Do you REALLY Think?

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I was playing a game of questions & answers with my friends with the rule that they need to answer within 5 seconds of me completing the question. I was asking them questions like "Which country is the largest exporter of Tea?", "Which is the 3rd highest mountain peak in the world?” etc. And after a while one of the friends said that I need to give more time from 5 seconds to say 15 seconds. I asked him "Why?", and he replied he need more time to THINK!

You might have asked similar questions to the people in day-to-day life like "What is Rahul's Phone No?", "How far is New Delhi from here?", etc. And soon thereafter they will gesture like they are THINKING, before they answer out. The common entity among all these questions is, they have a finite answer. So, would you agree with them that they were THINKING? Or would you agree with that they were just SEARCHING? In my opinion, someone who is good at answering quiz questions may not be a good Thinker. Where as someone who is good at reasoning, planning, decision making, and doing similar activities is most likely a good Thinker.

Remember of when you were kid, how many of your classmates used to raise their hands quickly soon after teacher finishes the question? All of those were having great Recall & Search memory, and how many of them used to dive into the questions and come out with some creative answers after a while? All of those were Thinkers. But the 'Fact of the Life' is then Searcher succeeded and Thinkers Failed! But as you grew, you would have observed it going reverse.

Consider your brain is having a box within, and whatever you have learned so far is in this box. Now, if somebody asks you a solution to the problem, most of the time you will go to this box, search out pieces from your learning, apply some relational analysis and join those pieces to present the solution. Eventually you are going to make a known solution, because it came from learning already known.

The Power to THINK is so incredible, it allows you to go beyond the boundaries of this box, and come out with a solution which is unknown to this world. And it is you who need to apply that 'extra' effort on your THINK muscle, because it that 'extra' only which differentiates between an ORDINARY & an EXTRAORDINARY.