We all have indelible memories from our youth. One of mine comes from 10th grade gym class. I was lying face down on the trampoline looking toward the edge where the coach bent down to engage my gaze. He was a kind and patient man, who knew his students well. "Derin, do you know your problem? You think too much."

There are times which call for action. The trampoline required intuition, not analysis. Days before proposing the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote the Attorney General of Massachusetts: "Some people must have time to look around them, before, behind, on the right hand, and on the left, and then to think, and after all this to resolve. Others see at one intuitive glance into the past and the future, and judge with precision at once. But remember you can't make 13 clocks strike precisely alike at the same second."