The Art of Clear Thinking summary

Stand-ups were a daily ritual when Lee was a student pilot in Air Force training. Every morning, a trainee would be randomly selected to stand in the center of the classroom, be given a theoretical emergency by their instructor, and asked to talk through how they’d handle it. Performance in this daunting exercise was closely recorded and played a role in assigning students to aircraft upon graduation.

As you might imagine, stand-ups weren’t particularly popular amongst student pilots – but they were powerful teaching tools. So much so that the sentence they were required to start with – “I will maintain aircraft control and then analyze the situation” – has stuck with Lee throughout his career as a fighter pilot.

This gets to the heart of the first step of problem-solving – making an accurate assessment of the situation. This is the first step to solving any problem. Lee and his peers may have been using this principle for decisions to be made in the air, but unbiased assessment is just as critical for decisions to be made in our homes or workplaces.

Sure, it’s not uncommon to want to jump into action as soon as a problem arises – but rushing to act without gathering all available data and developing an approximate mental model can be detrimental to the final outcome. In the high-stakes world of fighter jets, pilots have died from rashly skipping this step.

In practice, analyzing a situation – although crucial – doesn’t need to be some flashy exercise. In fact, a great place to start is simply taking a breath between the stimulus and your response.

After learning to overcome the impulse to act immediately, student pilots are then taught to engage their senses and quickly consider each piece of information one by one. Has the cockpit increased or decreased in temperature? Where in the aircraft is that rattling sound coming from? Does that smell indicate the presence of fire or ozone? Each mini-assessment may only take a couple of seconds, but it’s an investment that breeds much-needed clarity and perspective – and, in the fighter pilots’ context, may well save their lives.

We’re cognitively predisposed to want to solve problems as fast as possible, to hammer them away as soon as they pop up. Yet, as the ACE Helix model recognizes, many of the decisions we encounter in today’s world are dynamic and have second and third-order effects. As a result, taking a moment to pause, collect data, and form a working mental model is a moment disproportionately well spent, whether you’re navigating a supersonic jet, a disagreement with your significant other, or an unexpected setback to a group project at work.