Use Tech to Manage Your 12,000 Daily Thoughts

According to a widely quoted National Science Foundation Study, on average we have 12,000 thoughts per day. And it can run as many as 60,000 thoughts per day.   I have been unable to locate the original study. No matter, we have all experienced the constant self talk and flow of ideas that make up everyday experience.

How do we mange so many ideas? Are there ways to manage our idea flow that will improve cognitive performance in decision making, self-regulation and creative problem solving?

Well known techniques for managing daily idea flow include journaling, keeping a notepad by your bed and other methods of trying to write them down. There is value in that but it is very low tech.  Powerful but simple tools like Evernote, give us a way of quickly capturing our idea flow electronically (phone or computer) and relating it to other on-line documents and information.

The very act of documenting our idea flow slows it down and changes it. We may lose important notions.  Fortunately, voice recognition technology has advanced to the point where we can reliably capture our thought by speaking to our phone or computer. Check out the Dragon line of naturally speaking products from Nuance.  They have dictation and voice recognition products for every need including the iPhone dictation app shown below.

But will using technology to smoothly capture our thought flows improve our cognitive performance?

There is some evidence it does.  For example, in the June 2011 issue of Wired, Clive Thompson argues in his story, Hold That Thought, that voice recognition technology may help us be more creative and over come mental challenges such as writer’s block.

From a general standpoint, having a transcript of all our thoughts in a given day could provide many insights. For example, we could identify patterns of self-talk that are negative or see bits of important ideas that might otherwise have been lost.

This summer I am planning to do some simple experiments at Northwestern University with students in my cognitive design class on capturing and analyzing daily though flows. I will blog the results. In the meantime, I am interested to hear from readers on how you capture daily thoughts and use that to improve cognitive performance.