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Zusammenfassung von How to Think More Effectively

Name: How to Think More Effectively
Rating: 4.4 (953 reviews)
Author: The School of Life

The School of Life

A guide to greater productivity, insight and creativity

4.4 (953 Bewertungen)

18 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

"How to Think More Effectively" by The School of Life is a guide to improve your critical thinking skills. It helps you to identify cognitive biases, make better decisions, and solve complex problems by using different perspectives and creativity.

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Inhaltsübersicht

How to Think More Effectively
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What’s in it for me? Improve your ability to think.

There are a few bodily processes that happen automatically: your hair grows and you breathe, for instance, without a thought crossing your mind. But pretty much everything else you do in daily life requires thinking.

You rely on thought to formulate ideas at work, evaluate your relationships, be creative, and hold interesting conversations. So how much time do you spend trying to improve the way you think? If you’re anything like most people, probably not much.

Here’s the good news: these blinks can help. They lay out the key steps that can turn run-of-the-mill thinking into something creative, precise, and profound.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why envy can be productive;
why we have good ideas in the shower; and
why we should all think about death.

Devote more time to evaluating your ideas, values, and goals.

How good are you at prioritizing?

Most of us believe we’re first-rate. As rational people, we like to think we attend to the most important things in life first, and only then turn our attention to less pressing tasks. In other words, we think our priorities are pretty much in order.

But are they really? Look closely. Many people’s priorities are actually mixed up. We spend little time engaging with serious, important questions about the value of our goals – and instead jump straight to trying to make those goals happen.

Do you ask yourself whether more money will really make you happy? Or do you just thoughtlessly pursue a greater income? And have you ever asked yourself whether you’d be better off single, or do you grudgingly plod on in familiar but unhappy relationships?

Things don’t have to be that way.

The key message here is: Devote more time to evaluating your ideas, values, and goals.

It’s easy to say you’ll start evaluating your goals more thoroughly, but actually following through can be tricky: that’s why you need a plan. The first step is to become aware of how much time you devote to executing your plans, and how much time you spend evaluating and strategizing in a more reflective manner. If you currently only evaluate and strategize about 5 percent of the time, try upping that figure to 15 or 20 percent.

The next step is to try and get over your discomfort. Fundamental, first-order questions are tricky – contemplating purpose and value can often make us feel uneasy. There’s no quick fix for that: the solution is simply to practice.

Before you jump straight to the execution of an idea that enters your head, try to spend more time actually interrogating it. Ask yourself searching questions about what you’re doing and what you plan to do – questions about value, purpose, and ultimate significance.

Dare to subject your aims to probing words like “why,” “to what end,” and “of what importance.” It may sound like a recipe for stagnation and inaction, but, well, the alternative isn’t pretty either: a life spent in the pursuit of accolades you don’t desire, money you don’t need, and relationships – both romantic and platonic – that ultimately leave you cold.

However long it takes, this shift from impulsive action to a more discriminating, evaluative disposition will make your thinking richer, subtler, and more effective.

Accept that ideas develop in fits and starts.

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.

Distracting your mind can help you catch elusive ideas.

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 can help you identify your true desires.

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?

Thinking about death puts life into perspective.

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.

Be skeptical about your own beliefs.

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.

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Worum geht es in How to Think More Effectively?

How to Think More Effectively (2020) is a simple guide to improving the way you think. Drawing lessons from sources as diverse as the feeling of envy and the prose of Proust, it lays out the characteristics of effective thoughts – and shows how you can start cultivating them.

Wer How to Think More Effectively lesen sollte

Reflective types who want to up their cognitive game
Creatives trying to release their inner potential
Anyone who’d like to feel a little bit smarter

Über den Autor

The School of Life is an organization devoted to helping people lead richer, more fulfilling lives. It believes that the humanities can help us develop emotional intelligence, wisdom, empathy, communication skills, and much more. With premises in cities like London, Amsterdam, and Seoul, the School of Life offers educational films and books, classes, and therapy sessions.

Kategorien mit How to Think More Effectively

Kreativität Persönliche Entwicklung Produktivität Psychologie

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