The Problem with Tools for Thought!

There's something amiss with the term 'Tools for Thought.' Perhaps something as simple as having the word ‘Tool’ first causes us to focus on the tool more than the thinking. Maybe even using the term ‘Thought’ can lead us astray. It’s easy to confuse thought as an object rather than thought as a process. Once that happens, we seek to manipulate the thoughts we’ve already had rather than enabling their generation.

Perhaps it's no wonder that the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) community is so preoccupied with the tools themselves. We’ve become obsessed with managing notes, the external indicator of thought, rather than the internal process of thinking.

Words have power! The way we describe the world around us impacts how we interpret and interact with that world. So perhaps it's time to consider the terms we use and how that shapes the community we build.

Where Are We Headed?

What's the point, you might ask, in spending what limited time we have discussing the triviality of terms? I have meta-data to add, workflows to polish, and integrations to refine.

But there's potential for division within the community because we've not yet come to terms. We use the same words with different meanings or different words with the same meaning, but more on that in a future article.

Unless we get clear on our terms, we risk a future where we do less and less of the thinking and more and more of the managing. We might shift from being the generators of thoughts to simply shovelling the proverbial coal into the furnaces. Ceaselessly providing inputs for tools in hopes that they’ll do the thinking for us.

I’ve started to hear more about how we can use AI and other fancy computer processes to analyze the information in our PKM systems to make connections and generate insights for us. Is this the future we want?

Would we be as willing to have another human do our thinking? Or because it's a system we think we 'control,' we convince ourselves that it's still us doing the thinking?

Where Could We Go Instead?

If we shift our focus to what the tools enable us to do, perhaps we can unlock the potential to truly develop our thinking.

How often have you heard a hammer referred to as a Tool for Construction or a brush discussed as being a Tool for Art? Likely never.

Instead, it’s a Builder's Tools or an Artist's Tools. The focus is on the individual and what they create. So perhaps it's time we start talking about Thinker's Tools. (Common terms also include Art Tools, so Thinking Tools works as well).

The Thinker comes first, and the Tool is second.

Because no matter what the tool is, nothing is intrinsically a tool for thought. Just as a hammer can be used to build, it can also be used to destroy, or if we get a bit morbid, even as a murder weapon. A tool’s function depends on how you use it.

With the way we embrace the secondary and tertiary features, so-called Tools for Thought are also becoming Communication Tools, Task Managers, and, if we aren't careful, Tools for Distraction. They become the barriers in the way of thinking rather than enablers of it.

When we shift our focus from products to processes, nearly anything can be a Thinker's Tool. Perhaps one of the most effective ones is simply going for a walk; nothing generates insights quite like it. Yet how often is this critical tool touted in online discussions?

Conclusion

The potholes we need to avoid on the road of knowledge development is how easily we can go from having Tools for Thought to having Tools for Thoughts. We don't necessarily need more notes or features in our apps; we need more neural connections. Because regardless of the tool we use to enable thinking, the only one we have that actually does the work is our mind, not our personal knowledge management system.

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