Thinking more doesn’t always mean thinking better
(It Also Doesn’t Mean Seeing More)
Perspective Note #2
How many times have you caught yourself thinking, “I need to think about it”?
But how do you know when you have thought about something enough? As if quantity were somehow a measure of quality when it comes to thinking and decision-making.
“I need to think about it.” “Let’s think about it.” “I need some time to think it through.” These phrases often come from the assumption that more thinking will eventually lead to an answer.
But perhaps it was never really a question of time. Perhaps it’s a question of space.
And I mean space quite literally. Not space as in time, quiet, or mental availability, but space as in how much territory your thinking is actually able to explore.
You can spend hours thinking inside a very small space. Sometimes, we can think about something extensively while asking ourselves the same questions, exploring the same perspectives and following the same reasoning over and over again: the same assumptions, the same fears, the same alternative scenarios, the same blind spots and the same patterns. Like circular thinking, gravitating around the same fixed point.
You can think deeply and still only see what is visible from where you’re standing.
That’s why I don’t think that simply thinking more, from the same perspective and within the same limited space, is necessarily useful. Sometimes, it only creates more confusion, or leads us back to the same decisions and patterns that weren’t working for us in the first place.
Expanding the space
We all have blind spots we don’t think to question, because we may not even be aware that they are there.
By definition, we don’t know what we don’t see.
That’s what I mean when I talk about thinking space. Thinking space can expand. Every new perspective, experience, conversation or piece of knowledge can reveal territory that wasn’t previously available to our thinking.
The more we expose ourselves to different perspectives, educate ourselves, communicate with others and question our assumptions, the more material we have to support our thinking. It doesn’t necessarily give us the answer. It gives us more to think with. And that distinction matters.
Thinking alone ≠ thinking for yourself
Seeing another perspective, under another light, doesn’t mean delegating your decision-making. On the contrary, someone external can help you see more without deciding for you.
And this is where I think the distinction between advice and perspective matters.
Advice often comes with a direction: “This is what I think you should do.” A different perspective doesn’t have to tell you where to go. It can simply reveal something you hadn’t considered, question an assumption you didn’t realise you were making, or shine a light on a part of the situation that was previously outside your field of view.
You still hold your own light. And no matter how broad your perspective already is, how much of a “thinker” you are, or how educated you may be, someone else’s light may illuminate a part of the landscape that yours doesn’t reach.
Their light doesn’t replace yours, and they don’t choose the path it reveals. It simply allows you to see more of the landscape before choosing where to go.
Perhaps that is what we sometimes need when we feel stuck: not more time to think, and not necessarily more advice, but more space to think in.
Sarah SER | Clarity & Perspective