Even those that love to be entertained. But having “primarily entertainment” as a life goal is foolish.

In summary, if you only spend, say, two hours per day on the thinking aspects of life discussed here, you will have a much better chance of succeeding. And if you make it a habit, at some point you will see the advantages of this and will find that it requires very little if any further discipline. In fact, you will increase the amount of time you spend in the thinking versus the doing part of the equation.

Of course, I don’t want to mislead. Doing is critical. It’s what happens after the thinking. And I’m differentiating the entertainment part of doing from the constructive part, that part that comes from personal internal growth.

I have no bias against entertainment. It has its place. It helps us renew and refresh ourselves. I enjoy a good football game, crime show or film noir on television. But a life based primarily on entertainment? That’s nor a recipe for success.

There’s one other big factor here. From experience, I can tell you that when you reach 60 years of age, you want to be in good enough shape (both health-wise and financially), that you can live the life you desire. You may want to travel or enjoy other activities which cost either time or money or both.

How wonderful it feels to not have to work (unless one wants to) and to make all decisions without regard to money or time. And how sad it must feel to not have taken care of business when younger. You don’t grow in energy as you reach 60 years of age and beyond.

There’s one little known fact of life at play here: when younger, you spend your time to make money; when older, you spend money to make time, free time. But if you didn’t take care of business when younger, well, you don’t want to be like those people on BART that I referred to earlier.

Core Values — The Secret Sauce

I’d like to close with a particular bias of mine. Each of us have 10–20 internal core values that are inherent and do not change much over time, if at all. I learned this from Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and his business partner Hyrum W. Smith (What Matters Most). For the last 30 years, I have found that if one discovers his core values and makes daily decisions consistent with them, he will find both fulfillment and peace of mind.

If he adds a few more skills, he will enjoy financial freedom. That’s the trifecta. I found all three and retired twenty years ago. The entire “core values” process took 11 years from start to retirement from work.

I have taught this to hundreds of people over the past decade.

If you want to read my other blogs on core values: https://medium.com/the-innovation/your-core-values/home.

If you’d prefer to wait for my new book, it will be published in mid-January 2021 — A Fool’s Errand: Why Your Goals are Falling Short and What You Can Do About It.

If you’d like me to email you the first chapter and notify you when the book is published, please add your email here: https://mailchi.mp/592c9a435a29/a-fools-errand. (Until then, I promise to share with you the power of core values via blogs taken from my book 2–3 times per week.)