The Discipline and Process of Synthesis

How deep thinkers make related conclusions in unrelated fields

This piece has been building and bouncing for a while in my head, and as part of this ongoing conversation between myself, Michael Woudenberg, and Karina Schneidman MBA, MS-MFT regarding personalities, pathology, and labels, I thought I would try to explain the process that goes into pulling multiple unrelated fields together to create a synthesized idea—partly because you can learn to do it, if you don’t already, and partly because the world needs a lot more people doing it. Michael was a natural choice to continue this part of the conversation with; after all, he’s an aspiring polymath, so synthesis is his thing too. It’s a learned and sharpened skill, but that means anyone can learn it. Let’s dig in.

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What does it mean to be a deep thinker?

Do you consider yourself one?

Why or why not?

When people say, “that person is a deep thinker,” what they often mean is:

• Reads a lot

• Quotes people you haven’t heard of

• Can spot logical fallacies in an argument

• Is a contrarian

• Has a high IQ

• Comes up with new ideas

All of these are good things, and yet none of them, even when combined, constitute deep synthesis, where real work can be done. The systems for it can be built, and the structure can be created, so why isn’t it done more?

First, let’s define the term.

Synthesis is the act of holding multiple models in tension, identifying their overlaps and contradictions, extracting the invariant principles beneath them, and then recombining those principles into a more complete framework.

Put even more simply, it is pattern recognition and extraction across domains. It leads to some pretty robust ideas and fascinating challenges. Apoorvaa Deshpande called people who do this “Merge Masters,” defining it as taking “two domains and deliberately collid[ing] them, producing something neither could generate alone.”

One of my readers, Marshall R Peterson, pointed out that while Apoorva’s definition is great, the “more, the merrier.” Why collide only two domains when you can collide more? He brings up an excellent point; after all, my own work uses five—a fact I didn’t even truly realize until writing this article. Michael Woudenberg’s work uses even more than that, as do a lot of the amazing thinkers that I follow here on Substack.

I love synthesizing. There are few things as alive-making for me as having a conversation with someone in an entirely different field, holding entirely different experiences and knowledge, and exploring what each of us can contribute to an even greater idea. In fact, that’s how my podcast was born. That’s how The Grey Cell Protocols evolved over the years, and continues to do so. It’s how I approach so many things, with a combination of “What about…?” and “Now what…?” with a splash of “What if…?”

Daydreaming, you might call it, but for grownups.

I have been thinking a great deal about how I think. It sounds like self-absorbed navel-gazing, but it has a point: recalibration. Recently, I was doing some particularly brutal self-inventory (is there any other kind worth doing?), and I found myself asking things like:

How do I get to my conclusions? Do I miss evidence? Do I try to cram square pegs of information into round holes of decision? What pieces of my orientation are rising to the surface without me noticing? Why is this particular idea or belief important to me? What is uncomfortable about asking these things?

That led me down a deep rabbit hole of note-taking and thinking, and more note-taking and thinking, until I could explain the point; no, until I understood the point myself.

So many interesting questions arose during this exercise. What began as a heightened version of “do you really have any idea what you’re talking about on a given day?” evolved into an internal structure around synthesis itself.

• What does it require? More specifically, what does it require of me?

• How do I already do it?

• How can I do it better?

• What am I missing?

And of course, with the answers to those questions come more questions; this time, they are of the daydreaming variety:

• Can it be scaled?

• Can it be taught?

• Is it already taught somewhere?

• Do a lot of people already do it?

• How do they do it differently from me, and what can I learn from that?

• Who else could learn it?

• What would happen if they learned it?

• What could happen if they used it?

Once my brain reached that last question, the quest became obvious: I needed to be able to explain it.

I don’t think about this in the simplified sense of “critical thinking,” which is often reduced to lists of logical fallacies and argument structures. Those tools are useful, but they don’t explain where ideas actually come from.

The deeper question is where frameworks originate. Where does that moment occur when two ideas that appear unrelated suddenly connect and produce something new? Why do certain insights appear only after multiple disciplines intersect? Why do some conversations unlock entirely new lines of thinking while others simply circle the same ground?

The more I examined my own thinking, the more I noticed that synthesis rarely begins with answers but with collisions of questions.

These questions involve ideas, people, and arguments that don’t exactly agree. Contradictions and seemingly dead ends that maybe have a tiny trap door to something more, if you’re willing to sit in it and look around long enough. Woudenberg and I, for instance, disagree fairly viscerally on a few things, and yet that is what made our recent podcast discussion so intellectually stimulating.

I think people like to resolve contradictions quickly. We choose one model and discard the other, or we default to the framework we are already most comfortable with. More dangerously, we force a new idea into the slot that fits our desired conclusion.

Synthesis requires doing something different. Instead of resolving the contradiction immediately, you allow both (or all of the) models to remain in tension long enough to examine them carefully.

That period of tension is where the interesting work happens. Over time, patterns begin to appear. You start to see where the models overlap and where they diverge. You begin asking which parts of each model actually survive contact and pushback, and which parts don’t make it. Once the weaker pieces are stripped away, what remains are the underlying principles that both models were attempting to describe.

Those principles become the building blocks for something new.

Looking back, I realized that most of my own work had followed exactly this path. The Grey Cell Protocols did not appear because I sat down one day and decided to invent a doctrine (and if I had, it would have been a pretty trash piece of work), although I did decide to formalize the patterns I saw. The doctrine itself emerged from a long period of examining ideas from several different disciplines that were never originally intended to intersect. Military doctrine, psychology, neurological trauma research, behavioral analysis, and counterintelligence all contained fragments of the same problem. Each field offered useful insights, but none of them addressed the entire issue on its own.

The only way forward was synthesis.

Over time, that pattern began to repeat itself. Whenever a question became interesting enough to pursue seriously, the investigation almost always led outside the original field where the question appeared. The answer to a problem in one domain often requires examining research in another domain entirely. Eventually, the overlapping patterns began to reveal themselves.

When you spend enough time thinking this way, another observation becomes unavoidable.

Holding multiple competing models in your mind requires patience, curiosity, and a willingness to tolerate uncertainty for longer than most environments encourage. Modern culture, particularly online culture, rewards fast conclusions and confident declarations. Synthesis requires the opposite posture. It demands the willingness to remain uncertain long enough to see what emerges. It requires being able to say, “I don’t know yet; let’s think more about it.”

Synthesis, polymathic thinking, or whatever else you’d like to call it, isn’t mystical or inaccessible, and certainly someone who engages in it is not special or somehow worth more. All of that being said, it’s still uncommon, and wielding it well can feel like a superpower.

Which brings us back to the original question.

What does it actually mean to be a deep thinker?

I posit that deep thinking, in the sense that produces frameworks and workable ideas rather than isolated insights, is the discipline of holding competing models of reality in tension long enough for a pattern to emerge.

Once that pattern appears, the work shifts from analysis to construction. Principles are extracted, relationships between ideas become clearer, and a framework slowly begins to take shape in the midst of the never-ending questions.

That is synthesis, and once you start recognizing the process, you begin to see it everywhere. You start to do it everywhere. There’s no limit to where you can go then.

The next logical question is “what kind of personality types ‘do’ synthesis?” I think now we’re squarely in Michael’s territory, so let’s hand it off to him.

What Kind of Personalities Engage in Synthesis?

Discipline and synthesis hit a crux when it comes to personality because there are proclivities that make this easier, or harder, but never impossible. Let me pause here because personality is often contentious, especially when a mirror is held up that contradicts our core mental frameworks against how we’d really like to believe we’re capable of.

Let me start off by saying that personality measurements are proclivities, not absolutes and personality can, and does adapt over time, through life circumstances, and through intentional adaptation. That said, they’re also anchors that require deeper analysis so we can do synthesis better. For example, on the Myers-Briggs, I’m an ENTJ. For years, I struggled to understand why my brain naturally moved toward synthesis while everyone else seemed perfectly comfortable focusing on the ‘thing.’ That’s when I learned that 75% of the population are Sensors. (S-types) This means they naturally go into the problem, whereas the Intuitive (N-types) naturally step back for greater context.

Now, add in the Thinking (T) and Judging (J – Orderliness), and I’m big-picture, analytical, and structured in my approach to analysis. In comparison, someone who is Sensing, Feeling (F), and Perceiving (Disorderly) isn’t going to be inclined for, not only the synthesis, but the objective and structured analytics.

Now, shifting to the Big 5 personality profile, we deal with Openness, Conscientiousness (orderliness in MBTI), Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (degree of natural anxiety, worry, doubt). It’s not hard to begin seeing that a person who is low on Openness and Contentiousness while high in Agreeableness and Neuroticism will have a very hard time overcoming their core proclivities to explore new ideas and areas. They’ll lack orderliness for their thinking structures, and aren’t inclined to challenge the status quo. Lastly they approach the situation with a higher baseline anxiety and doubt about the whole venture.

This isn’t a failure in any way. They’re part of the beautiful tapestry of humanity. We don’t want everyone to think like me. We don’t want to force me to think like you. We complement each other because while Kit (INTJ), Karina (ENTJ), and I are all similar, we need to be grounded by others who will hold us accountable to respect the people who are more connected to the details, the emotions, the social strata, and the nuance of each topic.

Simply put, I can’t do synthesis well if I don’t have the positive tension of the other ways people view, interpret, and engage with the world with different personalities than me.

This also means that we can’t expect everyone to do synthesis the same way we do. This is where it’s important to pause, consider who you are and how you interact with the world, and collaborate with those who think differently. For a person not inclined to the types of thinking and synthesis Kit talks about, that’s not wrong, unless you refuse to understand that others are inclined, do the analysis, and come up with different insights than you. That’s what I do at Polymathic Being, where we explore counterintuitive insights across domains and disciplines. While my readers range across the personality continuum, I’ve learned after nearly four years of writing and talking to them, there is a very wide diversity to interpretation, acceptance, and even understanding of the synthesis I’m performing. But they’re all there to explore.

A problem only emerges when we refuse to understand and accept that diversity of thought. This is why, for the topic at hand, I recommend approaching life with Insatiable Curiosity, The Humility to accept we don’t have all the answers, and Intentional Reframing to see if we understand the situation. If I were to just distill this one layer more, it’s the ability to Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn. Anyone can do this, and when you do, regardless of your personality proclivities, you’ll start thinking differently, and you’ll begin doing synthesis.

Conclusion

Synthesis is not reserved for a certain type of person or a certain level of intelligence. Certainly, some personalities are more inclined to it than others, but at its core, it’s a discipline of attention, and that means anyone can learn how to do it.

It’s a choice to slow down, to sit in questions longer than feels comfortable, and to remain open to the possibility that the first answer you reach is incomplete. There is even a very real possibility that the answer isn’t found in the place or even the discipline where you first looked, or that the answer leads to even more questions (as it should!).

When you become more aware of how you already think, where your defaults limit you, and where other perspectives can sharpen you, if you’re willing to lean into that consistently and deliberately, you will start to see connections you didn’t see before. Once you start to see those, there is no limit to what else you can see or what can be done with it.

A few other thinkers are engaging in synthesis here on Substack. You’ll see that none of them do everything the same way, but they all collide several seemingly unrelated domains to come up with multi-dimensional questions and paths of thought. Each of them brings something spectacular to the table, and each of them has somehow informed my own thinking, even if I don’t always agree with their conclusions. I never miss one of their posts because I am watching their process.

Sam Alaimo
Kyle Shepard
Adam Karaoguz
Erik Hogan
Mark McGrath | OODA Synthesist and Brian “Ponch” Rivera
Patrick Van Horne
Sarah | Profound Autism Mom
Shane Copeland
And of course, Michael Woudenberg and Karina Schneidman MBA, MS-MFT

There are plenty more, but start with these. Watch how they think, how they document their process, and how many different domains they are colliding.

What can you do to come up with your own synthesis process?