How we think and make decisions is one of the most important skills in our life. If its so important then it makes sense that we should try to impove it.
In order to improve something, it is first important to define what it is.
Thinking: “is the mental process in which beings form psychological associations and models of the world. Thinking is manipulating information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions.”
What is excellent thinking?
Lets break it down into the core components:
- 1) Understand – Able to clearly and accurately understand the world, situations and people.
- Understand the world – with frameworks and models for understanding situations, society, or a specific field such as our industry, eg. business, fields, science and learning.
- Understand ourselves – our mind, body and emotions.
- Understand others
- 2) Problems – Able to identify and solve problems.
- Identifying problems, defining them, coming up with possible solutions then solving them.
- 3) Process – Able to evaluate, using logic or processes to prioritise and make judgements
- Processing information.
- 4) Ideas – Can think of ideas
- Can brainstorm and come up with ideas and options.
- 5) Decisions – Can make decisions.
- Able to understand the options clearly, have a great process for making the optimum decisions
- 6) Learn – Ability to learn
- Can learn raw data that can be accessed later
- Has an effective way of uploading the information.
- Can understand models and frameworks
- 7) Goal-setting – Able to set goals, and achieve goals.
- Goal setting
- Goal Tracking
- Goal readjustments
How can we improve thinking?
- Writing is thought. I think one of the best ways to improve thinking is to write. When you write you can then look at it later and see how it can be improved. When you think in your head it is not as clear as when you write. That is why I am writing this article – to try to improve my thought.
- The word “thinking” is quite broad. I think it’s helpful to break down thinking into all its smaller parts. What is thinking? I think it is those different skills above. Then we can go through each of those skills and try to work out what level we are now, and then improve them individually.
- Realise that our ability to think is extraordinary in some ways (imagination, ideas) but also quite limited in many ways eg., our memory is short and unreliable. We do have a very little understanding about how our brains actually work.
- Learn about general principles eg., physics,
- We can learn how to use machines to supplement the weaknesses we have. Eg., making notes, and using machines to organise our thinking with tools such as evernote or notion.
- Learn from others. How do others think and process thought? how do we compare to those? Reading books, case studies, or talking with others is a great way to learn.
- Learn from challenges. Can we improve our thinking by giving us a much bigger challenge, and then trying to overcome it. The bigger issues we deal with, the easier it is to solve the smaller issues.
- Looking to find our misunderstandings. What are the things we understand incorrectly? We might not know unless we look. Seek feedback – ask others for their feedback
- Our body is a machine, so we need to take care of it. That means the fuel we give it, the sleep relationships and excitement and living the dream.
- Evaluate our thinking skills now. What is the weakest part? What is the strongest?
