5 Elements of Effective Thinking
I didn't use to give much thought to thinking. It is such a natural and unconscious activity that I couldn't care less. In fact, I wish I could think less sometimes and reduce the constant flow of random thoughts popping up.
What was missing in my previous pattern of thought was the differences between thinking, and effective thinking. Thinking effectively entails a certain process and sequence of steps that can be learned and applied in a diversity of fields, which contrasts with the mindless carriage of thoughts. In one (twitter friendly) sentence: Effective thinking is what allows ordinary people to think in extraordinary ways.
The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking book lays an interesting foundation of those principles and suggests different applications in one's life. The 4 Classical are used to explain the first 4 principles: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. And ends with the Quintessential.
First Principle of Effective Thinking: Earth
The Earth is the ground or the building block for all the other elements to thrive. This means: deeply understand the basics of any subject and make them rock solid. It is crucial to continue mastering the most fundamental basics in order to learn the details. Not just learning in terms of random facts and bits of information, but mastering the connections that stick the basics together. You can't be an effective thinker, without being able to understand and explain the basic concepts with ease.
Great basketball players spend most of their training hours mastering the pass, and not inventing the wheel on new and complex moves. The lesson is simple: refine your skills and knowledge of the basics, so you can have a strong foundation.
Exercise: Pick a skill or subject and spend 5 minutes detailing the basic principles and concepts. Then, pick just one and spend 30 minutes learning it. The relevance of this exercise is to find flaws in your thinking and gaps in your knowledge. Then it's much easier to focus on the topics that still need to be reviewed. Feynman was an advocate of this process, and you can read more about it here.
I usually go through this exercise before an exam. When reviewing the material, I quickly jot down the areas in which I can still see weaknesses, and focus my available study time there. This seems quite straight-forward and intuitive, but, and from my personal experience, it's much more comfortable to stick to the concepts we already know, and avoid the most challenging ones. But it's worth to effort to embrace difficulty and master new concepts.
“As you revisit fundamentals, you will find new insights. It may appear that returning to basics is a step backward and requires additional time and effort; however, by building on firm foundations you will soon see your true abilities soar higher and faster.”
Second Principle of Effective Thinking: Fire
It still hurts to think about some past failures of mine, but failing is essential to succeed. Laying the foundations is one step, but without the possibility of failing, learning, and consequently, thinking, takes longer. I can still remember some evaluations I performed poorly, and how crucial they were for me to improve my understanding and strive for better.
It's usually by saying the wrong thing, failing an exam, or getting into a rut, that we learn how to better cope with those challenges and thrive. Failing is a great teacher when lessons are drawn from it. Instead of striving to write a "perfect" report, or give the "perfect" speech, it is far more effective to ask for feedback and improve along the way by revisiting what you produced often.
Nobody wants to fail with a 1 million dollar business. But most failures that lead to better thinking rarely come with high-costs. For me to learn something new and improve my thinking on the topic, I allow myself to fail. Right from the start, I expose myself to quizzes, questions, previous exams, and experiments, in order to fail — also called active learning. The more you fail from the beginning, the less probable it is to fail when it actually counts... And from those failures, you gain insight into what areas you still need to work on.
“Mistakes, loss, and failure are all flashing lights clearly pointing the way to deeper understanding and creative solutions.”
Third Principle of Effective Thinking: Air
You need curiosity as much as you need air. Really, creating questions is a way to generate knowledge, redirect your attention to the most important ideas, and to feed your motivation to continue learning and improving.
When creating a question you can do it mindlessly, sure. But you can also spend a bit of grey matter coming up with an effective question — one that generates new insights.
You can ask: "How can I get more money?", or you can ask "How can I learn to invest my assets to generate future cash-flow?"
And you can ask: "How can I get a better grade?", or you can ask "How can I engage with the material and lectures throughout this semester?"
You can get answers to all 4 questions. But if you're pursuing the wrong question, you might also be pursuing the wrong answer. Reframe your questions to get better insights! If you need a bit of extra motivation to ask questions, read this!
Fourth Principle of Effective Thinking: Water
The fourth principle emphasizes the idea of establishing connections in the learning process. "What previous knowledge and concepts make the new idea clearer, intuitive, and a natural extension of the previous one?" The exercise of linking different concepts and principles is a great way to increase retention of the content, as you have an anchoring point.
Fifth Principle of Effective Thinking: Quintessential
Change. It's the goal of all the principles combined — you need to embrace change and be willing to adapt in order to improve your thinking skills. In what ways?
Become a better thinker and learner;
Drop the habit of just understanding things on the surface;
Don't fear failure, and embrace the lessons to improve yourself;
Learn the flow of things — give meaning to what you're learning by connecting it with different experiences;
Do it differently, not just better.
“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”