The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Masculine and feminine styles of thinking:
Masculine thinking tends
toward focusing on what separates phenomena from one another and
categorizing them. It looks for contrasts between things to better label
them. It wants to take things apart, like a machine, and analyze the
separate parts that go into the whole. Its thought process is linear,
figuring out the sequence of steps that goes into an event. It prefers to
look at things from the outside, with emotional detachment. The
masculine way of thinking tends to prefer specialization, to dig deep

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into something specific. It feels pleasure in uncovering the order in
phenomena. It likes to build elaborate structures, whether in a book or
a business.
Feminine thinking orients itself differently. It likes to focus on the
whole, how the parts connect to one another, the overall gestalt. In
looking at a group of people, it wants to see how they relate to one
another. Instead of freezing phenomena in time in order to examine
them, it focuses on the organic process itself, how one thing grows into
another. In trying to solve a puzzle, the feminine style will prefer to
meditate on several aspects, absorb the patterns, and let answers or
solutions come to the individual over time, as if they needed to be
cooked. This form of thinking leads to insights when the hidden
connections between things suddenly become visible in intuitive
flashes. As opposed to specialization, it is more interested in how
different fields or forms of knowledge can connect to one another. In
studying another culture, for instance, it will want to get closer to it, to
understand how it is experienced from within. It is more sensitive to
information from the senses, not merely from abstract reasoning.
For too long the masculine style has been seen as more rational and
scientific, but this does not reflect the reality. All of the greatest
scientists in history have displayed a powerful mix of the masculine
and feminine styles. The biologist Louis Pasteur’s greatest discoveries
came from his ability to open his mind to as many explanations as
possible, to let them cook in his mind, in order to see the connections
between wide-ranging phenomena. Einstein attributed all of his
greatest discoveries to intuitions, in which long hours of thinking gave
way to sudden insights about the interconnection of certain facts. The
anthropologist Margaret Mead used the latest abstract models from
her time to rigorously analyze indigenous cultures, but she combined
this with months of living within it and gaining a feel from the inside
position.
In business, Warren Buffett is an example of someone who blends
the two styles. When he considers buying a company, he breaks it
down into its component parts and analyzes them in statistical depth,
but he also tries to get a feel for the overall gestalt of the business, how
the employees relate to one another, the spirit of the group as instilled
by the man or woman at the top—a lot of the intangibles most
businesspeople ignore. He looks at a company from both the outside
and the inside.

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Almost all people will lean more toward one style of thinking. What
you want for yourself is to create balance by leaning more in the other
direction. If you are more on the masculine side, you want to widen the
fields you look at, finding connections between different forms of
knowledge. In looking for solutions, you want to consider more
possibilities, give greater time to the deliberative process, and allow for
freer associations. You need to take seriously the intuitions that come
to you after much deliberation, and not discount the value of emotions
in thinking. Without a sense of excitement and inspiration, your
thinking can become stale and lifeless.
If you lean more in the feminine direction, you need to be capable of
focusing and digging into specific problems, tamping down the
impulse to widen your search and multitask. You have to find pleasure
in boring into one aspect of a problem. Reconstructing a causal chain
and continually refining it will give depth to your thinking. You tend to
see structure and order as dull affairs, giving greater emphasis to
expressing an idea and feeling inspired by it. Instead, you need to
derive pleasure in paying deep attention to the structure of a book,
argument, or project. Being creative and clear with the structure will
give your material its power to influence people. Sometimes you need
to gain greater emotional distance to understand a problem, and you
must force yourself to do so.