What is the process of thinking
On one of those days looking at clouds, I was thinking about thinking. Specifically process of thinking that involves high concentration and problem solving. Why the process of deep focused work starts with clearing your mind? Why you need clutter & distraction free space for critical thinking? What exactly you are doing in your head while doing thinking? I though deeply about this questions and really tried to understand what I was doing in my head while working on some problems or while trying to make some decision. I came up with interesting analogy of computer and algorithms. According to me, the process of thinking is like dry running algorithms. You have some assumptions, some input knowledge and you run simulation on possible outcome on them. The process is literally about predicting outcome on each possible decision path. Because it is so much information that you can hold in your head, you need to remove all other thoughts to make space for the problem you are working on. The more complex the simulation and more information you have, the more you need to remove other thoughts for making ample space in your mind.