How to Think More Effectively summary

When you read a book, listen to a speech, or watch a presentation, it’s easy to imagine that the person who composed it came across their ideas and the corresponding words in a straightforward, almost effortless way. Because the words seem to flow together seamlessly, you might think the creative process was breezy and painless.

This is a delusion. The brain is a fitful instrument: it doesn’t chug along at full power for hours at a time. It proceeds in fits and starts – kicking into life briefly, making a sudden leap forward or an interesting new connection, and then lapsing into idleness again for a prolonged stretch.

It would be nice to imagine that the more valuable a thought is, the more likely it is to lodge itself clearly and securely in your mind. Unfortunately, it’s usually the opposite. All too often, your most insightful thoughts are the most elusive – like rare and hard-to-capture butterflies.

That image of thoughts as butterflies might sound familiar to you. Many great thinkers have compared insights to the airborne creatures. Vladimir Nabokov, the famous Russian-American novelist, compared writing to butterfly hunting: just like a butterfly hunter, the writer has to coax flitting ideas and sensations into the nets of language and conscious awareness.

Envy – it’s an emotion we all feel from time to time, but it’s not one we often like to acknowledge. We’re told that it’s wrong to envy others’ successes and talents and luck. Good people, after all, are happy to see others doing well.

But what if envy has something important to teach you? What if, instead of repressing the envious thoughts that occurred to you, you examined them and teased out their implications?

If you were decorating a study or library at home, what would you put in it? Pretty paperweights? Dark leather sofas? Or maybe antique prints in gilt frames?

A few hundred years ago, one object was pretty common: a real human skull, complete with a gaping jaw and cavernous eye sockets. Pretty gruesome – but that’s kind of the point.

You might imagine that effective thinkers rarely doubt their own opinions – and, in a way, that would make sense. After all, thinking’s what they’re good at. Why should they be skeptical about the conclusions they reach?

For instance, you might assume that persuasive lawyers rarely doubt their arguments, and convincing actors rarely doubt their performances. But they do – and for good reason. Experiencing doubt is one of the core aspects of thinking well. In fact, the best thinkers are very often the most skeptical.