On using metacognition to think clearly, what therapists do when they are lonely and more
4 new ideas on better living
Hello everyone,
I’m Thomas. My goal is to help you master the best of what great thinkers, top performers, psychologists, philosophers and behavioural scientists have already figured out. All courses and books at Perennial Learner.
Postanly Weekly is now a reader-supported self-improvement newsletter. To maximise impact, all issues in the future will be FREE. To support my work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription for $6 per month or $40 for an entire year. If you are already a paid subscriber, thank you. If you’ve ever paid for any of my digital products, thank you. I appreciate you all (free or paid) for your attention and time. Bonus content for paid supporters: an invite to Thinking Toolbox (mental models for life) and Mental Wealth Toolbox (practical psychology, economics and philosophy concepts for smarter decisions).
In partnership with Morning Brew
Morning Brew covers the latest news across business, finance, and tech in the most digestible way to save you time. The teams condenses the day's most important stories into a short, quick, and entertaining read. It’s read by over 4 million professionals. I read it every day. Try it, it’s free.
Now onto today’s post.
How to use metacognition to think clearly
Thinking about our thinking improves our ability to make sense of information, solve problems, and think more abstractly.
Socrates said, “To find yourself, think for yourself.”
The more you know about your thought processes, the more effective you’ll be at making better decisions, changing your thinking behaviour and designing a better life.
When we think, we have access to a wealth of information, which we can use to our advantage. If you’ve ever wondered why some people are so good at certain things, you’re thinking, too.
When you think you have access to information you may not usually have access to. Thinking is the process of having a new insight or idea, and it’s indistinguishable from intuition.
It’s not something that everyone is capable of, and it’s not something that’s just for geniuses either. Anyone can learn to think more effectively, and it can have incredibly positive effects on your life.
Without realising it, you have probably formed a habit of thinking in a certain way that has kept you trapped in old ways of thinking.
The habit of thinking is almost like a personal operating system we use to make decisions, and form habits and new relationships.
You may already be aware of how your habitual thinking influences the way you make decisions, the habits you form, and the relationships you have.
Or you may just be starting to understand how much power your habitual thinking has over you. As such, you may be wondering why you shouldn’t just accept your thinking habits and move on.
Our thinking habits develop over time; we learn from our immediate family members, the people we interact with at school, the books we read and the relationships we build as we grow.
The truth is, you can change your thinking habits to break old behaviours and create a new, more positive way of living.
You can upgrade it to make better connections and think clearly. To improve your thinking skills, you must be aware of them.
You need to become aware of your own thinking process and have strategies to help you manage your thinking.
Many people often struggle to think clearly, which can make them feel anxious about the future.
However, if you learn to be aware of your thinking and practice keeping your mind active, you can improve your ability to think clearly and logically.
When was the last time you questioned how you think or thought about how you process information?
“Few minds wear out; more rust out,” Christian N. Bovee said.
Once you understand how you think, you can start working on changing how you think and how that will affect your behaviour and your habits.
To do anything well, you have to have a good understanding of the fundamentals. And to do that, you have to have an understanding of where you’re starting from.
To think well, you have to learn and apply the basics:
— Don’t hold on to what you know as the only truth.
— Find weaknesses in your own logic; think why you might be wrong.
— Find data or more knowledge to improve what you already know or adjust your thinking.
— Learn to find better knowledge to improve your assumptions.
— Ask what works better for others, and don’t be afraid to change your mindwhen you find better knowledge.
— Read wide and deep to expand your set of assumptions.
— Know the limits of your knowledge and be more interested in improving your thinking blind spots.
Socrates said, “Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.”
Questioning your thinking can help you upgrade your thinking processes.
We can often be so wrapped up in what we’re doing that we forget to take a step back. It’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day grind of our jobs that we forget to ask ourselves, “what am I doing?”
Are my decision-making processes still serving me?
Thinking better is a process that requires you to analyze your thinking and understand how you’re approaching problems. It’s a deliberate process to think about your thinking and understand how you make decisions.
Thinking about your thinking, also known as metacognition, is a skill that can be developed over time. It requires a constant effort to focus on what you’re thinking at any point in time and why you think the way you do.
“I am not what I think. I am thinking what I think,” Eric Butterworth once said.
Think of the last time you made a difficult decision. Perhaps you were trying to decide where to live. Or maybe you were trying to decide what to do with your life.
A decision is a thinking problem, and if you struggle with thinking, it’s probably something that you’re going to come across frequently.
More thinking models, principles, and cognitive tools are always better when it comes to learning how to think. That’s why some of the best thinkers spend so much time gathering thinking tools.; they want to upgrade how they think to make smarter choices.
The value of metacognition lies in the fact that it helps you notice your own thoughts and actions. This, in turn, enables you to understand what you’re doing and how you make decisions.
“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right,” Albert Einstein said.
Thinking about your thinking can help you make better decisions. It can also help you to understand yourself better and create a more consistent way of thinking.
Thinking about your thinking can also help you become a more mindful person. Being mindful means being present and aware of your surroundings.
When you’re being mindful, you’re able to filter out unimportant details and focus on the big picture. Thinking is an essential part of learning, and it generally comes naturally.
However, it can be challenging to think clearly about your thinking; that takes practice. It’s a skill you can improve. Better awareness and understanding of your thinking patterns can change the trajectory of your life.
Recommended Reads
Start with flattery, maintain eye contact and never lie: how to win people over [Guardian] — Some people are just charmers. They can sweet-talk an otherwise immovable doorman, cajole a small child into picking up their toys without protest, and smile their way to a freebie. But being a blagger isn’t the preserve…
Does Marriage Really Bring People Happiness? A Discussion [Time] — Today in America the Jeffersonian vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is in trouble. When it comes to life, what we're seeing is that scores of especially men are turning to drink, to pills, or the barrel of a gun, and record numbers…
No regrets: 5 strategies to get clear about what you want in life [Fast Company] — The Life Brief is a practice for getting clear about what you want. It’s a practice of alignment between who you are, what you believe, and how you live. And like any practice, it gets easier the more you do it. The poet David White once said, What you can plan is too small for you to live. Don’t get me wrong…
How to find success with the 4 conditions of “intelligent failure” [Big Think] — “There is a deep-rooted belief in our culture that success means never failing. That failure is unacceptable. That if I fail, it means there’s something wrong with me,” Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School, tells Big Think. “Of course, that’s nonsense…”
9 Things Therapists Do When They Feel Lonely [Time] — When Samantha Bender, a social worker in El Paso, Texas, feels lonely, she heads to a local coffee shop where she can people-watch while sipping a saffron latte and reading the latest Stephen King novel. “Sometimes loneliness isn't about our direct relationships,” she says, “but how we feel in relation to the world around us.”
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife [The Marginalian] — “In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost,” Dante wrote in the Inferno. “The perilous time for the most highly gifted is not youth,” the visionary Elizabeth Peabody cautioned half a millennium later as she considered…
4 Ideas on Better Living
Steven Schuster (The Art of Thinking in Systems) on Systems thinking
“Systems thinking is, at its heart, looking at problems in a way we haven’t before. It is a realization that everything is interconnected, and we should look at things as a whole rather than just a group of independent parts. Systems thinking means looking at the big picture first, then digging in deeper to examine its parts and focusing on the relationships between them.”
Charlie Munger on success factors
“Adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success, often in non-linear fashion, as one is reminded by the concept of breakpoint and the concept of critical mass in physics. Often results are not linear. You get a little bit more mass, and you get a lollapalooza result. And of course I’ve been searching for lollapalooza results all my life, so I’m very interested in models that explain their occurrence. An extreme of good performance over many factors.”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games) on training the mind
“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees what is unfinished there. Training regards the past as finished and the future as to be finished. Education leads toward a continuing self-discovery; training leads toward a final self-definition. Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinished past into the future.”
Shane Parrish (Clear Thinking) on seeing the world as it is
"When you learn to see the world as it is, and not as you want it to be, everything changes. The solution to any problem becomes more apparent when you can view it through more than one lens. You’ll be able to spot opportunities you couldn’t see before, avoid costly mistakes that may be holding you back, and begin to make meaningful progress in your life. That’s the power of mental models."
Tools I Use
Meco — Read all your awesome newsletters and Substacks on a single app. Meco is a distraction-free space for reading and discovering newsletters, separate from the inbox. Add your newsletters in seconds and liberate your inbox. Move your newsletters to a space built for reading and declutter your inbox in seconds. Enjoy newsletters in a space designed for reading. Check it out.
Morning Brew covers the latest news across business, finance, and tech in the most digestible way to save you time. The teams condenses the day's most important stories into a short, quick, and entertaining read. It’s read by over 4 million professionals. I read it every day. Try it, it’s free.
Classified:
Aimply Briefs: The Last Newsletter You'll Need. Using a combination of humans and AI, we deliver a curated brief containing all the most relevant stories to you every weekday.
Get featured here.
Thanks for reading!
Until next week,
Thomas
Medium | Thinking Toolbox | The Write Life | How to Live: Lessons in Stoicism
Postanly Weekly is now a reader-supported publication. To support my work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription for $6 per month or $40 for an entire year.