After reading about the human thinking process for the last three years, I have realized that the brain, even after being a marvelous piece of biological machinery, is prone to errors. This conclusion is quite obvious since we all have experienced the pain of making bad decisions in life.
We all have, at least once in our lifetime, believed in something that we later realized to be a lie. It’s alright, I have been there too.
Without further ado let’s get started with 5 lessons that improved my decision-making and problem-solving capabilities.
P.S. You won’t want to miss the 4th and 5th lessons on this list.
1. Be careful when you form new beliefs
It's easier to form beliefs than to break them. Once you form a belief, you sign a pact with certainty. You enter the realm of order from chaos. It's a comforting experience. Comfort is addictive, it hooks you. Precisely why it is difficult to dismantle your pre-conceived notions and beliefs. It's a devastating experience.
People get offended when you try to change their mind because you are not just arguing against their beliefs, but their version of reality that hold so dear. You are not telling them to change their mind, you are telling them to destroy their version of reality and all the relations with their tribe that subscribes to that belief.
This brings me to this section's main point: be very careful about your beliefs, especially when you are forming new ones. It's easy to believe in something, but it's tougher to un-believe it.
Be skeptical, question everything that is presented to you in simple statements. Dissect them in pieces to get to the truth of the matter. All simple ideas have complex explanations. Complexity is scary, but it is the price you will have to pay for the truth.
2. Test your beliefs
Now that you have formulated new beliefs (or you have a set of old beliefs), make sure you put them to test now and then. Try to argue against them, be slightly more open to the evidence that goes against it. Manifest your beliefs in reality and observe if they function properly or not.
Listen to people who have a different opinion on a certain issue. Patiently. Eagerly. Not to counter-attack them, but to understand their sides of things as well.
Start with a common ground, iterate things that you both can agree upon. Start your discussion from there and then take it to a place of mutual intellectual progress.
Related: Think Like a Scientist
3. Be aware of your cognitive biases
The human brain is a complex system of neurons. Millions of bits of information flowing every second. In short, it consumes a lot of energy, since it has a lot of vital functions to perform.
Due to this extensive load of responsibilities on its side, our brain creates mental shortcuts and hacks, that simplify the complex nature of reality. Now, these shortcuts definitely serve an important function, of making the brain a more efficient tool.
Some of these shortcuts are what we call cognitive biases. Generally, they are outcomes of our long history of evolutionary progress, while others are just the manifestation of whatever limited information our brain has stored in form of memories. The problem with the former set of information is that it's old.
Social progress has outperformed the evolutionary progress for the last few hundred years. We are supposed to be rational, but our brain is overpowered by its emotional side (limbic system) than its analytical parts (prefrontal cortex).
Cognitive biases trick you into lazy-think. They are energy-saving tools created by our brain, most of the time in the 21st century, fool you to make bad decisions in life.
They act as blindfolds that instinctively makes you avoid a particular category of information. If you want to make well-informed decisions and beliefs that are closer to the truth, be aware of your cognitive biases.
Related: 9 Cognitive Biases That Make You Think Irrationally
4. Be a Deliberate Thinker
Most of our mental energy is spent on thinking reactionary thoughts. Our brain is kept occupied by externally stimulated impulsive thoughts carried out instinctively.
The act of deliberate thinking involves you take charge of your thoughts. To carry it out, you will have to command your brain to think about a specific idea or a problem in your life.
Most people who are victims of overthinking are just trying to avoid the efforts of deliberate thinking. They are spending too much time in conflict. You need to deal with that conflict, instead of running away from it.
Anxiety is chaos, and the act of planning creates order out of that chaos. To plan, you need to think deliberately. If a problem in your life makes you anxious, the solution never lies in escapism. You need to sit in silence and force yourself to think.
Instead of using your mental energy on impulsive thinking, try to think deliberately to solve your life problems.
Related: Antimeditation—Art of Untying The Knots of Your Daily Thoughts
5. Think in Systems
Individual problems in your life are rarely individualistic in nature. They are significantly affected by external factors.
The beauty of system thinking is that it allows you to create a well-defined boundary around those factors. It’s like accepting the existence of chaos and then trying to create groups of orderly systems.
System thinking is a bullet-proof way to create predictable systems in unpredictable environments. It is the divine act of creation, the emergence of order from chaos.
Related: System Thinking
A Quick List of Books
Thinking Fast and Slow by Dan Kahneman
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Tempo by Venkatesh Rao
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
Superthinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
Loserthink by Scott Adams
The Model Thinker by Scott Page
Nudge by Richard Thaler
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
Incerto series by Nassim Taleb
I appreciate your patience and dedication to read this essay. I am glad that you made it to the end. I hope you learned something new that will help you to think better in your personal and professional life.
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