Thinking Deeper About -- Thinking Things Through

It all started with an apology.

I left the toilet seat up. And someone I really care about got upset because of it. Not physically, of course, but emotionally. I wanted to say sorry, but "my bad" wasn't going to cut it. I needed to figure out the real problem. Where did I mess up?

Thinking about that made something click. I since I couldn't just tell her "I'm sorry you were upset", I had to ask myself what system had broken down. (That's my engineering background kicking in.)

Ultimately I figured out that she wasn't upset about the inconvenience I had caused while running on autopilot in the middle of the night, she was upset about what she considered being inconsiderate of her feelings. It wasn't inspiration that led me to that, it was looking at other things that upset her, finding the patterns, describing how the patterns work, testing them against other things, and describing the result in a concise way. Every time I irritated my wife with a spoon left next to the sink for potential reuse, moving a photograph to access a cord and not returning it, or making too much noise in my morning routine, there was a common thread, completely different than things that I consciously refuse to do that I would expect to cause real harm to our relationship.

Collecting examples, finding common traits, and then patterns to the traits, testing them, and finally building an answer worked. I found the pattern, I knew what to apologize for, and the problem was solved.

As I thought back on it, not the apology but the process I used to figure it out, I realized I've been using this same pattern my whole life -- often without even noticing. I use it for writing, for figuring out design problems, political arguments, even for jokes -- and as I discovered, even in relationship problems.

I have a repeatable method for turning a random thought into a real insight. In my more formal work in the technical world I live in, I call it "Structured Synthesis", but here we can just call it "Thinking Through Things".

Most big ideas don't start big. They begin as a little hunch, a flicker of curiosity, something that just feels a little off or totally right but you can't explain why yet. A lot of people stop there. They either chase the idea too fast and build something that falls apart, or they make it so complicated they lose track of it. Most of us never really test if our ideas are any good.

I do it differently, and so often that even when I'm not consciously doing it I can look back and see that I did it following the same pattern over and over. It's become second nature.

Here’s the basic blueprint I follow, whether I'm thinking about it or not, when I'm trying to build a solid idea:

• Start with a gut feeling. That intuition, tension, or a wild guess that just won’t leave you alone.

• Gather examples. Find specific cases—real ones, made-up ones, funny ones. Doesn't matter. Just get your hands dirty with details.

• Group them up. Look for patterns or types. Ask: What makes this group different from that one? You might find things fall into a few clear categories.

• Describe the common traits. What defines those categories? What are their typical patterns or signals?

• Spot the real dividing lines. Find the differences that actually change the meaning or the outcome.

• Build a model. Turn what you've found into a rule or a simple map you could use somewhere else.

• Try to break it. Throw the hardest examples you can find at it. Turn it upside down. Push it to the edges.

• Fix what doesn't hold up. Adjust the model until it works. Rethink your groups if you need to. Figure out what truly matters. If it's not consistent with large and small, weird and mundane, you and others, all without special rules to fit the outliers, it's probably not the best answer yet

• Say it plain and clear. Express the result as clearly as you can. Not to win an argument—but to genuinely understand it. To own that thought.

This doesn't make an idea perfect or undeniably "true." It just makes it an idea you've really thought through. Yes, it feels mechanical, I'm an engineer, remember? So using it in relationships might not feel right to you, but using it to think through real problems might be worth the effort.

Let's use a crazy example: "Shoes cause economic collapse." Sounds ridiculous, right? But let's run it through the system:

• Gut feeling: What if shoes—or something about them—are a clue to how economies crash?

• Examples: Imelda Marcos's three thousand pairs. Sneaker collecting turning into a weird stock market. All the waste from fast fashion. Kids needing new shoes faster than we can afford to replace them. Old movies where shoes are super valuable after the world ends.

• Grouping: Looking at all these examples, some shoes clearly exist for function such as work boots, running shoes, school shoes, while others exist purely for image or prestige. At first glance, that gives us two broad groups: utility shoes and status shoes.

• Describe the common traits. Basic shoes are necessary and functional, with price closely tied to the cost of making them. Status symbol shoes, from OJ Simpson's Bruno Maggi loafers to high fashion shoes, to celebrity-endorsed sports shoes drift away from functionality and with prices skyrocketing well beyond the cost of production.

• Spot the real dividing lines. There's actually a third group. The status symbol shoes are actually two different groups, those that are worn and those that are collected. The celebrity-endorsed sports shoes are priced based on public demand and the expectation that they could be sold to someone else for more than they were bought for. They aren't status symbols, they are speculative "investments" like the Dutch tulip craze, Beanie Babies, and subprime mortgages in the early 2000's.

• Model: So knowing that collector shoes are a craze, with prices unrelated to actual value, we can see that they are part of a patten of thinking prices will increase forever. So for shoes: A simple need leads to choices, at least in societies where choice is possible and permitted. The variation in choices (and human nature) lead to them becoming signs of status, unconnected do the original need. When status can be bought and sold, it leads to speculation and ultimately crash. It’s a consumption spiral where the reason we buy something gets totally separated from actually needing it.

• Try to break it: (I tend to get carried away here.) What about simple sandals? Or boring state-mandated shoes in communist countries? Or shoes you buy in an online game to decorate a video game character? The model still makes sense. It also applies to Beanie Babies and baseball cards and houses and cars and plastic surgery.

• Fixing it: Okay, it's not the shoes themselves. It's the way we turn core human needs into a competition for status that then gets mistaken for a valid investment that has nothing to do with their original purpose. Shoes are just an easy way to spot the problem.

• Say it clear: The economy starts falling apart when we treat necessities like status games totally removed from real use. Shoes are an example, not the cause.

So we get an answer -- not that shoes are the cause of the collapse of nations, but that they are an example of the bubbles that cause economic bubbles and eventual collapse.

Why does this actually work?

It doesn't guarantee you'll come up with a brilliant idea every time. It just gives you a structure to see your ideas more clearly, challenge them, and explain them better. Following the process FORCES you to do the work.

It works for me because it’s how my brain naturally works. But now that I can see the pattern and name it, I can share it. You don't have to use all the steps, every single time. But even trying a few can take a fuzzy idea and make it something strong, repeatable, and easy to teach someone else.

So, back to the apology.

I thought about what she was really trying to tell me. The real change was that I actually made the effort to consciously think about it, I didn't just assume that the single toilet seat incident was the problem, I looked at it as part of a pattern. My thinking process didn’t just help me say "sorry" better; it helped me truly grasp what I needed to apologize for in the first place.

Since realizing I had followed a pattern, I use it consciously. I was trying to figure out a completely different challenge: defining what makes a "Renaissance Man." I needed to explain his characteristics, the tools he used, and the problems he faced. I didn't start with the answer. I just followed this same path until I had something that made sense.

I used it to look at the problem of homelessness and discovered that we have multiple problems all with the same external signals, making most proposed solutions ineffective. I looked at philosophical problems like the nature of virtue and vice. I used it in my fiction writing to figure out why certain characters are effective villains and others are not.

And at the risk of edging into silliness, I even used it to figure out what to have for dinner last night -- not formally, scribbled across the white board, but informally in my head but still thinking about examples, characteristics, patterns, tests, and coming up with a result.

I can't help it, I'm an engineer.

This process doesn’t make you right. It makes you honest. It makes you do the actual work of thinking. And sometimes, when you do that work, a strange little idea turns out to be something you can really stand behind.

And if not? Well, at least you’ll know how to apologize better next time.

As you read the posts I put here on Vocal, keep this process in mind and you'll see it at work. Some posts will be highly technical, some will be more accessible, but now that you know how I think things through, the pattern will be there.