Augmented thought has the potential to improve pretty much everything. The benefits can be considered from the perspectives of personal growth, competitive advantage and social benefits.
On the ‘What is POW’ page on this website, the effect of the POW system on thinking was described as subtle yet pervasive. The effect is subtle in the sense that a user’s mind will easily accept the additional information and set it aside until needed, analogous to multiplication tables. Once learned and embedded, multiplication tables remain permanently in memory to be summoned and used as needed, but unless called upon, those tables are not present in conscious thought. POW content is stored in the same way, except that the stored POW content is far more useful than multiplication tables.
POW is pervasive in life, since thought is pervasive in life and augmenting thought will usually augment life. POW can be used to augment virtually all modes of thought including contemplation, conversation, decision making and problem solving. All of these thought processes produce outputs, which will benefit from faster and more comprehensive and systematic inputs.
The benefits of the basic system are somewhat quantifiable. For example, education consumes enormous personal resources including time and money. Educational performance may affect employment income and provide additional opportunity for advancement. These significant endeavors are measurable in terms of tuition and other costs related to education, grades in school and, of course, wages and salaries resulting from employment and career advancement.
School and courses can be thought of as investments of time and money for future benefit. Consider the potential impact of even a small change in thinking and memory ability and performance in activities heavily dependent on thought, such as performance in grade school, high school, College and University and all other coursework and reading.
As important as they are, thought in school and occupation are at best second tier thought level events. POW is relevant to all levels of thought including the contemplative thought and decision making that preceded the decision to take a course, read a book, choose a career, and all other important decisions and choices. Imagine that these meta choices can be made better. Better – meaning better than an individual can make without POW.
Apart from the direct benefits of individual growth, better is also relevant in a competitive sense. For example, school and business are, in many ways, competitive endeavors. All else being equal, in a competitive setting, a ten per cent advantage in winner-take-all scenarios may result in a significant and disproportionate advantage in producing desired outcomes.
A more structured approach to thinking enables many other benefits as well. Storing important information in a two dimensional way facilitates a more comprehensive and structured way of thinking. For example, if you have ever considered writing a book, you may be interested in the “Be the Book” concept described under the Be the Book menu on this site. Producing the idea content required for a book may be far easier than commonly thought. More significantly, content developed this way can be produced and stored in a virtual way without the need to manually record it.
The current system uses Excel based VBA software to help a user to place a wide set of generic, non-ideological ideas, and other valued information, in your most accessible memory. The way the material (including ideas) is embedded, facilitates your ability to recognize and recall idea content in the future.
A basic, beta version can be viewed on the iampow.com YouTube channel or from the YouTube menu on this site. If there is interest in this method, it will be expanded.