How To Think

Thinking Skills

Focusing On HOW Not WHAT To Think

How to think effectively is especially relevant, in the uncertain times in which we live.

We are currently living in an age of unreason where:

• Experts are denigrated and ignorance, bias and prejudice is celebrated;
• Woke thinking takes precedence over reasoned debate;
• Virtue signally takes precedence over private philanthropy;
• Intelligent discussion and agreement to disagree and respect for other shades of opinion are denied in the current cancel culture;
• Public debate is hijacked and taken over by group think and mob rule.

All of which provides another very powerful rationale and motivation for learning how to think effectively.

In this article [and the associated articles that follow] we are going to look at a number of ways of improving your cognitive capabilities and  provide you with a range of practical tools and resources to do this successfully.

A Simple Way to Understand Thinking

All of the ideas that follow — from creativity and critical thinking to persistence and learning — are different expressions of the same underlying capability: how you process and respond to information.

At a practical level, thinking can be understood as three connected activities:

• Taking in information (observation and attention)
• Making sense of it (interpretation using frameworks, experience, and reasoning)
• Forming a response (judgement and action)

Different thinking skills strengthen different parts of this process. Some improve how you observe. Others improve how you interpret. Others improve how you decide and act.

The purpose of this article is not to give a single method, but to build a broader capability — so that over time you develop a stronger, more flexible way of thinking across all three.

We are going to start the process of understanding and learning how to think effectively with several key reference points

1. Focusing On How To Think Not What To Think
2. Critical Thinking Skills
3. The Strategic Mindset
4. Metacognition
5. Mental Models

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How To Think: [1] Focusing On How To Think Not What To Think

In recent research into the neurology of creative brains, the lead author of the study [Roger E.Beaty] said:

“People who are more creative can simultaneously engage brain networks that don’t typically work together.”

The evidence suggested 3 sub-networks:

1. The default mode network involved in memory and mental simulation.
2. The salience network which detects important information.
3. The executive control network which plays key roles in creative thought.

“It’s the synchrony between these systems that seems to be important for creativity...”

Neuroscientist and Neuropsychiatrist Nancy Andreasen scanned the brains of 13 of the current most famous creative people across various domains and summarised key patterns in the minds of these creative geniuses:

# They have patience and persistence and allow the time

Creative work takes time, often a lot of time, and that requires patience and persistence.

"Isaac Newton's formulation of the concept of gravity took more than 20 years and included multiple components: preparation, incubation, inspiration — a version of the eureka experience — and production...”

[Nancy Andreasen]

# They are largely self-taught

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg were all self-learners preferring to figure things out for themselves.

“Because their thinking is different, my subjects often express the idea that standard ways of learning and teaching are not always helpful and may even be distracting, and that they prefer to learn on their own...”

# They are good at making juxtapositions between dissimilar subjects

Many creative geniuses make connections between things that are unrelated to their main research. They can force relationships where there is none. They make connections where ordinary minds see opposites.

Leonardo da Vinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water, which enabled him to make the connection that sound travels in waves.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something...” [Steve Jobs]

When presented with a problem, creative people will ask :

• “How many different ways can I look at it?
• “How can I rethink the way I see it?”
• “How many different ways can I solve it?”

They tend to come up with many different responses, some of which are unconventional and possibly unique.

# They are open-minded

Every problem — no matter how apparently simple it may be — comes with a long list of assumptions.

These assumptions must be tested especially the most obvious and the "sacred cows".

They ask "Why!?"

# They are so good, we can’t ignore them

Cal Newport says:

“Until you become good, you don’t have leverage.”

Truly creative people are always seeking improvement:

• Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents
  
• Bach wrote a cantata every week
• Picasso made 50,000 works of art in his life.
  
• Mozart composed over 600 pieces in his lifetime.
• Charles Schulzmade made 17,897 Charlie Brown strips before he died.
• Aside from his paper on relativity, Einstein published 248 other papers.

“On average, creative geniuses aren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers, they simply produce a greater volume of work which gives them more variation and a higher chance of originality...”

[Prof. Dean Simonton]

In summary, patience, persistence life long learning and approaching things differently are the keys to high-level creative thinking.

For a fascinating insight into the thought processes of Bill Gates I do recommend the Netflix 3 film series for which this is the trailer:

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How To Think: [2] Critical Thinking Skills

What Is Critical Thinking?

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” [The Foundation for Critical Thinking]

Critical thinking is just deliberately and systematically processing information so that you can make better decisions and generally understand things better.

Ways to critically think about information include:

• Conceptualizing
• Analyzing
• Synthesizing
• Evaluating

That information can come from sources such as:

• Observation
• Experience
• Reflection
• Reasoning
• Communication

And all this is meant to guide:

• Beliefs
• Action

These notes are an extract from an excellent article by Ramson Patterson: 7 Ways to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills

The "Five Whys Technique" is used to help determine the root cause of a problem by asking the question “Why” five times.

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How To Think: [3] The Strategic Mindset

The strategic mindset is focused on the most efficient thinking process to achieve a result.

We are all familiar with that well-known quote from Thomas Edison, with reference to his 3,000 failures before he successfully invented the lightbulb, when he said that:

“Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration”.

However, usual interpretation of that story suggests dogged persistence and determination was the key to his eventual success. However there was far more to it than just that. Edison didn’t just randomly move from one failed design to another.

He was constantly adapting and refining his ideas:

“I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable... then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved.”

At each step of the process, he was making intelligent decisions that learnt from the failures and built on the small successes.

A recent study, at the National University of Singapore suggests we might all benefit from the strategic mindset.

While others diligently follow the same convoluted path, people with the strategic mindset are constantly looking for a more efficient route forwards.

“It helps them figure out how to direct their efforts more effectively,” says Patricia Chen who ran the study and the research shows that the strategic mindset may just spell the difference between success or failure.

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How To Think: [4] Metacognition

Thinking about thinking: knowing how to apply the most appropriate cognitive processes to the task in hand.

Our brains process and organize information in a variety of ways. The core cognitive processes used for learning were first defined by Albert Upton [a professor at Whittier College] and later refined with David Hyerle. They include:

• Defining: Listing the facts, details and key information you know about a topic or term.
• Describing: Identifying the essential characteristics of something using adjectives.
• Comparing and Contrasting: Analyzing how two things are similar or different from one another.
• Classifying: Organizing information into groups or sets and listing the details, members or characteristics of each set. 
• Whole-to-Part Relationships: Defining the parts and subparts of a system. 
• Sequencing: Outlining the steps in a process or the sequence of events in a narrative. 
• Cause and Effect: Analyzing the root causes and impacts of an event. 
• Analogies and Relationships: Showing how things relate to one another using an analogy or relating factor. 

By deliberately activating and combining these 8 cognitive processes, and knowing which ones to apply for different tasks, we understand and interpret the world around us.

These thinking processes are built into our brains; we use them all the time and automatically. But we don’t always use them efficiently.

Effective thinkers have good metacognition, they know how to access these different modes of thinking deliberately and apply them to different kinds of tasks.

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How To Think: [5] Mental Models

A mental model is a high level representation, or overview, of how something works.

Since it is impossible to keep all of the details of all of the information that you absorb in your brain, you use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organisable chunks.

Mental models shape how you reason and how you understand, and they also shape the connections and opportunities that you see, and also why you consider some things more relevant than others.

Charlie Munger on Mental Models

Latticework of Mental Models

How To Prioritise Learning Mental Models

Charlie Munger: Adding Mental Tools to Your Toolbox

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“A large part of the difference between the experienced decision maker and the novice in these situations is not any particular intangible like “judgment” or “intuition.”

If one could open the lid, so to speak, and see what was in the head of the experienced decision maker, one would find:

• That he had at his disposal repertoires of possible actions;
• That he had checklists of things to think about before he acted; and
• That he had mechanisms in his mind to evoke these, and bring these to his conscious attention when the situations for decisions arose.”
  

[Herbert Simon - "Models Of My Life"]

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Reflections and Action Points

Reflections

Focusing on “how to think” vs “what to think”

• When you read or hear an argument, pause and ask: “Am I just accepting the conclusion, or am I paying attention to how the reasoning works?” 
• Consider a recent belief you held strongly: what was your path to that belief? What thinking habits shaped it? 

Critical thinking skills 

• Think about a decision you made in the past week: did you actively engage in conceptualizing, analysing, synthesising, evaluating?
• Use the “Five Whys” technique on something that went wrong: what was the root cause you stopped short of asking “why” five times? 

Strategic mindset

• When you make plans or set goals, how often do you ask: “Is there a more efficient route?” or “Am I repeating the same path expecting a better outcome?” 
• Reflect on a “failure” or setback: did you treat it as a random event, or did you ask what theory you assumed that failed? 
• What habits of persistent effort do you have, and how might they benefit from being combined with smart strategy rather than just “more effort”?

Metacognition (thinking about thinking)

• Notice your thinking in the moment: when you’re deciding, when you’re frustrated, when you procrastinate — what cognitive process is in play (defining, comparing/contrasting, sequencing, cause/effect, etc.)? 
• Which modes of thinking do you default to (e.g., quick reaction, emotional reasoning) and which are you weak in (e.g., sequencing, comparing/contrasting)? 
• When you are stuck or spinning in thought, what kind of thinking would help you step back (metacognitive pause) and pick a better process?

Mental models

• What “models” or frameworks do you use implicitly when you interpret the world (e.g., “fail fast”, “growth mindset”, “everyone should be happy”)?
• Pick one decision you made recently and ask: which mental model guided me? Was it useful or limiting?
• Explore a new mental model (for example: Occam’s Razor, first principles thinking, inversion) and consider how you could apply it to a recurring challenge in your life.

Action Points

Schedule a “mind-thinking check-in”

• Choose a regular cadence (e.g., weekly) and for 10 minutes review your thinking in that period using the reflection prompts above.
• Use a journal or digital note to capture: “What thinking habit served me? What thinking habit hindered me?”

Pick one cognitive process to strengthen

• From the metacognition list (defining, describing, comparing/contrasting, etc) choose one you feel weak in.
• Over the next two weeks, apply it deliberately when you make decisions or analyse information. For example: when reading an article, explicitly write down “What are the similarities and differences between this and my prior view?”

Adopt one new mental model

• Choose a mental model you don’t currently use often (e.g., “second-order thinking”, “inversion”, “probabilistic thinking”) and apply it consciously at least once a day to a problem.
• Try: “What could happen as a result of this decision (second order)?” or “What if the opposite happened (inversion)?” Then record how that reframes your view.

Deepen critical thinking on one belief

• Identify a belief you hold that you have not questioned recently. Use the “Five Whys” method or comparable root-cause approach: ask “Why do I believe this?”, then “Why that?”, repeating until you get to a deeper underlying assumption.
• Then ask: “Is that underlying assumption valid? What evidence do I have?”

Refine a strategic decision

• Take a goal you’re working on. Map the current path you’re taking, then ask: “Is there a more efficient route? 
• Am I repeating something that happened before? What can I discard or adjust?”
• Then pick one thing to change this week based on that.

Create a “thinking pause” habit

• When you feel emotional, reactive, or hurried (for example: when traffic makes you frustrated, or your phone distracts you), take a 30-second pause.
• During the pause ask: “Which thinking network is active? Default mode? Executive control? Salience?” 
• Then ask: “Which cognitive process do I want to engage deliberately here?” 
• This builds the habit of switching from autopilot thinking to intentional thinking.

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Try these blogs to stimulate your thinking:

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Sam Thomas Davies

Bernardo Kastrop

Farnam Street

Mark Manson

Scot Jeffrey

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How To Think: Thinking Skills

First Principles Thinking

Second Order Thinking

Mental Models

Good Judgement

Cognitive Distortions

Charlie Munger

Elon Musk

Cal Newport

Julia Galef

Mental Models - General Thinking Concepts

The Metagame Approach To Life - How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives

Understanding Complex Systems Thinking - It's Not Complicated

How To Live With Contradiction - Beyond Thought Let Stillness Speak

The Wise Advocate - Helping You Achieve The Very Best Outcome

What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?

The Map Is Not The Territory

Circle Of Competence

First Principles Thinking

Second Order Thinking

The Metagame Approach to Second Order Thinking - 5 Guiding Principles

Occams Razor

Probabilistic Thinking

Inversion

The Power Of Opposite Thinking

Iatrogenics - "Do Something Syndrome"

The Eisenhower Box - What Is Important Is Seldom Urgent

Mental Models - Human Nature

Heuristics

Availability Heuristic                                                                      

Representativeness Heuristic

Affect Heuristic

Cognitive Distortions

Confirmation Bias

Fundamental Attribution Error

Hindsight Bias

Survivorship Bias

Herd Mentality

Mental Models - Productive Thinking

Deep Work

Applied Rationality and The Scout Mindset

The One Thing

The Pomodoro Technique

Less Is More - Subtractive Solutions

Thinking Fast and Slow

The Long Game

Knowing When To Quit

Atomic Habits

Delayed Gratification

The Challenges Of The Road Less Traveled

Root Cause Analysis

Inflection Points

Nassim Taleb

Black Swans

Antifragile

Living Antifragile

Skin In The Game

Satisficing

The ETTO Principle - Why Near Enough Can Be Good Enough

Getting Things Done

Just Do It

Positive Asymmetry

Slack

Fat Tail Fractal Factor

Going The Extra Mile

Finish What You Start

How Not To Be Stupid

Checklist Manifesto

Signal In The Noise

Unseen Margins

Discernment - Exercising Good Judgement

How To Win Without Succeeding

Keeping Things Simple

The Art Of Saying No

The Long Game

Knowing When To Quit

Mental Models - Physics, Chemistry & Biology

Speed and Velocity

Leverage

The Red Queen Effect

Incentives

Mental Models - Systems

Margin Of Safety

Mental Models - Numeracy

Compounding

Pareto Principle

Regression To The Mean

Multiplying By Zero

Further Reading: Asking The Right Questions

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