Loops: Thinking Outside Your Head

Zsolt · June 5, 2026, 9:16am

I grew up believing thinking happened entirely inside the head.

If I just concentrated hard enough, clarity would eventually emerge.

But in my experience, that is rarely how good thinking works.

The biggest breakthroughs usually happen when thinking starts looping through external systems: sketches, gestures, conversations, diagrams, notes, questions, and explanations. Because once an idea leaves the mind and takes shape in the world, it becomes something we can interact with.

This connects closely to the ideas in The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul. Based on expert research across cognitive science and psychology, thinking is not confined to the brain. We think through our environments, tools, bodies, and social interactions.

Transcript:: The Extended Mind - Book on a Page

See also::

That realization fundamentally changed how I approach learning, creativity, and problem-solving.

Instead of trying to “solve” ideas internally, I now try to create cognitive loops around them.

I research.
I organize fragments.
I sketch rough structures.
I step away.
I come back later.
I explain the idea to someone else.
I notice where the explanation breaks down.
I redraw it.

Each loop changes the thought.

However, not all loops are productive. Replaying the same thought internally without gaining new perspective burns energy, but often does not yield solutions. The mind keeps circling the same terrain because nothing external challenges the structure of the idea.

Visual thinking interrupts that cycle.

Yuri Malishenko describes visual thinking as a way of turning verbal, sequential information into external visual representations that support the brain’s thinking process. By drawing ideas as mental maps or diagrams, you can understand them faster, see flaws more easily, think more deeply, communicate better, and make the process more enjoyable.

Transcript:: From Information Overload to Clarity: How Visual Thinking Can Help You Organize Your Thoughts

That is why even rough sketches can create disproportionate insight.

The value is not artistic quality. The value comes from creating detachment. Once a thought appears on paper, it is no longer fused with your identity or emotions. You can examine it more objectively. You can move pieces around. You can ask better questions.

But there is another type of loop that is easy to overlook.

Sometimes progress comes not from engaging more deeply with a problem, but from temporarily disengaging from it.

Rick Rubin describes this as skillful distraction: occupying the conscious mind so the unconscious mind can continue working in the background. Most of us have experienced this phenomenon. You struggle with a problem for hours, give up, go for a walk, wash the dishes, take a shower, and suddenly the solution appears.

The breakthrough feels spontaneous, but it rarely is.

The unconscious mind has been looping around the question while your conscious attention was elsewhere. Simon Sinek and Elle Cordova talk about a similar idea in the A Bit of Optimism Podcast when they explore the role of boredom, which Sinek relabels as “Good nothing”.

In that sense, shower thoughts are another form of cognitive loop. You are still thinking, just not consciously. Stepping away from a problem is not abandoning it. Sometimes it is the most productive thing you can do.

And questions are loops too.

In my experience, some of the most valuable thinking happens not when I find answers, but when somebody asks a question that forces me to redraw the map entirely.

Because thinking is rarely linear.

Therefore, the goal is not to think harder. The goal is to build environments, practices, and feedback loops that help thinking evolve.

Practical Takeaways

The next time you feel stuck on an idea, resist the urge to spend another hour thinking about it internally.

Instead, create a new loop:

Draw it. Even a messy sketch forces you to make implicit assumptions visible.
Explain it. Try describing the idea to a colleague, friend, or even an AI assistant.
Ask a question. “What am I assuming here?” is often more useful than searching for another answer.
Change the medium. Move from text to a diagram, from a diagram to a conversation, or from a conversation to a concept map.
Leave and return. Go for a walk, take a shower, do the dishes, exercise, or engage in another form of skillful distraction. Give your unconscious mind space to keep working.
Seek another perspective. Experts, peers, and beginners all see different aspects of the same problem.

Whenever an idea feels stuck, don’t ask: How can I think harder?

Ask: What loop am I missing?

In a way, this blog post is yet another loop in my own thinking.

Now I’d like to make it part of yours.

How do you move an idea forward when you’re stuck?

Do you sketch? Journal? Walk? Discuss with others? Build concept maps? Ask AI? Teach the idea to someone else? Or do your best ideas arrive in the shower?

Share your favorite thinking loop in the comments. I’m particularly interested in practices that consistently help you gain a new perspective rather than simply going around in circles.

rditmore · June 21, 2026, 4:16pm

Whenever I get stuck on a problem, there are 2 tools in my toolbox that I find myself frequently reaching for. The first of these is taken from systems thinkings. When you are modeling some process and feel either stuck or overwhelmed, that could be a sign your have the wrong level of abstraction. Am I at a low level and missing the forest for the trees? Or am I at such a high level that I can’t distinguish any features of the terrain?

The other tool I reach for comes from Robert Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In particular, one of the concepts I picked up was looking for gumption traps. To avoid this trap, you meticulously take notes on what you know and any underlying assumptions that knowledge is built on. This process helps you find gaps where your underlying assumptions are leading you astray and this helps with understanding what the real problem might be. Mindmaps are very effective tool for working your way through gumption traps.

This reminds I’m long over due for a re-read of Persing’s book. I need to make it a BoaP someday.

Zsolt · June 21, 2026, 4:55pm

I wonder if exhaustion can be considered a gumption trap.

I spent the past weeks fighting the Obsidian code scanner “beast”, reworking things to satisfy its rules. I learned a lot in the process, but looking back, the result is not necessarily better — mostly just different, shaped around the constraints of the scanner. In some ways it may even be worse, because large-scale changes always carry the risk of introducing new hidden errors.

Now I find myself a bit exhausted and dissatisfied, thinking about all the things I could have built if I had spent that energy elsewhere, and about the focus it pulled away from what I actually wanted to do: nurturing this community. It feels a bit like Sisyphus — pushing the same stone uphill, only to watch it roll back down.

This also made me think about Simon Sinek and Elle Cordova’s discussion about boredom and “good nothing” (around 39:47). Is doing nothing, or simply stepping away for a while, actually a legitimate form of thinking outside our heads?

Maybe boredom is not the absence of thinking or initiative. Maybe it is another kind of loop.