

Ask HN: What is the thinking style of HN? - ivyirwin

I'm working for a startup (mindtime.com) that has developed a new model of human cognition positing that each of the temporal frames that our species has conceptualized—future, past, and present—correlates with a specific set of cognitive aptitudes.<p>Broadly speaking, future thinking gives us an awareness of possibilities, past thinking gives us an awareness of certainties and present thinking an awareness of probabilities. In the startup world, this might translate to idea generation (future activity), validation (past activity), and execution (present activity). Each individual member of a startup team blends these three perspectives in their own way, but are all of the thinking styles necessary to make the start-up work?<p>So what is the thinking style of HN? Are we a community of future, past or present thinkers? Or a healthy mix of all three?<p>We've developed a simple app to measure the thinking style of communities. Please participate at apps.facebook.com/mindtime/ and report back here with your unique blend.
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SHOwnsYou
Ok, so I was predominantly future thinking style (as probably most of HN).

But the biggest error I see that it suggest I am inclined toward spontaneity
and impulsiveness.

I can see where this comes from - I marked that I do not methodically examine
choices before I make them. Which is accurate, but not so much when viewed in
a vacuum.

When faced with a decision that is not time sensitive, I like to think about
the idea for a few minutes, then come back to it a week later, not explicitly
thinking about the problem as the week progresses. During that week of not
thinking, it is typical to have a sudden breakthrough. If that doesn't happen,
when I revisit the problem and commit to thinking about it, I discover that my
decisions have already been made without me trying to figure everything out.
In a sense it is letting my subconscious do all the heavy lifting.

I very much enjoyed reading through the results.

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ivyirwin
Thanks for checking it out -- glad you enjoyed reading the results. I also
suspect HN will be composed of mostly future thinkers, but our research points
to successful companies needing all three constructs to operate efficiently.

By the way, we will be adding a link to retake the questions in the next
revision.

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iontheprize
Ok, I took the plunge and I'm definitely in the idea generation area. My
strengths are much more in line with CEO/CTO than COO. Here's the test result:

You are primarily driven by Future thinking qualities, and your thinking style
generates:

Enthusiasm for fresh ideas; Ingenuity led by intuition; A sense for
possibilities; An embrace of opportunities and change; A constant drive
towards the new and unexplored.

~~~
mindbeingman
Hi, I'm one of the team developing MindTime and thought that perhaps I might
help in the discussion. While you definitely seem to use Future thinking as
your lead (the brief description points to our lead perspective more than
anything) it does not mean that you aren't also using a good amount of Present
or Past thinking in the mix. My experience with COO's is that they are often
Future/Present or Present/Future thinkers. Especially in software development.
The nature of the beast requires a strong ability to stay with what can often
be a moving target and changing sets of variables or assumptions while driving
things toward concrete goals. The more in-depth description provided in the FB
app should give you a fuller picture of your thinking style.

