Do you often come to the same answer as most people? The same conclusion? Most people do. This is because they read the same stuff, talk to people who are similar to them and don’t question their assumptions. Social media has created a bubble devoid of critical thinking which drives people to the same conclusions.
Tag Archives: Thinking
12 Self-Directed Questions To Help Improve How You Think
Did I ever tell you that I have various notebooks where I collect questions? It’s a practice that I picked up many years ago, doing so sharpens my thinking, helps me ask better questions and enables me to extract insights from conversations. The rule is simple: ask better questions to get better answers.
7 Lessons From Think Again by Adam Grant
How often do you change your mind? I don’t know of anybody who keeps a journal of the amount of times they change their mind during the day, week, month or year. Changing our mind isn’t something we deliberately aim to do, but it’s necessary for our growth as people. As Adam Grant, author of Originals, says in his book Think Again: changing your mind does not mean you’ve abandoned your principles. It means you’ve evolved.
How To Think Clearly
Thinking is hard. The main reason is because the brain wants to be efficient, so it develops routines and habits that are hard to break. That’s why sometimes your head hurts when you really put your mind to work; you’re forcing your brain to break it’s routine and be unefficient.
Contrarian Mindset: The Courage to Be Wrong
A couple of months ago I republished a list of all the ways Misfits (innovators) are misunderstood in the workplace and what they want from their boss to be able to get along with them. It got a great deal of attention immediately after I published it, many Misfits empathized with the list; non-misfits probably didn’t.
So for all of you non-misfits, today I’m going to elaborate on a key attitude of a Misfit: being a contrarian. …
How to think
We’re one week away from 2015, people will make their resolutions and try to keep them for a whole year; which usually doesn’t work out as planned. One resolution, an ongoing effort actually, that we should all aim for on a daily basis is that of making better decisions.
That means thinking better, which will have a cumulative effect in all else we do; including executing on our New Year resolutions.
A question I get asked often is something along the lines of , “How can I improve my ability to make better decisions?” To this, I respond with a counter question, “why do you think you make bad decisions in the first place?”
The reframing of the question, is good example of “what to do” to make better decisions. Thus, an easy way to make better decisions is to ask yourself questions, but that usually comes after you’ve done some grunt work to define a better question beforehand. …
How can we become better thinkers and decision makers?
This the sixteenth of a series of weekly posts where I will answer a few common questions about innovation. Please feel free to add your own response. Also, if you have any questions you think we should discuss, let me know.
“The better decision maker has at his/her disposal repertoires of possible actions; checklists of things to think about before he acts; and he has mechanisms in his mind to evoke these, and bring these to his conscious attention when the situations for decision arise.” – Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate
There are plenty of ways to make better decisions. But what about when you are dealing with complexity (which we all do)? How can you see the essence of anything quickly?…