“It is a profoundly erroneous truism,
repeated by all copybooks and by eminent people when they are making speeches,
that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing,” writes
Alfred North Whitehead. “The precise
opposite is the case. Civilization
advances by extending the number of important operations that we can perform
without thinking about them. Operations
of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in
number, they require fresh horses and must only be made at decisive moments.”
When I was at college, I tried to
distill my classroom notes from hundreds of pages to 100 pages and then to ten
pages and finally to one page—which I would then memorize and throw away. It was the act of taking notes and the
process of integrating those notes into fewer and more meaningful concepts that
I could master prior to a test that facilitated mastery. I’ve found that once I grasp the conceptual
structure, the details took care of themselves.
At work, I surround myself with volumes of
specialized information. But there is
only a small amount of that information I need to have on hand. These include telephone numbers, locations of
additional information, and specialized processing information. I make an effort to ensure that this
information is always current. There is
no need to have a superior memory. But
it is important to have a way of mastering the vast information you need. Whitehead is right. There is no need to think when you have
processes in place that will do your thinking for you.