Do You Think Before You Speak—or Speak to Think??

Me, I'm a ruminator. I know exactly what I think, but I don't know where to begin. By the time I'm ready to talk, I've already had hours of conversation with myself.

I've imagined objections, revised conclusions, related it to other experiences, made connections, and looked at the issue from a hundred angles. What started as one thought has become an ecosystem

Then someone asks "what's on your mind?" and I'm supposed to make all that into a sentence or two? It seems impossible. I know that sounds backwards — isn't thinking about something supposed to make it easier to talk about? But that's not my experience.

Language is so linear. If every thought branches into three, which branch into three, which branch into three. Which twig do I break off and share with you?

It's not that I don't know what to say, it's that saying just one or two things feels so bare. And I know that the person I'm talking to is going to comment on what I say, and then here we are talking about a twig and leaving the whole tree behind. To use another metaphor, talking is like reviewing a book by reciting one paragraph.

Not Overthinking

The number of times I've been told I'm overthinking... like it's an insult. Ruminate has negative connotations, so I really prefer to say "I'm an internal processor."

Certainly there's a danger to loop endlessly around the same fear or anxiety.

But there is value too in genuinely exploring your own complexity. I examine the hell out of my life, thank you very much, Socrates. But I recognize there can be too much of a good thing. I've gazed at my navel enough to see the lint

The problem is that even healthy reflection reaches diminishing returns if it never becomes external. All of us internal processors need to find our ways to get out thoughts out where other humans can see them

The Opposite Approach: Thinking out loud

I didn't know this until recently but some people don't know what they think about things until they say them. They discover what they think by hearing themselves. This blows me away. They are external processors

They throw out ideas that happened somewhere inside, revise on the fly, contradict themselves, and come to conclusions... the conversation is the thinking. Internal processors do all that, well, internally, so by the time they talk they feel pressure to deliver a finished version.

Neither approach is wrong, of course! Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. One has looked at an issue from every angle, the other is more open to an evolution. One externalizes maybe too early. The other maybe waits too long

BioGraffs creates a middle space

My hope is that BioGraffs can help both the internal and the external processors

For internal processors, BioGraffs:

• Lets complexity exist without having to have it immediately translated into sentences

• Validates contradictory feelings and perspectives

• Get ideas out of your head without forcing them to be simplified into a linear expression

• Give some distance so you can examine thoughts in more concrete relationship

For external processors, BioGraffs

• Slows the impulse to explain

• Creates a pause before language takes over

• Encourages reflection before reaction

Same tool - opposite jobs

This is where I could say I created BioGraffs because I had trouble flattening my thoughts into a sequence of sentences, but that's not exactly true. The truth is more interesting a little ironic even

I created it for fun because I thought it was a weird and quirky way to talk about sex. THEN I realized how powerful it could be for talking about anything that I think about a lot and have trouble flattening into sequences of sentences. So it's kind of like I externally processed BioGraffs into existence, and then realized what I thought about it.