How to Think Better: 5 Robust Tips

// A THREAD //

We think all the time.

Yet, we don't spend much time thinking about HOW we think.

But this meta-level is required if you want to IMPROVE your thinking.

Thinking is the highest ROI skill you can build for life.

Let me show you five tips on how to do it.
1. Get bored

The great thoughts don't come to you when you're busy jumping from one task to another.

- Shower
- Walk

...those are the places where great thoughts tend to appear.

Take advantage and plan how to incorporate "boredom" into your life.

P.S. Meditation counts
2. Know your thinking biases

We as people have some predictable errors in our thinking.

You need to know them, so you can take them into account - and adjust.

Where to start?

@ScottAdamsSays book Loserthink
or Daniel Kahneman book: Thinking Fast and Slow
3. Use mental models

Mental models are general principles that you can apply to various situations.

I strongly recommend you to build your own base of those.

Where to start?

Blog: @farnamstreet

Book: Poor Charlie's Almanack
4. Read

And even more important: Read the right books.

Define what the right books are for you and then re-read them.

I have a list of ten books I re-read every year, and would strongly recommend you to do a similar list.

Works wonderfully.
5. Reflect

- Freewriting
- Journaling
- Sauna
- Walk

Those are all ways how to reflect.

Pick what suits you and make it a habit.

The dividends are sweet.
To sum it up:

1. Get bored
2. Know the natural thinking biases
3. Use mental models
4. Read
5. Reflect
Thanks for reading!

If you liked the thread consider RT the 1st tweet.

And let me know:

👇 What's your best tip on how to think better?

More from Freedom Designer

20 Most Important Lesson of 2020

// A THREAD //


It was a fast and weird year.

The year of change.

My life changed a lot and I learned even more.

Here are the 20 most important lessons - which will shape the upcoming decade for me.


1. Systems Are Better Than Goals

In the past, I failed many of my goals.

This year I've realized that it could be caused by the fact that they were goals, not systems.

Thanks, @ScottAdamsSays for helping me realize this.

Short article on the topic:
https://t.co/lyBqGBR0yM


2. Use Notion More

@NotionHQ is definitely the most useful tool I've discovered this year.

I use it for:

- Twitter
- Freelance CRM
- Content Creation
- Website project management

And for personal use, it's completely free.


3. Email Is Immortal

This year we saw on social sites:

- Shadow bans
- Normal bans
- Decreasing reach (e.g. during the presidential election)

That's why I believe building an independent audience e.g. email list is mandatory.

P.S. https://t.co/iuhQJIf80K

More from Life

“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)