Gregorc Thinking Style

06.06.15

My Gregorc thinking style is Concrete Random. The way my brain recieves information is through my senses, and my preferred modalities of information input are books and videos. I like books and videos more than lectures because they allow me to easily go back and revisit certain subjects in order to solidify them. I think repetition is important because the way our brain forms long term memories is via a process called rehearsal. Each time we recall certain knowledge, we activate the neuronal pattern associated with that knowledge. In the short term, this recall process becomes more efficient due to biochemical processes like the build up of neurotransmitters. This effect is amplified even more so in the long term, because the body would adapt physically via gene activation, producing more protein channels and receptors to facilitate the neuron activation. When I first dive into a subject, I like to first skim the material in order to get a fuzzy mind map. Once I have a sense of the overall stucture of the concepts, I organize them into chunks in my head, grouping related concepts together.

For the first unit of phase 0, the biggest struggle for me is that I tend to obsess over the same problem for a long time without break. It's not very efficient because when we are stuck on a problem, sometime taking a break could allow us to solve it faster. Sometimes a shift of mindset could allow new solutions to present itself spontaneously, or something might click while working on an entirely different problem. There were multiple instances where revisiting a problem that I've previously struggled on for hours and looking at it with a fresh eye allowed me to solve it within minutes.

I've always had a growth mindset, because I've never been very competitive by nature. I don't really care about who is smarter than who, and I don't care if someone thinks I'm "dumb." I have no problem with asking "stupid questions," because sometimes even stupid questions can lead to smart discussions. During medical school, I was surrounded by people with "Type A" personalities, and I was always the person who would ask the most basic questions. Sometimes these questions lead to other questions which eventually lead to the answer, and other times my idea was considered and immediately disproved and discarded. I did't find it insulting or take it peronsally if my idea was disregarded, because I prefer we eliminate all the bad ideas quickly over everyone suffer in silence trying to come up with "smart" answers. I'm glad that I kept this good habit for dev bootcamp. I tested bad code with gusto and gleamed a lot of knowledge from the error messages. I think this "fail quick" mindset is good for software devlopment, it's good to know whether something is working ASAP, so that no time is wasted polishing something that is doomed from the begining.