• Think Before you Speak, Act, or Do Just About Anything

    Take the saying "think before you speak" literally, and apply it to a general range of actions.

    Most of the time, our minds are in a purely reactive mode. One thought leads to another, or a given question leads to an immediate, naturally-flowing response. A conscious thought may reach your head every now and then, but for the most part, you're a walking vegetable whose instinctive ability to unconsciously interact with the world proves to be little more than a defense maneuver. The harm that this (lack of) thinking process presents may not be realized immediately. If you recall the last argument you've had, chances are the memory's full of moments you wish you could take back; things you said that you wish you hadn't, as well as things which you could have said far more clearly. In fact, I don't doubt that if a more efficient thinking process had been used before the argument began, that it may have been avoided altogether.

    Thinking before you speak is generally a draining process to begin with. Intensive, continual thought that is heard rather than felt is less natural to the mind and requires more work to achieve. It's like reading a book and concentrating on every letter of every word of every page, rather than allowing your mind to flow naturally through the book's contents at your "comfort pace". When you have gotten comfortable with thinking before you yet again mess up your life on a single impulse, begin steering your thought process towards the use of thought triggers. That is, we are capable of thinking very fast. Putting those thoughts into words, or human-speak, is a somewhat draining process for our mind, and it's even more of a drain to hear each and every thought. Being able to feel your thoughts and knowing that the information is there when you need it is a speedier and equally efficient process than thinking out thoughts fully. It's much like skimming through the details of a book, and remembering what page or paragraph a certain detail lies on. Some details may need to be touched up upon and thought through in full, but for the most-part, you need only remember the basic idea or summary of a thought to recall it in full.

    Within my own mind, I may be able to plan out an entire paragraph at once and then put its contents aside into speed-memory. This has a feeling very similar to that felt when a word, saying, or important task has slipped from the mind. The thought is still able to be felt, but it requires a certain trigger in order to recall it in its entirety. Of course, rather than a space of mind felt in distress while a memory fades, this region of thought it used to keep a memory fresh in our minds while we await the need to recall it in full. For example, to recall the contents of the previous paragraph as if I was writing it again, I keep in mind the basic idea to be expressed within it. Consciously, I recall the words "thinking" and "draining", which not only expands into the first sentence of the paragraph, but also points my mind in the direction and order of thought in which I wish to express the given topic.

    The practical, natural form of thinking before you speak is generally going to be in keeping mind of these thought triggers, topics, or general ideas you wish to express. All the while, travelling your mind through the full contents of these thoughts and those related to them. Over time, this will allow you to think, speak, and act more clearly and consciously; and perhaps, if Lord be permitting, you can manage to avoid another pointless, heart-corroding quarrel with your mother-in-law.


    Try Speed Reading

    Often, when we want to get through reading materials quickly, we skim over their content in our search for words or sentences which stick out. While skimming is a useful tool in research, it's far less useful when reading a novel. Novels tend to set a mood and scenery, and are more than just a sequence of events or set of significant details to be remembered. Sceneries have to be imagined, voices have to be heard, characters have to walk and crawl and run and fight; and so, when reading a novel with utmost dedication, we may read at a pace where the words on the pages have time to be said, and the sounds and images have time to set in our mind as we slowly and carefully reconstruct the world in which the author has described. Learning how to read quickly will give you the benefit of time that skimming offers, while allowing you to hold onto the sense of world contained within a novel.

    There are several skills required for speed reading. I recommend having already read a novel or two before flexing your reading muscles as I will inscribe, as having prior experience with reading, imagining, and recollecting the contents of a novel is a must; these skills will be expanded upon and made easier on the mind through the process of speed reading.

    Reading the contents of a book to yourself at the rate you would speak them out loud must be abandoned if you wish to increase reading speed. Within your mind, the physical limitations that exist with speech do not exist. You are limited only be how long it takes you to comprehend the contents of a book. Speed reading is unlike skimming in that all details are reviewed, but you will find that naturally, many details take less time to comprehend than others, revealing the amount of filler text within the English Language; this text is still important to read over, I believe, especially if the author uses accentuation and sets a mood within their narrative. It may be a sensation which is strange, and is even hard to describe, but experienced readers learn to take full advantage of data processing without physical constraints.

    The process of imagination may go through changes between reading at talking pace and reading as fast as you can comprehend. A novelized scenery is constructed in sequence, what is the limit of using text as a creative outlet. At talking pace, carefully and sequentially is how a scenery may materialize. The fluency with which the author intended to create their scenery with is lost. When speed reading, several details of a scenery may be comprehended all at once, bridging the gap between what the author intended you to see and the order which text must be written in the novel. This is simply a natural progression that occurs within the process of speed reading. Attempting to mesh together entire scenes in such a brisk manner prematurely will undoubtedly result in sequence being ignored altogether. Sequential writing, while a limit when describing coexisting events, is often taken advantage of by authors. With speed reading and an expanded imagination, novels can quickly turn into films within the mind's eye, suspense and all.

    You should always be able to recollect the entirety of events which occurred within a novel during any point while reading it, and for long after having finished it. A word for word, paragraph for paragraph account of a book isn't necessary nor expected of you, but with heightened reading speed and a well-honed imagination, a novel should be able to be rewound and sped forward like a film within your mind. When you start off reading a new book, checking with your memory every few pages just to make sure you understand what has occurred thus far helps verify your ability of recollection. When you have adapted fully to the writing style of a novel and are well into it, recollection should occur at least once every chapter (or every few chapters if you're *really* that desperate to find out what Dr. Livesey meant when he said, "Watch out for squalls"). Recollection proves that you aren't just skimming through a novel's contents, and that you are receiving the full, fluent benefit of speed reading. This is a skill which also proves to be useful when listening to people giving speeches, although, of course, during discussions or while listening to speeches, recollection may belittle itself to the equivalence of that which a skimmer would require.

    Novels and research books will become far less intimidating once the skill of speed reading is mastered. A novel may be read in a day or in a single sitting. Rather than approaching a book tentatively, unsure if you'll ever manage to read it, much less comprehend it, books will become casually approachable and far less of an inconvenience. Of course, tasks such as looking up unfamiliar words in the dictionary are still ever the tedious, but online dictionaries and research materials prove to be invaluable alternatives to bookshelves full of dictionaries and research folders.


    Take Rests

    It may seem productive to hustle yourself through research materials until your brain feels like bursting, but your brain probably can't store the full contents of whatever it is you're reading in immediate memory, and especially not for long. Pound too hard at your brain, and chances are you'll wake up in the morning unable to recall a single word of what you read the night before. The brain needs some time in between chapters of information to store recently learned information into a more permanent place; and if you use your resting time to run your mind over what you've just studied, chances are you'll begin to relate one concept to another, creating a universal, relative database of knowledge. This enables the use of information in a practical manner, rather than simply having a dictionary-type understanding of your reading materials.

    The brain doesn't need rest just to organize your thoughts. The brain, under the strains of work and study, is actually quite the calorie hog - mostly carbohydrates. If your head's pounding at the work place while you're trying to remember articles 3.7b through 4.8e of Engineered Work Policy for H-Level Employees, there's a good chance that your brain's using more carbs than the rest of your body altogether. Blood flow is especially important as well, and in most sitting positions your brain isn't going to get enough to keep up with the energy losses and increase in temperature energy use brings about. So before your brain implodes due to lack of calories, or explodes in a fever due to rising temperature, it's best to put the book down for a bit, lay back, and briskly review the details you've read thus far until your head stops pounding and feels a little lighter. Quite possibly, you are.


    Try Day-Dreaming and Even Talking to Yourself

    You might not consider the crazy homeless guy who hobbles around your neighborhood mumbling the lyrics to "Ring of Fire" in a tone fit for "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" to be the wisest of men, but perhaps he understands something about the world that you don't.

    While you don't want to get lost in them, day dreams provide an excellent outlet for the imagination as well as a comfortable platform for running concepts through your mind. Putting yourself in place of a character you've read about or placing yourself in a scenario you're analyzing can lead to great self-discoveries and inspiration. More likely than not, you'll feel as though you've exceeded the creativity and intelligence of another author's works through your day dreams, perhaps inspiring you to write your own novel or to imagine a world whose rules and setting are based on a perspective of life belonging to you and you only. Day dreaming can also provide a manner of reviewing your thoughts before using them in practice. Making sure you're well-studied, open minded, and able to turn strong feelings of anger into the triumph over ignorance are all activities with which day dreaming can provide aid. I warn, however, of interacting too strongly with real life objects placed within your mind. This can lead to widely contrasting scenarios between what you imagine to happen and what actually does happens. That is, the strongest arguments should be posed against yourself rather than against others within your day dreams, otherwise you may begin to live within your own mind more than you do in the real world, what is probably how our homeless friend ended up where he is. Reality disconnect is another topic altogether, of course, but is something that should at least be kept in mind when thinking to yourself.

    Talking to yourself can also provide exercise to the mind. Often we have heard of written speech being practiced in front of a friend or family member, but live speech and debate is much more heated and stressful, where a single misspeak can lead to hours of reprehension. The ability to speak fluently and precisely is invaluable. Improved rhetoric permits you to solve problems at hand with haste and describe solutions to those around you with precision and confidence. Clear, confident speech requires an entire topic's summary to be held in mind at once, what is much easier when writing than when speaking, as sound fades away after being spoken, while written text remains unaltered until we decide otherwise. A thought process optimized for speech does not generally come naturally, where thought flows casually with limited risk from the mind and through the lungs, and so practice is required, either by talking out an issue to yourself or debating it with a patient, trusted friend. Our goal here, of course, is to strengthen and improve the elegance of the mind, rather than to relax it to the point where we thoughtlessly mumble to ourselves, such as is likely the case of our homeless friend.


    Think Relatively; Think Universally

    Efficiency of thought is more than just memory tricks, such as flash cards or thought triggers. Many of the techniques of those who claim to be well-studied are often, in fact, constraining to the natural process of thought. Such constraints must be removed, and an understanding of relative learning be had in their place. In life, all that exists is in some way related to all else that is, either by fundamental design or by how we perceive existence to function. More than likely, I would imagine that this is why figures of speech aid so much in description and mood; and so to think as efficiently as possible, all that you learn must be understood at a universal, relative level.

    Aside from the conscious recognition of patterns and relation between topics, there is also a manner of natural understanding and interaction embedded within what I will call the human spirit. Sadness and Happiness are not only internal feelings, but are also a way to describe and relate that which is external to us to all else that is. I often refer to this natural understanding of what is around us as Natural Interaction. Our mind's ability to understand so naturally what is around us allows topics such as art, music, and beauty, which have the most complex technicalities, to be simplified to feelings and ambition. I will use the Visual Arts to help aid my case. Art is a very technical field at its root. All artists must have an understanding of light, texture, geometry, and stroke. Each artist will find, however, that as their technical understanding of art evolves, their natural and individual style of art progresses as well; and they will also find, surely enough, how art, and more so their individual style of art is related to all that surrounds them. Some are better at this than others, and the ability to have such relative thought is dependent on your open mindedness. You must be willing to see things in different ways. The strongest starting point is likely to be your greatest form of natural interaction. Start with what you understand the most; something you can relate most everything else to.

    For much of my life, my greatest natural understanding was in Martial Arts. I was inspired by the variety of motions among fighting styles, relating them to dance, music, and rhythm and harmony, and soon learned that nature itself flowed in a very similar manner; it was a composition which I was more than pleased to play along with. Martial Arts was both rigid and flexible, depending upon need, and the rigid structures and flexible momentums with which a body flows through forms provided for me a greater understanding of the physical forces. I began to see everything in the same elegance with which a skilled martial artist directs their mass and interacts with that of another. Martial Arts was my most natural form of interaction, and from that, any new knowledge I gained took Martial Arts as an analogy; Martial Arts was a root for my knowledge. All that I learned became relative, not only to Martial Arts, but all concepts to one another, until even the most technical fields began to feel natural to me; thus, my most natural form of interaction acted merely as a starting point of relativity, a starting point which eventually blended in casually with all else that I learned.

    Study habits are altogether an entirely different topic, so I will not go much into those. Most study habits do not cover a proper manner of thinking, but rather foolishly at times attempt to form a rigid process which can create a natural relationship between wide varieties of thoughts. Emphasis must be put on taking advantage of the immense amount of processing power available to us naturally, and so learning how to work with your own individual mind is far more significant, I believe, than mechanical, rigid processes used to remember pointless piles of information. I say pointless, as without being able to properly connect and understand one piece of knowledge with another in a natural manner, you will turn yourself into nothing but an intellectual who knows many facts, but can not see beyond what they have been told. The gift of innovation and imagination passed down to man is not one which we should waste, and so I am against such mental and spiritual decay for the proposed purpose of furthering knowledge. As said by The Giver of the scientists, "They know nothing."


    If All Else Fails, Insanity is Your Friend

    Chances are that no matter how smart you are, your friendly neighborhood Mad Genius with an IQ twenty points below yours will always be better than you are in at least a single field. They are so good, in fact, that you were inclined to present them the title of Mad Genius. You don't have to be particularly intelligent to be good at a single something, just obsessed. To start off, you must bend your perception of the world and make everything relate purely to your field of interest. A mathematician may see numbers and ratios in everything they do. Digital clocks become a fun type of video game, keyboards a cryptographic pattern, and six-digit numbers play toys for the mind before bed, laid out on an imaginary chalkboard. Sure, the consequences of putting yourself in this state may be absolute social unorthodox, megalomania, and most other symptoms of insanity, leaving us to hope that you'll never leave your lair, but obsessive geniuses of this particular sort tend to make the most significant discoveries for the good of mankind. No other type of person is so willing to offer up their lives for the sake of numbers, mechanical gears, or for the study of rare species of mold. If you should choose to follow such a path, I have but only one request. Stay out of politics, please. I find your particular type of obsessive personality too narrow to understand principle ideals such as Civil Liberties, and too single-minded to be aided by a history lesson. Thank you.

    The art of insanity isn't so difficult to master. The conscious choice of running yourself into insanity, however, is far more difficult. Most people, I'd imagine, like seeing the world for what it really is. The idea of seeing everything in terms of numbers might be frightening. When most people look at their clocks, it's usually to know what time it is, for the purpose of either relaxing or intensifying their efforts to get dressed with haste; not to ponder upon how many cells of mold have been fermented since they last walked up to check on their collection. When turning obsessive, you are redirecting the large amount of focus normally put forth for a multitude of tasks towards a single field of interest. In sacrificing dedication towards the world as a whole, you can achieve full mastership of a field as a singularity.

    Somehow, I feel as though I've said enough on this topic even though I haven't given any instructions in particular. I would imagine that most of us have gotten obsessed with one thing or another, if only for a while. The art of obsessive insanity is simply extending the normal kind of desperate obsession into your every day life, forever.


    Thank You,
    Pritchard