Controlled Chaos: Thinking, as done by the Type A.

I colour-code my closet, organizing tops within colour categories by sleeve length. I can tell you exactly where in which drawer you can find any given clothing item. I have a photographic memory enabling me to visualize precisely where on a piece of paper the word, sentence, diagram, or concept I’m thinking of could be found. I’m that person fidgeting, shifting, tweeting, facebooking, texting, constantly thinking in the movie theatre – it drives my mom crazy (seriously though, she basically refuses to watch movies with me now). My brain never shuts off; it’s literally given me insomnia. I am Type A. It’s not an excuse; it’s just an explanation.

SIDEBAR: Although I actively manage what I perceive as the negative fallouts of my Type A personality – such as excessive control issues – I’m not perfect, but I refuse to use it as an excuse. If you catch me doing it, call me out!

I digress, as much as I often think about myself as an analytic thinker, the more I reflect on my academic journey through post-secondary school, particularly within the Sauder School of Business, the more I realise I am a depiction of the reconciliation between the two schools of thought that Martin discusses. Originally pursuing finance, I did a 180 in my choice of concentration after just one semester of forced quantitative and analytical thinking, switching to the creativity and innovation facilitating concentration of marketing. Rather than viewing these two “schools of thought” as dichotomous, I prefer Martin’s way of thinking that they are instead tools to be leveraged in conjunction, through “design thinking.” Despite my drastic switch from finance to marketing, when I have a problem to solve or an essay to write, my thinking is very linear. In life, such as in the movie theatre with my mom, my thinking is constant, erratic, and un-contextual.

When I am preparing for work such as a marketing consulting job or writing an essay, I start in a very systematic way, essentially using a “fill in the blank” approach. Obsessively. In some ways, my way of thinking could be best described as a funnel:

I start with the bigger picture

and I work backwards,

developing a structure

such as headings

Seriously, for my latest essay I have nine pages solely of headings and two graphics. However, where I often get “stuck” is when my work no longer fits the blanks. Rather than just going in a new direction, I will often try to make my work fit the pre-defined structure rather than thinking of a new structure to fit my work. I don’t like to give up. From the outset, this detail-oriented approach prevents me from seeing the bigger picture, immediately limiting my creativity and openness.

Conversely, in problem solving my thinking breakdown is relatively immediate, as I try to accomplish the (almost) impossible and find a solution that makes everyone happy. Then after the fact I will almost always look back and process what I “should” have done to avoid outcome X that resulted from the solution I implemented; I dwell. Also, I often find that the stakeholder I seem to prioritize least is myself. Frustrating, to say the least. Perhaps my lack of self-satisfaction is the reason I spend so much time re-thinking through things, dwelling on what I can’t change.
Something else that has been brought to my attention while writing about the way I think is that I am very visual; as I work through things – whether it’s an assignment, an essay, a business problem – I write down my thoughts. Scratch that: I’m not visual, I’m disorganized. Controlled chaos. CHAOS because I think of things spontaneously and supremely out of context. CONTROL because I write these things down to “come back to” later. This way, I am able to go back and grab these disorganized snippets of thought, later finding the appropriate place to insert the thought or find the time to address the thought. I thought my thinking only followed such an erratic, non-linear pattern in life; clearly, I was wrong. Disorganized. That is not a word I ever though I would use to describe myself. Thankfully, my intensely Type A self unconsciously controls the chaos!

Type A-lly Yours,

PS – I wasn’t kidding about my closet.