Thought Mining

When does a careful plan help you decide, and when is it a polished way of not starting? Today's thought, from Nathan: over-systematizing your life with conceptual frameworks is just intellectual procrastination. Nathan collects frameworks; four of them hang on his wall. Derek mostly plays jazz. They work through two of Nathan's: CORCE, the framework behind this show, and ALT MAP, which Na...

Should you change who you are to get ahead, or wait to ripen into what you already are? Today's thought: trying to force your unique talents into a standard mold is like painting a banana red to look like an apple. It comes from a story in Nathan's 30-year journal, about a green banana who rolls himself in red paint to be loved like the apples. Derek asks what that means for a show that wo...

Is turning your hobby into a side hustle the best thing you can do with it, or the fastest way to kill it? Nathan brings the thought: turning every personal hobby into a side hustle destroys the hobby. Derek starts with a deodorant sponsor who doesn't want you talking about what's in their deodorant, and it gets harder from there: books nobody buys, books you only write because they sell, and whet...

Is letting AI do your writing like paying someone to go to the gym for you? That's the thought Nathan brought to this episode, the first of season two. It started with a Cal Newport op-ed in the New York Times about technology making us intellectually lazy, and it took us from AI-written email chains to James Patterson's ghostwriters, e-bikes, Icarus, the Borg, and whether either of us cou...

In this episode of Thought Mining, we explore a powerful quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”What does Emerson mean by this? How can we apply it in a world full of uncertainty, distraction, and pressure? Join us for a contemplative conversation where we break down the meaning behind the quote, deconstruct its philosophic...

Derek and Nathan thought mine the quote, "Impatience is an argument with reality," from Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. What do you think? Is impatience an argument with reality?

In this episode of the Thought Mining Podcast, hosts Derek and Nathan welcome Tanner Wells, a sophisticated explorer of geographic regions, cultures, and perspectives. They discuss predictive processing, explaining how our brains use life experiences to fill in details, sometimes leading to biases. The conversation covers the implications for safety, time-saving, and social interactions, with Tann...

Derek and Nathan discuss experiences with being spontaneously vulnerable. They explore positive and negative consequences of times when they acted or hesitated to act on opportunities to do things beyond the scope of their comfort zone. The episode concludes with a peek into both of them being spontaneously vulnerable in a parody rap video that fostered the origin of their friendship.

This is the second part of a two-part series on fears of speaking up in group settings. Derek and Nathan discuss fears related to passion, presence, and relevance.

Derek and Nathan continue mining thoughts related to fear. Their conversation includes a discussion on three out of six fears that Nathan feels have sometimes hindered his ability to speak up in meetings at work.

Derek and Nathan mine thoughts associated with fears of doing new things. They discuss some of Derek's experiences with speaking a foreign language and doing improv comedy and explore a reflection that Nathan wrote after waking up from a dream related to the theme of feeling anxious about vulnerably pursuing and sharing a new project.

Derek and Nathan continue their thought mining journey. Derek introduces his visions for an anti-Jobs character and a reality show for psychics. Nathan reads another excerpt from his original middle-of-the-night reflection on the concept of thought mining as well as a phrase from a recent walk that he felt inclined to thought mine. They touch on practices of shared and individual meditation, how s...

Derek and Nathan discuss thought mining characteristics and strategies as they lead you on a journey of unconventional thinking and uncommon awareness.

This is the first episode of the Thought Mining podcast. Derek Olson and Nathan Anderson introduce the concept of thought mining. They discuss the origin of their awareness of the term, their initial interpretations of what it means, and how it inspired the title of the podcast. Their conversation in this episode is generally informed by the following excerpt of a reflection that Nathan wrote in t...