Why knowing HOW to think is much more important than knowing WHAT to think

How to think effectively is especially relevant, at the time of writing, as the world slowly emerges from the post-Covid-19 lockdown and begins to accept the social, economic, and financial consequences.

We currently live in a time of unreason in which:

• Experts are denigrated and ignorance, bias and prejudice are celebrated;

• Waking thinking takes precedence over reasoned debate;

• Virtue takes precedence over private philanthropy;

• Intelligent discussion and agreement to disagree and respect for other shades of opinion are denied in today’s culture of cancellation;

• The public debate is hijacked and dominated by groupthink and mob rule.

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

In this article, we will look at various ways to improve your cognitive abilities and provide you with a variety of practical tools and resources to do so successfully.

Let’s start the process of understanding and learning how to think effectively with several key benchmarks:

• Focusing on how to think, not what to think

• Critical thinking skills

• The strategic mindset

• Metacognition

• Mental models

[1] Focusing on How Do not think What Think

Neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist Nancy Andreasen scanned the brains of 13 of today’s most famous creative people across various domains and summarized the key patterns in the minds of these creative geniuses:

• They have patience and perseverance and they take the time

• They are largely self-taught

• They are good at juxtaposing different topics.

• They are open minded.

• They are so good that we cannot ignore them

[2] Critical thinking skills

Critical thinking is fair deliberately and systematically process information So you can make better decisions and generally understand things better.

Ways to think critically about information include:

• Conceptualizing

• Analyzing

• Synthesizing

• Evaluate

That information can come from sources such as:

• Observation

• Experience

• Reflection

• Reasoning

• Communication

And all of this is meant to guide:

• Beliefs

• Action

[3] The strategic mindset

The strategic mindset focuses on more efficient thought process to achieve a result.

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

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

However, the usual interpretation of that story suggests that stubborn perseverance and determination were the key to its eventual success. However, there was much more to it than that. Edison did not randomly move from one failed design to another.

He constantly adapted and refined his ideas:

“I would build a theory and work on its lines until I found out that it was untenable … then it would be immediately discarded and another theory developed. “

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

A recent study from the National University of Singapore suggests that we could all benefit from the strategic mindset.

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

[4] Metacognition

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

Our brain processes and organizes 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 then refined with David Hyerle. They include:

• Defining: List of facts, details, and key information you know about a topic or term.
• Describing: Identify the essential characteristics of something using adjectives.
• Comparing and contrasting: Analyze how two things are similar or different from each other.
• Classifying: Organize the information into groups or sets and list the details, members, or characteristics of each set.
• Relationships from everything to part: Definition of the parts and subparts of a system.
• Sequencing: Outline the steps in a process or the sequence of events in a narrative.
• Cause and effect: Analyze the root causes and impacts of an event.
• Analogies and relationships: Show how things are related to each other using an analogy or a relationship 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.

[5] Mental models

A mental model is a high-level representation, or general description, of how something works.

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

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

The quality of your thought processes is proportional to the patterns in your head and their applicability to the situation under consideration.

The more models you have, the better the quality of your thinking processes and decision-making skills; however, most people are specialists.

What we need is a lattice of mental models spanning many different domains of information and expertise.

• Many people know a little about a little.

• Most people with training and skills in a particular discipline or field of competence know a lot about a little.

• The person with a network of mental models knows a little about many things.

• The serious thinker has a network of mental models that allow him to know a lot about many things.

Learn more about: How to think