This post is a part of the GroupLens Iron Blogging effort, so take that for what you will.

One of the things that seems to be necessary (if not sufficient) for success in academia is how consistent and efficient people can be with their clarity of thought, rather than the capacity for good thought.

This is something I find myself struggling with a lot. I often have vague notions of something that seems interesting, but I’m not always very good at articulating or clearly defining the thought that I’m having.

The other odd part about this is that it seems entirely opaque to me what helps build this clarity of thinking, and how you achieves the high rate of consistency and efficiency of clear, put together lines of thought.

I’ve often wondered if there is personal infrastructure I can put in place that supports habituation of thinking clearly, or if it’s just a thing one has to be mindful of always. If you’ve got ideas, I’d love to hear them.