Thinking things through indicates there is something to think through. It means you have a starting place and let’s say a direction & energy and you wonder where it’s going to take you. That right away indicates you don’t know where you’re going. To “know where you’re going” you have to have an end in mind. Every end indicates a beginning and some kind of path between.

So, the way we go through life, making choices, is to have a familiar pattern already established and to nibble around the edges of new experiences which are independently not so dangerous. Fly a plane, buy another new one of the same kind and paint it a different color. Not so dangerous.

Where danger comes in is when you have a paradigm change or when you really launch into something big and very very new without that crutch of the ‘tried and true’. Take a trip to England and a lot is different, but a lot is at least in the abstract the same. Take a trip to the Australian outback and you would very quickly be lost.

It’s sometimes said a genius or artist envisions the whole thing and then just works out the details to execute the plan. I don’t kow that it takes genius or artistry so much as the simple knowledge that one can approach things that way. Making GREAT plans and executing them VERY VERY well would be a better indication of genius. Artistry is in some ways a higher compliment since it indicates things which are hardly explainable and yet work very well.

So, imagine your final product or situation, see it’s outline and elements, define your goals accordingly and then finding the way from where you are to that final state merely requires taking steps toward that end while maintaining your values. It gets tougher when surprising events interject themselves and require responses. It also gets tougher when opposition filibusters and creates those objections and events which are interjected. They first interrupt your schedule and then they might derail your plans.

So, thinking things through needs to include imagination and abstract thinking as well as setting goals or considering where your actions *might* lead.

To put is more humorously, thinking things through pretty much requires defining your end before you consider the plan to begin.

“Thinking things through” can be valuable when building something as obviously complicated as (for example) a jet aircraft, but you’d be surprised how much is reusing known technologies.