What is thoughtfeel?

The sense

Like vision, for concepts

You could describe a dog in writing: it has fur, a wet black nose, and it’s about the size of a capybara. Or you could look at it, and vision gives you all of that at once, with no list.

Concepts have properties too, including properties you could never see. Take the economy. You could write out what’s true of it: millions of people, making and trading things, sometimes booming and sometimes in a slump. People with thoughtfeel can still make that list in words. But when they use thoughtfeel, the sense takes in properties like these all at once.

That makes comparing fast. Show someone photos of two dogs, and they can tell right away whether it’s the same dog. If it isn’t, they can look again and point to why: one has a brown tail, the other a white one. With thoughtfeel, the same works for concepts you imagine. If two concepts aren’t the same, that’s clear right away, and paying attention to each one shows which properties differ.

Is it really all at once?

Taking in the concept is. Putting its properties into words comes after. When a friend walks into a room, you know it’s them right away, before you could describe a single feature. If someone asks what color their eyes are, you look again and say. thoughtfeel works the same way. Someone with thoughtfeel who thinks of a promise knows right away what it is. Then they can pay attention to it and put its properties into words: it’s made to someone, it’s about the future, and it can be broken.

With practice, people notice finer properties, the way a birdwatcher learns to spot details in a bird that look the same to everyone else.

Who has it

Does everyone have it?

Like vision and hearing, it differs from person to person, and it most likely varies the way the mind’s eye does. Based on studies of unsymbolized thinking, about 73% of people have some of it, some have none, and among those who have it, it ranges from faint to vivid. For some people, taking in and imagining concepts is the default way they experience the world. For others, it’s much quieter.

Source: Russell Hurlburt’s study of inner experience (Heavey & Hurlburt, 2008). 22 of 30 people had unsymbolized thinking at least once: a specific thought that comes without words or pictures.

To find out whether you have it, answer one question.

What it isn’t

What thoughtfeel is not

• Not your mind’s eye or inner voice. Pictures and words can come along with a thought, but thoughtfeel works without them.
• Not an emotion. The economy and justice feel different from each other, but neither one feels happy or sad.
• Not the feeling of knowing. Everyone knows what they’re thinking. thoughtfeel gives the thought itself detail you can notice, the way a picture has detail.
• Not a technique. thoughtfeel is the sense. The lessons teach techniques that use it, the way the memory palace uses the mind’s eye.

The lessons

What is it useful for?

thoughtfeel is a sense, like your mind’s eye or your inner voice. Those senses come with well-known techniques you can learn to remember and learn better. The memory palace uses your mind’s eye to pull off remarkable feats of memory, like memorizing a 1,000-digit number in an hour. Your inner voice remembers more when you put the words to a song, which is why the alphabet song works.

thoughtfeel has techniques of its own, and learning them can improve how you think and learn. Each lesson teaches one. Start with the interactive lesson (14 minutes), then see it live in Julian’s first lesson, or see all the lessons.