The habits of mind

Something I think people in general are not thinking very much about, is their own individual habits of thought. We all think about what we perceive, what we experience and what we do, but rarely do we take the time to examine the actual mental activity going on, and rarely do we try to dissect the exact actions our minds do when we think about something or process information.

I think it is in some ways important to think about our cognition in relation to certain modes of thought and thinking related to certain actions. I've found that often times when I come across a new piece of information, I quickly examine it and analyze its meaning intuitively, symbolically, semantically, or in whatever context and relation I find to be a meaningful categorization for this new information. Yet I've come to realize that it may be crucial to think more about exactly what's going on when this is happening

I have not, until recently, considered or questioned very much about the process of cognition going on. Through my recent pondering on this, I have considered some possibilities of improving and changing the act of processing information by examining the step by step process of doing so. I have found that through the process of considering something, aspects of the information may easily be ignored or given too much or too little thought, thereby limiting the effectivity of processing information and aquiring new knowledge. A lot of people may be unaware of this occuring, and of the possibility of changing this by becoming more aware of the cognition behind thinking and processing information.

In today's world with the superhighway of information that we're exposed to and constantly experiencing in our every day lives, it's crucial to not only carefully examine new information in relation to currently held knowledge, but also to carefully examine the process of doing so. In closing, you may find it useful to consider exactly how you processed the information given in this post, and try to find out whether you could change your mindset and turn yourself into a more effective and reliable processor of information.