A lot of my thinking takes the form of internal monologue; talking to myself, or adressing an imaginary audience, or sometimes adressing an actual person who’s involved in whatever I’m thinking about. (An interesting aspect is that I almost never imagine being talked back to.) Contrary to Alicorn’s observation thinking-as-soliloquy seems pretty common here.
Some of my thinking feels like a smoldering fire, a background process that needs to be given time to run its course, to be tended and protected even though it’s invisible, but will eventually break to the surface.
Sometimes my thinking takes the form of actually talking to myself out loud. But this is usually only when something is really bothering me or I have some grandiose or noble plan, which I’m probably procrastinating about or likely to forget (don’t tell me that, though). I’m usually driving when I do this.
Sometimes my thinking takes the form of actually talking to myself out loud. But this is usually only when something is really bothering me or I have some grandiose or noble plan, which I’m probably procrastinating about or likely to forget (don’t tell me that, though). I’m usually driving when I do this.
All the time my thinking takes the form of talking to myself out loud, to the point where my girlfriend kicks me because I’ve woken her at 5am again. It tends to take the form of roleplaying situations—at the least, imagining myself explaining something to someone else. I have no plans to stop this behaviour, because it’s how I actually get lots of thinking done.
Like you, I find this a useful technique. But I often note when I do this (most often when driving) that the other person in the conversation doesn’t do much beyond nod and ask me to clarify further.
The exception is my erstwhile therapist, who when I imagined having conversations with her would ask me questions that forced me to completely rethink what I was saying. I would occasionally relate these conversations to her; she seemed to find them amusing.
Like many others, my thinking is also internal discussions, whether with just one voice or multiple. The interesting thing to me is that while in my mind these ‘discussions’ feel complete and like regular conversation, when it comes to verbalise them I find quite often there’s huge and often unjustifiable gaps and leaps in the thinking. If discussing a problem with a colleague, I’ll often find that either the answer is obvious, or often that I need to take more time to come up with a coherent way of explaining it.
I don’t do it often enough, but often I try to safeguard against this when coming to conclusions by forcing myself to say them aloud.
A lot of my thinking takes the form of internal monologue; talking to myself, or adressing an imaginary audience, or sometimes adressing an actual person who’s involved in whatever I’m thinking about. (An interesting aspect is that I almost never imagine being talked back to.) Contrary to Alicorn’s observation thinking-as-soliloquy seems pretty common here.
Some of my thinking feels like a smoldering fire, a background process that needs to be given time to run its course, to be tended and protected even though it’s invisible, but will eventually break to the surface.
Sometimes my thinking takes the form of actually talking to myself out loud. But this is usually only when something is really bothering me or I have some grandiose or noble plan, which I’m probably procrastinating about or likely to forget (don’t tell me that, though). I’m usually driving when I do this.
All the time my thinking takes the form of talking to myself out loud, to the point where my girlfriend kicks me because I’ve woken her at 5am again. It tends to take the form of roleplaying situations—at the least, imagining myself explaining something to someone else. I have no plans to stop this behaviour, because it’s how I actually get lots of thinking done.
Like you, I find this a useful technique. But I often note when I do this (most often when driving) that the other person in the conversation doesn’t do much beyond nod and ask me to clarify further.
The exception is my erstwhile therapist, who when I imagined having conversations with her would ask me questions that forced me to completely rethink what I was saying. I would occasionally relate these conversations to her; she seemed to find them amusing.
Like many others, my thinking is also internal discussions, whether with just one voice or multiple. The interesting thing to me is that while in my mind these ‘discussions’ feel complete and like regular conversation, when it comes to verbalise them I find quite often there’s huge and often unjustifiable gaps and leaps in the thinking. If discussing a problem with a colleague, I’ll often find that either the answer is obvious, or often that I need to take more time to come up with a coherent way of explaining it.
I don’t do it often enough, but often I try to safeguard against this when coming to conclusions by forcing myself to say them aloud.