If you want to think better...
- Become better at probing other people’s thinking. Ask questions. Simple ones are better. “Why” is the best.
- Slow down. Make sure you give yourself time to think.
- Probe yourself. Try and understand if you’re talking about something you really know something about or if you’re just regurgitating something you heard.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
We often make the mistake of thinking that people with high IQs think better. But it's not true. That's not the type of knowledge or brainpower that makes you better at life, happier, or more successful.
- Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.
- "I’m not smart enough to figure everything out myself, so I want to master the best of what other people have already figured out."
They are a representation of an external reality inside your head.
Mental models are concerned with understanding knowledge about the world, they put knowledge in a usable form.
When learning, we should focus on ideas that change slowly.
When we chase the latest thing, we’re really jumping into an arms race. Despite our intentions, learning in this way fails to take advantage of cumulative knowledge. We’re not adding, we’re only maintaining.
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You don't need to master every detail of every subject to become a world-class thinker.
If you can master the fundamentals of each discipline, then you can develop a remarkably accurate and useful picture of life.
We cannot allocate our attention to multiple things at once and expect it to function at the same level as it would were we to focus on just one activity.
They are chunks of knowledge that can be simplified and applied to better understand the world, by identify what information is relevant in any given situation, and the most reasonable parameters to work in.
Mental models simplify complex processes.