The Art Of Thinking In Systems: Improve Your Logic, Think More Critically, And Use Proven Systems To Solve Your Problems Strategic Planning For Everyday Life pdfdrive com

Chapter 3: Types of Thinking
There are many different types of thinking. No one type of thinking is better than
the others. They are all useful in certain situations. We shouldn’t only use one
type of thinking to the exclusion of all others. This chapter will examine some of
the most common types of thinking and how they can be helpful in our lives.
Linear Thinking
Linear thinking is the way we were typically taught to think throughout our
lives. It involves looking for a link between a cause and an effect. This type of
thinking believes that one cause has one effect. Linear thinking tells us that there
is a cause and an effect, a problem and a solution, and a beginning and an
ending. This model of thinking looks for a simple one-to-one connection.
Linear thinking can be quite helpful in solving specific kinds of problems. For
example, your cell phone shuts off (effect) because the battery was dead (cause).
If you plug in your phone and charge the battery, your phone will work again. Or
you overslept (effect) because your alarm wasn’t set (cause). If you set your
alarm, you won’t oversleep the next time. Linear thinking is a quick and easy
way to find a solution to a problem.
Linear thinking also comes with its drawbacks. It doesn’t look at things as
complex systems and chooses only to focus on one small piece of a much larger
puzzle. There is often much more to any given situation than linear thinking
allows us to examine. When we focus on just one small part without taking into
account how it is connected to a larger system, it is possible that our solutions
may create unintended consequences that are not always beneficial.

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EventOriented Thinking
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Event-oriented thinking does view the world as being more complex than linear
thinking typically does, but it thinks of life as being made up of a series of
events and not as a system. In this thinking model, an event is something that
happened or is going to happen. Every event is believed to have a cause, and if
we change the cause, the event will also be changed.
Our brains like event-oriented thinking. Our brains feel good about handling
problems that are simple and familiar to us. From the earliest human history, we
planted crops in the spring so we could harvest them in the fall and still have
enough to eat in the winter and throughout the year, we lived near water so we
could have easy access to drinking water, fish for food, and a path for
transportation. We made sharp arrowheads to help us to hunt better, and we
banded together in groups to help us to stay safe and make sure that everyone’s
needs were being met. Event-oriented thinking is the foundation for our logic. If
we do A, then B will happen. This type of thinking is quick, easy to apply, and
easily understood.
Event-oriented thinking is ineffective in dealing with complex problems or
systems. As our society has changed over time, event-oriented thinking has not
evolved along with it. The problems we are faced with today often require a
deeper understanding than event-oriented thinking allows. Events can have more
than one cause, and each cause can have multiple causes as well. If we don’t
take these more complex relationships into account, we can also mistakenly miss
the unintended consequences that may result when we begin to alter systems.
That is beyond the scope of event-oriented thinking.