I want to reopen a conversation that I started having about two years ago, when I published a story on Medium about how I think we move through the world. The official title is "Electricity in Motion: A Theory on An Elementary Process Underlying Modern Development Approaches" and, if you're not put off by that too-long and pretentious headline, you can read it here.

The basic idea is this: we can exist in one of two states - Thinking or Doing. Neither one is inherently good or bad. How we make progress is through flipping between the two. This is where I usually picture one of those old-timey handcarts featured in cartoons, where two people alternately push up and down on a handlebar to get things rolling. What is important is not which state we're in, but how rapidly we're moving between them (how quickly we pump that handle up and down).

The interesting part is that there are "switches" that we can flip to help us get that forward momentum. When you're Thinking, and feel like you need to Do, flip the "Decide" switch - make a decision and move forward. When you're Doing, and realize that you're flailing, flip the "Observe/Learn" switch - take a step back, look at all the data you've gathered, synthesize, and then figure out the next decision you need to make.

I bring this idea up again because I work in technology and I'm often frustrated by the increasing emphasis on Doing at the expense of Thinking. "Move fast and break things." "Fail fast." "While talkers talk builders build."

To reiterate - Doing is not bad. Doing is AWESOME. By all means, move fast! Breaking things seems less appealing because broken things need fixing, but hey, people like doing that, too. But if you never stop to THINK, then what are you REALLY doing? What's the point of failing without learning? If the builders never talk to people, how do they know what to build? Or why they're building it in the first place?

Over the last two years, I've found this framework super useful in helping me move through my work at the right pace. Comments are on - I would love to hear what you think about it!