Talking to Myself

I've been writing down my thoughts in one form or another since high school. Unburdening myself of some cognitive surplus helps me think a little more clearly, and I've found that writing about something usually leads to fresh insights. My realization that I'm unhappy working on a me-too project is one instance where my writing about an issue led to a new perspective on an important issue (important to me at least). I usually don't fully understand the results of experiments that I've run in the lab until I've tried to write a paper or prepare a presentation. The internal dialogue required to make my interpretation of a data set clear to somebody else almost always makes that argument significantly better. Talking to somebody else about a research problem typically has a similar result. 


I've been reading a book, Conversational Realities, that explores this notion of how language influences thought. There is a passage that describes what I've experienced in trying to understand a new concept, "People's attempt to realize their thoughts - to formulate their thoughts to themselves in ways which make those thoughts socially usable, so to speak - must be negotiated in an inner back-and-forth process, in which they must attempt to understand and challenge their own proposed formulations as the others around them might." (Shotter 44) Thoughts "only become organized, in a moment-by-moment, back-and-forth, formative or developmental process at the boundaries of our being, involving similar 'linguistically mediated ethical negotiations' as those we conduct in our everyday dialogues with others." (Shotter 46)


This internal dialogue is a skill. My enrollment in the Marist online MBA program has given me a handy reference to compare my ability to learn new material now as compared to my study skills as an undergrad 15 or so years ago. School seems much easier now. Grad school seemed easier, but those classes were all in a subject that I have been dealing with for my entire career. I've never taken a business class, but I've been able to learn the material enough to do well in the classes without too much effort. My practice with this internal dialogue, posing questions to myself to gauge my understanding of a topic, has been a key tool in learning new material.