Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 13

Deliberate Practice: How to Harness Its Power

Are you confused by the amount of advice related to deliberate practice?

I don’t blame you. After all, there are lots of different kinds of skills that require different kinds of practice.

Not only that, but some people use a different term: dedicated practice. You might also see it called intentional practice. These variations on the term only add more confusion.

But there is an easy way to understand this concept and I’ll give you examples to make everything that goes into proper practice crystal clear.

And if you’re wondering if you need a coach or not in order for deliberate practice to work, we’ll discuss that too.

At the end of the day, deliberate practice will work for you. It’s just a matter of getting the facts straight and learning how to plan.

Since informing yourself correctly is key to practicing well, I’m glad you’re here. Let’s dive in!

What is Deliberate Practice?

The term is used often in sports science and is often defined as practicing according to specific steps or instructions.

Dedicated practice is planned, based on small component parts and improvement is meticulously tracked by capturing data. This data is then used for the individual person engaged in the practice to help them further improve by dialing down even deeper on key areas that require improvement.

For example, I study music and take courses online from Scott’s bass lessons. In one of his programs, Scott identifies 9 key areas of deliberate learning for musicians:

TechniqueFingerboard knowledgeAccompaniment skillsTheory and harmonyRepertoire and performanceRhythmic developmentChordal skillsSoloing and improvSight reading

Obviously, these areas don’t apply to all levels of skill, but the point is to break practice down into granular areas.

When it comes to how to memorize a song, for instance, you might dig even deeper into the theory component and study the modes. 

You just have to self-identify where you need improvement the most and then make a plan to fill in the gaps. If you’re not able to spot these areas on your own, this is where a coach can be very impactful.

Deliberate Practice Examples

We’ve just discussed how a musician might break their practice down into several key areas.

This principle applies across multiple disciplines, so let’s have a look at a few.

Deliberate Practice in Language Learning

One of my favorite ways to apply this form of practice is learning new words and phrases in a foreign language. It works well at any stage, beginner, intermediate or advanced.

There are a few ways to apply deliberate practice theory to language learning.

First, you can make sure you hit the Big 5 skills in meticulously scheduled doses:

Committing new words and phrases to memoryReadingWritingSpeakingListening

But another way you can apply this form of practice to language learning is in how you approach memorizing phrases and vocabulary.

For example, let’s say that you’re learning a sentence in German like “Das Blaue vom Himmel versprechen.” It literally means the blue promise from the sky to indicate a promise that cannot be fulfilled. 

If you find you get stuck on such phrases, a simple way to practice it more efficiently and ease it into long term memory, involves breaking it into 2-3 parts.

Das blaue vomVom HimmelHimmel versprechen

I tend to prefer starting in the middle and working on just two or three words in a loop. Then I add the end to create a longer loop before going back to include the beginning.

Incidentally, I adopted this approach from music, where it is very common for students to make the mistake of going back to the beginning of a song when they make a mistake. Instead, if you take a single bar and loop it in this exact same manner, you’ll help erase the mistake without having to replay the whole song.

This kind of laser-focused, purposeful practice helps make sure that you’re weeding out problem areas while allowing your brain time to process the whole.

Deliberate Practice in Painting And Art

When I taught film studies, we talked a lot about the “deep narrative” of a story, which is why my ears picked up when I read the artist Tanya J. Behrisch on the principle of “deep time” in art.

In brief, time spent in nature or plein aire vastly improves your technique. This is quite different than deep narrative techniques where filmmakers use an economy of means to create sometimes vast universes in your mind in just 2-3 hours.

The theory makes a lot of sense. For example, the more time you spend studying exactly how the light of the sun illuminates a particular shade of green on a specific kind of tree, the more likely you’ll be able to express it in ways that create both recognition and unexpected emotional impact.

How exactly do you practice deep time as an artist?

By actually using your exposure to nature to mix your paints and get them on the canvas. The artist’s sketchbook and consistent studies over time help create an observation loop as they track their progress over time. Artists can also detail the exact nature of their experiments and innovations for future reference.

As the artist Behrisch puts it, deep time is needed to learn what the environment being painted has to say. There is a physical dimension, according to Behrisch, that amounts to allowing the senses to take on the life of the environment in a way that directs the artistic choices of color, stroke, shade, perspective and other aspects of image creation.

SFU Morning by Tanya Behrisch, 2008.

Deliberate Practice in Writing

I’ll never forget when Professor Leps remarked about Roland Barthes that he was a remarkable writer precisely because he wrote masterfully in so many different genres. He wrote theory, philosophy, criticism and addressed multiple disciplines.

Leps said this to a class I took at York University back in 1998 and her observation influenced me to write in as many genres as possible myself. Doing so has helped me improve as a writer for reasons we’ll discuss in a moment.

But in order to gain any level of skill in writing, one needs to develop several levels of understanding. Each needs intentional practice in order to grow one’s skills as a writer. Here are four that have been particularly important to me:

DictionGenreTheoryStructure

Practicing diction comes down to style, the specific words you choose to use. This requires the practice of writing itself, but also observation of how you naturally write in comparison with your observation of others.

Genre, on the other hand, requires a study of situations and various kinds of plots. For example, there are at least two kinds of tragedy. 

In one, the protagonist fails to recognize his or her errors. In another, the protagonist does have a moment of recognition, but only after it is too late for correction. It takes dedicated study and actual time spent writing within a genre to begin to spot these types. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to take a genre like tragedy for granted.

Theory will help you spot these structures with greater ease. But even understanding theory can take practice. But the more that you combine study with implementation, the deeper your understanding becomes and the better you’re able to practice the craft.

Writing is also a physical art. It requires consistency over long periods of time. The first draft of my latest book project took 44 days with a minimum or 2000 words per day. I did that while continuing to write for this blog, where each article averages out to between 1700 and 2000 words. Given that I’ve written over two dozen books and hundreds of articles, I can tell you that stamina is something you build through consistent practice. No one is gifted with it from on high.

As an example of how I trained my stamina, here’s a practice I still use to this day:

I have trained myself to write for as long as one of my favorite albums takes to play from beginning to end.

For years, most of the posts on this blog were written while listening to just one album. Because I find editing extraordinarily tedious, I typically will use a separate album. A book written while listening to Nevermore may be edited while listening to Lou Reed, for example.

“Entraining” your brain to write by listening to the same music during each session could be a powerful deliberate practice technique for you.

You don’t have to take my word for that training using intentional practice matters. Stephen King says as much in his own words in On Writing and also talks about writing to music. Likewise, I learned about the importance of writing consistently from Susan Swan, under whom I studied writing at York University.

But to be as clear as possible: 

I treat writing an entire book very differently than I do writing for my blog. Whereas a blog post can be drafted in an afternoon, a book may take weeks, months or even years. 

Furthermore, successful blogging has certain rules and principles in order to reach audiences who typically use search engines to find answers to questions. 

Books, on the other hand, go much deeper and can use a variety of structures. For example, most of my books are like manuals. But when I wrote The Victorious Mind, I practiced combining the delivery of raw instruction with scientific journalism and autobiography. I took inspiration from books like Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer and Suzanne Segal’s Collision with the Infinite.

The point is that you need to practice the principles that are related to the genre and the structure you’re creating in while allowing theory to guide your diction.

Critical Thinking and Deliberate Practice

As a final, briefer example, let’s look at critical thinking. This is an important skill that cannot develop without consistent practice.

As Becki Saltzman puts in in her LinkedIn Learning course, Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset, you need to create a practice routine that integrates this form of thinking into your daily life.

She shares that she poses one question to herself each day of the week. The question may cover:

Issues at workMedical decisionsSocietal debatesTrending ideas

She goes even deeper by dividing the kinds of questions she practices by day of the week:

Monday = a purpose question (is my purpose properly aligned?)Tuesday = an information question (what are the best resources I need to look at?)Wednesday = a question question (what am I failing to ask?)Thursday = a perspective question (what perspectives am I leaving out?)Friday = Assumption question (what assumptions have I left out?)Saturday = Concept question (how can I better clarify one of my ideas?)Sunday = Conclusion question (how can I find better evidence to support my ideas?)

But practicing critical thinking using this structure, Salztman promises outcomes that I believe are very true:

We will make fewer mistakes and achieve intellectual humility. In other words, this form of practice keeps us open to learning more because we acknowledge that we do not know what we do not know.

For more ways to practice in this area, check out these 9 critical thinking strategies.

Deliberate Practice in Meditation

One of my favorite ways to apply deliberate practice is in mindfulness and a style of concentration meditation that is a bit more robust than other traditions.

In addition to daily sitting, this approach involves memorizing and reciting Sanskrit from a particular philosophical tradition.

Then, throughout the day, when unwanted thoughts arrive, specific statements “neutralize” them.

When pleasant mental experiences arise, deliberate practice is used to strengthen the positivity. The specific statement I make is “deepen, deepen” while focusing on the pleasant aspect.

According to renowned meditation expert Shinzen Young, this process creates a positive feedback loop. In other words, the more you label the pleasant experiences, the more pleasant experiences you have to label.

In this same discussion with Young, Leigh Brasington called the outcome of this process “Ecstatic Meditation.” He gives instructions on how to practice in his book, Right Concentration.

For more exercises that help you practice meditation intentionally, please also consider reading The Victorious Mind.

Why Deliberate Practice Works

According to Campitelli and Gobet in Deliberate Practice: Necessary But Not Sufficient, the success of deliberate practice may not come down to the amount of hours you spend on a skill. At least not entirely.

Looking at chess, they found that other factors were involved, such as:

General cognitive abilityThe age a person begins to practiceHandednessThe exact season of birth (due to exposure to viruses more or less prevalent during particular parts of the year)

Don’t let these findings discourage you. The researchers focused strictly on chess, after all.

But I mention the research because knowledge can give you mental strength that leads to identifying issues and helping you find solutions.

Ultimately, the real reason deliberate learning works comes down to the neurochemistry of habit formation.

Some of the best and most accessible resources on the science behind how the brain helps you form positive habits are found in books like:

Atomic Habits by James Clear59 Seconds by Richard WisemanThe Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

I’ve already given an example of how I’ve put this science to work in my own life. Whereas I never used to believe that I could write for a living, by simply committing to write 2000 words a day each and everyday, I completely rewired my brain. It’s now very difficult for me not to write at least that much in the same way some people crave exercise… or junk food.

I think you get the picture: 

Repetition is what forms habit, good or bad. The trick is to focus on repeating the good things enough times that your brain chemistry takes over and you crave the repetition of the steps that lead to positive outcomes. Even if effort is involved, you will ultimately not have a hard time showing up to do what works.

And on those days when you still struggle, you’ll have metacognitive tools provided by intentional practice itself that will help you “troubleshoot” the issues and neutralize them.

How to Use Deliberate Practice to Master Anything 

Now let’s get into the good stuff: Exactly how to apply deliberate learning to the skills you want to learn.

Although there’s no perfect way to order the exact steps involved, I’ve been practicing presenting information in logical order. But this is where learners sometimes get hung up:

You don’t necessarily have to execute anything in the exact order it’s presented. Once you have the bird’s eye overview, recreate the steps in the manner that makes the most sense for you. And if things don’t work out, come back to the training and start again. As you’re about to discover, reviewing your steps through critical observation is a huge component of your success.

Know the Key Components of the Skill

Although a skill like archery might look like one swift moment when practiced by a pro, it’s actually the combination of multiple small moves.

In order to practice effectively, you need to identify those small moves and work out ways to practice them as independently as possible. In painting, it might be devising color mixing from outlining shapes. In music, it might be differentiating rhythm studies from learning the exact notes in a scale.

The more you can map the territory into its component parts, the easier it will be to navigate the whole.

To give you another example, in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass, I help people focus on the Memory Palace technique first. Then we move into visualization skills related to association before linking them back to the initial technique. In this way, we establish one foundation at a time and then go back and strengthen that initial foundation through a process of review.

Plan Based On the Components

Once you’ve identified all the different parts that are involved in a skill, create a plan of attack. As we saw with the critical thinking example, Saltzman spreads her practice across the entire week.

You can also refer back to the method of splitting things up that I shared in the music and language learning examples. Instead of tackling a whole piece, you can look at just parts of things on specific days.

For example, I often teach my serious memory students to prepare what they want to memorize early in the week, practice encoding it during the middle of the week, and then practice decoding the information during the end of the week. 

Obviously, this particular suggestion can be modified in different ways. If you don’t want to split the sessions across an entire week, you can split them into morning, afternoon and evening. Experimenting to see what works best for you is the fastest way to settle on a strategy that provides consistent and substantial results.

Embrace Discomfort

There’s a reason many experts say that you have to get outside your comfort zone. Taking action not only requires energy and focus, but you also can never be sure that the expenditure will pay off.

That’s why it’s important to let go of the outcome. Perfectionists have an especially difficult time doing this, and they often benefit the most when they’re finally able to let go of control. The reality is that no one can actually control anything that’s going to happen in the future, so the sooner you accept this unsettling fact, the sooner you’ll benefit from practicing without concern for how the session will go.

That said, you still need to monitor your practice. As you do, simply observe any discomfort. Label it, but do not judge it. 

If you need help with this step, here are two questions you can ask if and when negative thoughts about your practice results arise.

Capture and Analyze

When I taught at Rutgers, my boss Dr. Spellmeyer gave me one of the most useful tips I’ve ever encountered. He said to never make more than three corrections on an essay I was marking.

The reason why is that too much feedback overwhelms students and prevents them from perceiving the value of what you’re offering.

Since that time, I myself have asked my own teachers to limit their feedback to just three corrections, especially in language learning. This area in particular requires a lot of courage, especially when it comes to speaking practice. If you’re interrupted constantly while trying to speak, it can shatter your confidence.

For this reason, I suggest you apply the three-corrections rule to yourself as well. The catch is that in order to find areas for correction, you need to actually capture your practice.

Fortunately, that’s easy these days. Back when I started magic, I used to record myself with a camcorder, which meant having to hook it up to a TV in order to watch the footage. But these days, it’s easy to use my desktop, laptop or phone to get instant feedback.

Likewise, anytime you meet a tutor on Zoom, there’s a one-click process to get the session recorded. It’s easy to review the material multiple times so you can analyze your own errors.

Just don’t overdo it. Try to focus on only three things at a time and you’ll give yourself space to work on the big issues. You’ll have great mental clarity for the granular details on your second pass.

Work in 90-day Blocks

Although I’m sure it’s influenced by all the years I spent attending semester courses at university, I think there’s a lot to be gained by practicing in 90-day blocks on particular skills.

For one thing, a lot of the neuroscience resources I shared above show that 90-days is a kind of sweet-spot for habit formation.

To help portion out these blocks of time, I have found The Freedom Journal useful. The best part about a tool like this is that after using it once or twice, your brain is well-trained to repeat the process without relying on an external device.

Rest Like A Pro

As the cliche goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

This phrase is instructive because not all of us feel rested by sitting around doing nothing. Some of us get our rest by engaging in alternative activities that help us express our skills in different ways.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang brings this point out in his book Rest. I took two of his suggestions to heart and combined them:

Take a sabbaticalApply your skills to something else entirely

I mentioned earlier that my latest book project took 44 days. But I didn’t mention that it was not about memory – at least not directly. I wrote a novel instead.

Although it still took energy and focus, I felt remarkably refreshed at the end of each writing period for the reasons Pang uncovered in his research. The skill of writing is being exercised, but in a completely novel way. This makes the activity as restful, if not moreso, than if I’d done nothing at all.

But whatever you do, it’s important to know what counts as restful for you. And it would be remiss if I didn’t point out that rest itself must be studied and practiced with intention and structure.

Miss Out on Intentional Practice At Your Own Risk

As I hope you can tell by now, you have every reason to practice with focused intention. There’s literally nothing to lose.

True, practicing in the ways we’ve discussed today requires setup and review. This process must also be repeated as you make your way on the path of mastery.

But isn’t this precisely what mastery is? 

When I use the term “memory master” on this blog, what I mean is precisely that: the person who consistently practices their memory with no concern for the outcome.

Yes, there’s the paradox that we need to observe the outcome in order to improve over time. But life is full of contradictions, and learning to accept them is part of how we make progress. You can learn to let go of the outcome and analyze it all the same.

And if you’d like help with this process when it comes to memory improvement, give this FREE Memory Improvement Kit a try:

It will reveal the secrets of how everyone from ancient learners to contemporary memory athletes learn faster and remember more.

You’ll learn exactly what needs to be practiced and how to document your journey so you can improve your results over time.

And let me know in the comments:

What outcomes do you want and how willing are you to put the key characteristics of deliberate practice to work in your learning life on a scale of 1-10?

David Perell On Writing, Learning In Public And Why Spaced Repetition Sucks

David Perell is an author who helps people excel in what you might call the business of creativity.

And frankly, I think he’s a memory artist too.

For example, everything that has to do with writing winds up involving the most positive form of spaced repetition. It’s like the ultimate mnemonic device.

But it’s not traditional spaced repetition or rote learning.

It’s creative repetition.

But these matters aren’t the only reason I wanted to interview David.

I’m also interested in how he’s using technologies of today to educate people.

As the founder of Write of Passage, David helps people generate ideas systematically and transform them into living, breathing and published pieces.

He is doing this though cohort-based training programs online and has been generating incredible results for people who tired of ineffective writing methods.

If you’re interested in expressing yourself through writing and developing career-level chops, definitely check his program out.

As I often like to say, writing is the source of all wealth. I believe it is also a key source of memory too.

Enjoy this conversation and I hope to hear from you in writing soon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pMzp...

David’s YouTube Channel

David’s website

David’s Twitter

How to Read a Book and Remember Everything

If you’re wondering how to read a book and remember everything like a professional scholar, this is one of the most helpful tips I can give:

Sit down, open a book and read. 

Of course, I have more secrets to share than just that.

But isn’t common sense powerful?

It is.

And it’s getting even more powerful as modern life creates more and more distractions and demands on our attention. 

Of course, we can (and will) talk about different types of reading, like elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical reading.

These are terms introduced by Mortimer J. Adler in his famous guide, How to Read a Book. 

But these terms are useless if you don’t: 

Schedule time to readRead according to demands of the genreRead based on clearly established goalsBe prepared with the appropriate tools for interpretation and analysis

So if you want to know the best way to read, I encourage you to explore ways to read.

That’s because there are multiple kinds of books. 

And when you have a toolbox of strategies at your fingertips, you’ll be able to read faster, remember more and even better:

You’ll understand what you’re reading and become a person of knowledge and wisdom. 

You’ll make connections on the fly and experience multiple a-ha moments of revelation.

Sound good?

Let’s get started!

The 4 Main Types of Reading (And Which Is the Best Way to Read a Book)

What’s the point of reading? 

There are several, including:

For school assignments and examsFilling in gaps left by traditional educationDeveloping personal wisdomSolving problemsExpanding mental awarenessSubstantial reflectionIdentifying or creating opportunities for yourselfResearch as a professionSpiritual goalsLeisure

Each of these categories can involve multiple reading types.

Let’s start with the oft-cited types identified by Adler in How to Read a Book. 

I’ll cover Adler’s main points, and after that, we’ll talk about how to read a book like a scholar so you can remember as much as you want.

Why should you care what I have to say about reading? 

Well, I have a PhD, two MAs and am an author of many books. Most of those books involve tons of research.

I’ve also taught reading and writing at three universities around the world, including for Rutgers where the legendary Kurt Spellmeyer was my boss.

Oh, and I read every single day, completing 2-5 books a week on average. All kinds of books from fiction to philosophy, science and Zen.

You name the category, and I’ll probably have read something that belongs to it.

And if I haven’t, even if the category is crushingly complex, I’ll figure out a way to increase my IQ in that field to the best of my ability. 

All right, enough about my street cred. Let’s get started with Adler’s four main types of reading.

One: Elementary Reading

Adler says that this reading type hardly goes past basic understanding.

You know what the words on a page say, and you can follow a basic plot. 

However, I think we need to add a very important point.

Elementary reading is often directed reading. 

You’re told to do it by a parent or teacher.

It’s the opposite of self-directed reading.

And that’s a big problem. As the authors of Balancing Principles for Teaching Elementary Reading argue, one core value matters above all.

Teachers and parents should strive to help kids want reading as part of their lives. 

Why is this so important?

Because literacy demands are only going up as technology and automation increase. 

Not only that, but critical thinking is so important to the success of all people. 

In fact, there are 9 critical thinking strategies all people need, but if you only have elementary reading skills, you cannot develop them. 

And no, you can’t expect so-called microlearning to help fill in the gaps if you’re an elementary reader.

Will inspectional reading get you there?

Let’s see.

Two: Inspectional Reading

For Adler, inspectional reading is what most people now call skim reading.

Adler seems to confuse it with scanning, which is substantially different.

Don’t get me wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with inspectional reading. As the authors of Reading as a Perceptual Process have shown, words can be skipped while scanning a book without the reader necessarily losing comprehension.

However, the most interesting finding in the book is that how much you can still understand while inspecting a book may be linked to handwriting.

For example, they analyse “target scanning,” which is stronger in those with decent handwriting skills. 

This means that if you never write by hand and are finding it difficult to grasp the meaning of books you’re skimming through using “speed reading” techniques, you might improve by practicing your longhand writing instead of typing.

Whether or not doing a lot of typing helps your “target scanning” for any kind of reading on screens is yet unknown. 

But there are also aren’t a lot of people who have talked about inspectional reading from devices because digital books aren’t quite so easy to scan.

Either way you look at it, I’ve chosen to read from print instead of digital. The benefits are too profound, especially when you’re using memory techniques. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er-k8...

Three: Analytical Reading

A lot of people worry that reading without understanding wastes time. 

I disagree. 

Rather, I read so that I might understand. 

After all, if I already know what a book is going to cover… why bother reading it?

Well, Adler had an answer for that. He called it “superficial reading.” It’s technically part of inspectional reading, and not exactly the opposite of analytical reading.

For example, you might be perfectly justified to read superficially if you’re just looking a book over to see if it covers anything new or surprising. 

But if you really want to dig deep into a book, you need tools of analytical thinking. Even if you’re familiar with the topic and the book is repetitive, you still need to perform what can also be called a “close reading.” 

What’s involved? 

A lot, frankly. 

Genre

First of all, you want to understand the book’s genre or category. 

Why is this important? 

Because it will help you connect the book to other texts that directly relate to it or hold an important connection. Knowing the various fields of knowledge speeds up your pattern recognition.

Classifying texts by their type is so important, I created an entire course about it called Genre Frameworks. 

Composition

You also need to understand how the book is put together.

This is called the form/content paradigm. 

In other words, how a book is written forms part of its ultimate meaning. 

For example, Plato’s Republic is a dialog. This formal aspect influences the meaning of the philosophical ideas in the text. They are discursive and combine objective and subjective reasoning in ways that only the dialog form can.

Aristotle’s philosophy, on the other hand, is presented in direct prose. It is argumentative and designed to convince you that his points are valid.

Paraphrase and Summary

Analytical reading isn’t just about reading.

Adler wants you to be able to restate the points in a book in your own words. 

Developing generally involves writing about what you’ve read. 

This is critical because A+ students get those grades by producing variations of assigned readings. 

Think of it like music. If you know a scale, you can play it forwards and backwards. But you can also perform the scale in your own style. 

I use the music metaphor because writing about what you’ve read should be combined with talking about it too. 

When you’ve properly analyzed a book, performing what you know is what you’ll be able to do.  Whether it’s while sitting for an exam, giving a speech or just discussing between friends, your descriptions of how what you’re reading connects to the larger field and how its style impacts the meaning of the book will be a great achievement. 

For help with writing summaries that boost your understanding, I recommend How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish.

Four: Syntopical Reading

This term sounds fancier than it is.

Basically it means that you read a number of books on the same topic. 

Then, ideally by paraphrasing and writing summaries, you can compare the output of those books. 

Not only that, but you can abstract the core ideas through contrasting different approaches to them.

I do this frequently when I compare different Memory Palace books.

What exactly should you compare between books using this type of reading?

Publication datesAuthor backgroundsWhy their books were writtenTheir research approaches and resourcesAny ideological agendas or biases the authors holdKey passagesKey vocabulary 

You also want to use this face to distinguish fact from opinion. When comparing and contrasting different authors on the same topic, you’ll find that some stick to science and evidence from their research. Others waffle on about ideas without providing substantial references. 

As the reader, you don’t necessarily want to discount opinion or even anecdotal experience. But you do need to place it in the context of other writers and how they approach the same topic. You could find that some anecdotal books that seem quite outlandish on the surface actually are backed up by science, even if the author of that book is unaware of it.

How to Read a Book Properly in 6 Steps

The points from Adler we’ve just gone through are solid. 

But he lived in a different time. The very definition of what a book is has changed. 

For example, when Adler wrote his book in the 40s and updated it in the 70s, contacting an author would involve writing to the publisher.

These days, you can follow authors on Twitter, watch countless interviews with them, and often even get an email response to your questions. 

So with our era in mind, let’s talk about some other ways to read a book. I’m confident you’ll find them empowering. 

Step One: Schedule Reading

I started this post with the notion that reading is as simple as sitting down with a book and starting to read.

This is true. 

So rather than talk in greater detail about skimming, reducing subvocalization or all the other topics I’ve addressed in how to read faster, let’s focus on the importance of scheduling.

There are many ways to schedule, but the easiest I find is to set simple rules. 

For example, when I’m not doing major research projects, I often use this rule:

One hour of reading in the morningOne hour of reading at night

If I can squeeze in more reading during the afternoon, I certainly will. 

In the past, I have tracked my exact activities, which I find a lot more useful than writing to-do lists. I can memorize my schedule, after all. 

But each person needs to explore many kinds of scheduling to find what works best. But if one thing is common to us all, it’s that having some kind of rule will set you free to follow it.

Without a rule, you are a prisoner of inconsistency. 

Step Two: Pace Reading

For my research, I like to work in 90-day blocks.

For example, when I first started studying Advaita Vedanta, I made it a rule to read only about this topic for ninety days.

I wound up reading about it for longer than that, but this only proves the power of setting rules. They are productive.

Plus, anything less than 90-days is unlikely to help your brain build enough connections to compare and contrast anything of substance.

This science-based principle is the origin of what is now called Metivier’s Razor:

Less than 90 days of study and practice of (almost any) accelerated learning technique does not deserve the phrase, “I tried.”

In sum, pick a topic, identify ten to fifteen books that deal with it, and then for the next 90-days, plow through those books. 

For bonus points, follow-up with another 90-days on a related topic. For example, I followed my Advaita Vedanta research project with 90-days on hermeticism, then 90-days on Zen. 

This allowed me to not only compare multiple books within each topic area. I was also able to compare and contrast the topic areas as a whole. 

Give this style a try. You are effectively creating your own semesters that resemble what a course of graduate study at university would be like.

Step Three: Interleave Reading

Rarely do I read books from beginning to end without pause. The only exception would be novels.

When it comes to reading non-fiction, there’s a very powerful strategy called interleaving. You will learn faster and remember more by reading 3-5 books at the same time.

To interleave, you keep shifting between them. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U34n...

There’s no exact pattern you need to follow. Generally, I read between 1-3 chapters of a book before switching to the next. 

The books that are being interleaved are read until they are done.

This is one of those rare speed reading techniques that actually works. Give it a try!

Step Four: Capture & Organize Reading

I don’t know about you, but when I come across ideas in books that resonate, I want to remember them. 

We’ll talk about memorizing key points in a moment, but I personally prefer to separate the process. 

One of the best ways to set the stage for memorizing information from textbooks is by taking notes on index cards. 

That way, each note is mobile. You can arrange them in multiple ways, which increases your ability to compare and contrast ideas.

It also helps when you’re writing essays or books in the future. 

Step Five: Memorize Your Reading

Once you have the information extracted, knowing what you want to remember is important. 

Generally, I suggest memorizing:

Author namesHistorical datesKey ideasKey vocabularyVerbatim passages

I’m very glad I did all these things, especially during my university years.

During my dissertation defense, to take one example, one of the examiners claimed that I had hardly written about Nietzsche. “Where’s the Nietzsche?” she demanded. 

Calmly, I said “Page 72.” Without looking at the page myself, I recited Nietzsche from memory. In German.

Needless to say, I walked out of that room with my Ph.D. in hand.

How did I memorize both the page number and the quote in a foreign language? 

I used a Memory Palace. Learn this technique yourself with this free course:

In the beginning, many people will still get stuck on exactly what to memorize from the books they read.

“Sure,” they’ll say, “remember key terms and historical dates. But how do I know which ones are important?”

There are two ways to think about this issue:

The more you read, the more you’ll develop an intuition for these thingsResearch

I think the point about reading more is clear. If you practice extracting information and performing it in your own words as we’ve been discussing, practice itself will hone your radar for the points that matter. 

When it comes to doing more research, a lot has to do with your context. 

For example, when I was a student, I used to visit the department secretary and ask for exams from the previous years. That’s the kind of research that can help you figure out what’s going to be important on a test. You can use that knowledge to read to identify those terms and ideas in the textbook.

You can also closely analyze the books themselves. Often there are feature boxes, summaries, introductions and conclusions that use bullets or other formatting to highlight key ideas. 

Extract them from the book and memorize them.

And if you memorize something that turns out to not be important?

No big deal. You never know when it might be useful. And if it’s never useful, you’ve gotten in some valuable practice using memory techniques. 

Step Six: Expand Reading

The final step is to expand upon what you’ve read. 

We already know that the fourth and most powerful kind of reading involves reading multiple books on the same topic. You can’t compare and contrast without doing so. 

That’s an easy way to expand your reading. You simply visit Amazon or your local library and find more books on that topic by keyword.

But there’s another way to expand your reading that is a bit more subtle. It’s also more powerful. 

I call this the 2-10% Rule. When I’m reading in one of my 90-day blocks, I build it out by trying to read 2-10% of the books mentioned in the core textbooks I’m reading.

Note: If a book is loaded with too many references for even 2% to make sense, I’ll pull that number down to just 2 other books.

Also, we don’t always have to apply this rule strictly to books. It can also include articles, ideally from trusted sources.

Of course, in my reading experience, I’ve studied topics like the Mandela Effect. To understand it, I had to read many pseudo scientific articles. I point this out because depending on the topic, your exact reading strategy may take you into questionable realms. 

So long as you’re a trained skeptic, that’s okay, and it’s important to have as many critical thinking benefits at your disposal as possible.

By reading in the strategic ways we’ve been talking about, you’ll come to learn more about the author’s context. And your mental web of connections grows.

Sometimes, you’ll find that the books you choose turn out to be quite incidental to the key point you’re studying.

That’s okay. Knowledge is not a puzzle that will ever turn into one complete picture. Not all the pieces have to fit. 

The important thing is to have a strategy for expansion.

And another key strategy is to strategically reread a percentage of books you go through. I try to shoot for at least one a month.

This not only refreshes your memory about what you’ve read, but also lets you use the 2-10% rule again, this time with fresh eyes. 

Of course, this next point should go without saying, but I’ll make it clear anyway.

After you’ve identified your 2-10% you’re going to read next, schedule that reading too. Then follow all the steps we’ve discussed before repeating them with the next round. 

Reading A Book Like A Pro

As you can see, it’s fun and easy to read a book in a sophisticated manner. 

Sure, it might seem like there’s a lot of moving parts if you’re new to reading in this way.

But give it 90-days and I’m confident you’ll see the logic in it. We’re talking about being a reading pro so that you can reach expertise in multiple topics, after all.

Frankly, I cannot imagine how horrible my life would be now if I hadn’t started reading this way myself back when I was in high school. 

I can’t stress the importance of reading highly enough.

With thanks for reading me today, let me know if I missed any steps in the comments. And tell me, what are you reading right now?

What would you like to read about over the next 90-days?

 

Concrete Thinking: What You Need to Know (and How it Differs From Abstract)

Want to know why concrete thinking is so difficult to define?

It’s because people use the term in many different ways.

Many will refer to how Jean Piaget used it.

In his work, the term essentially means that children interact with the world in very direct ways with very few concepts. As we grow, we develop and use a variety of abstractions to navigate the adult world. 

Although this may be true, it doesn’t make abstract thinking the opposite of concrete thinking.

You can experience some incredible concrete abstractions, after all. Flags, for example, represent entire countries at an abstract level. Yet a flag is also incredibly concrete. 

So what gives? 

If you’re confused, don’t worry. We’re going to get to the bottom of things on this page.

That way, when people say things to you like “concrete thinking is literal thinking,” you’ll be able to respond…

“Yes, it is that, but also so much more.”

Are you ready?

Let’s dive in!

What Is Concrete Thinking?

The first thing we need to understand is that thinking is always about representing knowledge. 

The world is a very complex place, but for the sake of simplicity, we can boil our experience of it down to two kinds information:

MaterialConceptual

When people cite Jean Piaget as an expert in concrete thinking, I believe this is a false attribution.

Here’s why:

Piaget was really talking about something called concrete experience. 

In the first of his four stages of development, he discusses Sensorimotor development, which takes place between birth and the age of two.

During this stage, the goal of the child is to establish what is called “object permanence.” In other words, the child “remembers” that objects exist even when they are outside of awareness. 

Concrete experience with objects is needed for this to take place. 

It’s only during stage 2 that symbolic thought, which involves abstract thinking begins to emerge. Later, logical thinking and then scientific reasoning develop at different levels depending on the individual’s context.

The Real Definition Of Concrete Thought

I believe Maxine Anderson puts it best in a book called, Absolute Truth and Unbearable Psychic Pain:

“Simply put, the concrete state of mind relates to reality in terms of sensory perception and sensory experience, defining reality in terms of what the peripheral senses convey. More specifically it is a state of mind in which metaphor and symbolic thought are not available.”

To better understand this, try this exercise:

Place an orange in your hand. Think about how it feels in your hand and how it will taste.

Those are concrete thoughts. Although an abstract thought about how much the orange weighs or what country it comes from might arise, thoughts about feelings and taste are based on your concrete experience of stimuli in your immediate environment.

3 Concrete Thinking Examples

Other lists of examples claim that “concrete thinkers” don’t understand phrases like “it’s raining cats and dogs.”

Frankly, I’m not sure if that’s true. If some people can’t understand or relate to popular idioms, other issues may be involved, such as literacy levels, reading comprehension and sufficient practice with self-expression.

So with the immediacy of your physical senses in mind, let’s look at some more examples. These will help better illuminate the concrete thinking process. 

One: Visible Thinking

Although Visible Thinking is a book for mathematics teachers, I believe its key points apply to all kinds of thinking. 

The authors basically point out that even the most abstract and conceptual concepts can be made concrete by:

Speaking them out loudHearing others discuss themDrawing them on a chalkboardWriting about them in a journal

Memory expert Tony Buzan was a huge proponent of visual thinking. His style of mind mapping has helped thousands of people turn complex ideas and processes into immediately graspable form. Using a mind map is one of the best ways to feel and see anything you find abstract in a concrete manner. 

One example is how Tony taught the rules that govern memory by having all of his students draw what he called The Most Important Graph in the World.

It’s a simple concept, but has a lot of moving parts that can be difficult to understand when conveyed in writing alone. I never fully understood it myself until Tony had me draw it out in my own handwriting. Now this knowledge is very concrete in my mind. 

Two: Relationships (In Life And In Art)

Ever found yourself attracted to a person but you don’t know why?

The philosopher Immanuel Kant called this die Verwandtschaft in German. It means “affinity,” “relatedness” or “kinship.” 

The German poet and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe even wrote a novel about this concept, Die Wahlverwandtschaften or Elective Affinities. In this novel, Goethe used principles of chemistry to explore whether or not human relationships like marriage follow certain concrete, biological rules.

No matter where you stand on such divisive topics, you’ve probably felt your heart race when you’ve been attracted to someone. You’ve probably experienced the instinct to protect a sibling or close friend. 

The thoughts that occur during such situations are immediate, primal and perfect examples of what we really mean by concrete thinking. 

We know that Goethe had the concrete in mind because he wrote Elective Affinities using a style of literature called Weimar Classicism. Although abstraction is part of this form, through the principle of Stoff, writers using this style worked assiduously to make sure even the highest concepts were firmly attached to immediate aspects of concrete reality.

Three: Concrete Contemplation

The goal of Zen and many other contemplative traditions is to live in the here and now.

Does it get any more concrete than that?

How does it work? 

Often, the practitioner focuses on a koan. It is a question or statement that helps you experience doubt about the authenticity of your mental world. As you reflect on the koan, you become deeply embedded in the physical nature of the present moment. 

I have personally benefited a great deal from this kind of concentration meditation. 

My mind used to be so undisciplined that I hardly noticed what was going on around me at all. The “object permanence” of my own body was so lost to me that I would forget to eat for hours on end, not to mention other forms of neglect. 

But then I learned these two questions that stop unwanted, abstract thinking. I’ve been much more focused on the concrete present as a result.

Concrete vs Abstract Thinking: What’s the Difference? 

The main difference between concrete and abstract thinking is scale. 

Whereas concrete thinking is firmly located in the immediate here and now, based on the senses, abstract thinking goes much wider. 

For example, if you are a concrete thinker reflecting on environmental issues, you might focus only on yourself and your family. An abstract thinker will extend to think about entire communities, possibly the entire world population and even compare macro and micro scales at the same time. 

An abstract thinker will likely also think about different historical periods and compare environmental data and predict future outcomes. This is obviously very different from the concrete thinker who focuses solely on the next few days or weeks ahead.

Of course, it’s entirely possible to think at both levels of scale. In fact, we must if we want to survive. 

Exercises to Help You Improve Your Concrete Thinking

Now that we’ve established what concrete thinking is and what it isn’t, let’s look at some ways to improve how you use this form of thinking.

Forgive the pun, but this is where we will pour the foundations and cement them into place.

Reproduce A Painting In Your Mind

What could be more immediate and material than mentally recreating a painting that you’re familiar with? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJbRK...

The steps are simple:

Close your eyesBring the painting to mindImagine painting it with your own handFocus on all the individual colorsVerbally describe different contoursImagine moving into the painting and towards the vanishing point

Repeat this exercise often with other paintings. 

And for bonus points, explore art galleries and art books so that you have even more references to use.

Hilbert’s Hotel

David Hilbert thought a lot about infinity. It’s one of the most abstract concepts we know.

The Hilbert’s Hotel exercise asks you to imagine infinity as an endless series of hotel rooms, each one occupied. 

However, you need to make room for one more guest. To do so, imagine each guest moving one room down, leaving the first room in the hotel empty. 

As you play around with this:

Explore how you imagine this hotel (one floor, many floors?)Physically feel the movement of the guests as they move to the next roomHear the sounds in your earsExperience any emotions (like being disgruntled when you have to move)

For bonus points, try to “double” infinity. In this version of the exercise, you have the guests move two rooms instead of one. 

The Wealth Exercise

In a famous story called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin describes a world in which one child suffers terribly so that others might thrive. 

Read that story and then to complete this exercise, imagine that you are the richest person in the world. 

Explore the moral dimension of how that feels.

What responsibility do you have to help others? What does that responsibility feel like?

What responsibility do you feel that others have to care for themselves? 

Once you’ve explored these ideas, write a 200-250 word essay response to the classic Wayne Dyer statement that all the money in the world will never solve poverty.

Is he right or wrong? Defend your answer.

The Separate-Less Exercise

Greg Goode provides many great concrete sensation exercises in his books. 

For example, he describes an exercise with an orange where he asks you to find yourself as the observer while examining a piece of fruit.

Although this might seem counterintuitive and abstract, it’s very hands one. What Goode is essentially asking you to do is realize that your experience is the most concrete thing any of us has access to.

To complete the exercise:

Put an orange on a table or in your handDescribe exactly what you are actually seeing in terms of colors and shapesAsk what is it that differentiates the table from the orangeNotice that there is nothing in the visual display that says “table” or “orange”Ask yourself, why do you know these terms? 

As you go through this process of inquiry, different memories might arise about how you have been effectively trained through education to think in particular ways.

Don’t be alarmed. You’re using concrete thinking to encounter just how cemented into social conventions your life has been all along. 

Concrete Thinking Is Consciousness 

If there’s one major takeaway I hope you’ll get, it’s that you are experiencing the present moment in a concrete way each and every second that passes. 

However, most of us are lost in the very abstract thoughts of our minds. 

Or are we?

If you take the orange exercise one step further, is it really true that our absent-minded thoughts are somehow the opposite of concrete thinking?

Just because we get lost in thought doesn’t mean we’re somehow not experiencing lost-in-thoughtness itself in a non-concrete way. 

In other words, it’s still a conscious experience in the same way dreaming is an immediate and real experience. 

When you take this realization into your everyday life and use memory techniques like the Memory Palace, life will feel much more immediate and satisfying. It was more concrete than you realized all along. 

And if you need more help in making abstract ideas concrete, I suggest you sign up for this free course:

So what do you say?

Are you ready to start experiencing the world of your mind in a new and more concrete way?

Abstract Thinking: What It Is and How to Improve It

Struggling to come to grips with abstract thinking? 

What exactly is abstract thought and how can you improve it? 

And if necessary, how can you avoid being too abstract so that others can always understand what you’re trying to say?

On this page, we’ll discuss abstract reasoning in-depth. 

You’ll also get some abstract thinking exercises that will help you enjoy a powerful mind for engaging with hypothetical ideas on demand.

Because that’s ultimately what abstract thinking skills are all about: 

The ability to deal with non-concrete, philosophical and even “transcendental” matters of intellectual life.

Not everyone can participate without training, but by the end of this post, you will. 

Ready?

Let’s get started!

What Is Abstract Thinking?

We typically hear that abstract thinking originates with the Greeks. 

Plato, for example, talked about how our material world is a shadowy “copy” of a pure and perfect world of ideals. 

In this sense, our world is an “abstraction” of the perfect world because “ab” as a prefix means “away from” or “removed.” 

“Traction,” on the other hand, means to pull away. 

Thus, an easy way to think about abstract thinking is to realize that it is the act of pulling away and removing yourself from a concrete process or idea. 

Here’s an even simpler example than Plato’s shadowy-world-as-copy concept. 

A Simple Example of Abstract Thinking

Take the word “human.”

In a concrete way, we use it to indicate a person. 

But when we “pull away” from the concrete meaning, we can also see that human means:

MammalHomo sapienA collection of biological cellsStardust

This list gets more and more abstract as we move from matters of genus and species to the cosmological origins of life.

With this example in mind, you can also think of abstract thinking as existing purely in the mind. 

Nowhere in nature will you find a sign that says, “this is a biological cell that belongs to a mammal.” Humans have created such concepts and they exist only in our mental lives.

“Hold on,” you might be thinking. “What about books and videos?”

True. We have created methods for storing our ideas using words that are imprinted on paper or saved in electronic formats. 

But how are those recorded ideas brought to life? They only have meaning when a human interacts with them, using a mind trained in abstraction to “translate” the stored words into something meaningful and useful. 

A Broader History of Abstraction

Now, I mentioned that typically we think of the origin of being able to abstract ideas as coming from the Greeks.

No doubt they made a huge impact. 

After Plato, Aristotle did a lot of work that helped create many of the classification systems we still use to this day for gathering and organizing knowledge. 

However, as the scholars of memory Tyson Yunkaporta and Lynne Kelly have shown, indiginous cultures dealt with plenty of abstraction long before the Greeks.

Their memory techniques in particular provide great evidence of how prehistoric people “abstracted” ideas from the world and placed them in memory by associating them with objects like the lukasa. They also used processes like Songlines and body parts to help them remember abstract cultural processes.

As more and more scholars learn about the past, we find another definition of the term abstract thinking. 

Whereas we used to think the Greeks were the first in a lot of areas, more data helps us think “abstractly” about other cultures and timelines. We are literally removing and pulling away from a territorialized form of thinking and including more history to form a new and more nuanced picture of human development.

The more information we need to consider, the more abstract things become.

More Abstract Thinking Examples

As you can already tell, abstract thinking is more than just one thing. 

Here are more examples that I think you’ll find helpful. Each one shows the different contexts in which abstract thinking is useful. 

One: Orders of Magnitude 

Humans find it difficult to think in large numbers. 

As Eliezer Yudkowsky writes in Global Catastrophic Risks:

“Human emotions take place within an analogous brain. The human brain cannot release enough neurotransmitters to feel emotion a 1000 times as strong as the grief of one funeral. A prospective risk going from 10, 000, 000 deaths to 100, 000, 000 deaths does not multiply by ten the strength of our determination to stop it. It adds one more zero on paper for our eyes to glaze over, an effect so small that one must usually jump several orders of magnitude to detect the difference experimentally.”

This leads us to a problem called scope neglect. We make many poor decisions because we don’t spend enough time thinking about how our problems relate to the big picture. 

Abstract thinking helps us take more aspects into consideration by understanding what an order of magnitude is and factoring this form of abstract reasoning into the decision process.

Two: Symbolism

We use abstract thinking every time we see a flag.

The Canadian flag is a particularly good example. 

It shows a Maple Leaf while at the same time representing a country. It refers to both an abstract concept and a concrete object at the same time. 

Everything from traffic lights to literary devices in novels serve as prompts for abstract thinking. 

To take one classic example of an abstract symbol, think of when Neo accepts the cookie from the Oracle in The Matrix. 

Because Neo’s “online” in this scene, the cookie is a nice gesture on one level.

But at the abstract level, Neo is being “cookied” in the sense of how your device is tagged with identification code that tells advertisers information about your behaviors online.

Three: Metacognition

Metacognition basically means thinking about thinking.

It’s a very important form of abstract thinking. It is literally pulling away from being immersed in your own thoughts so that you can analyze the process of thought itself. 

Doing so helps you gain perspective from within and create more space for bringing in the perspectives of others. 

It’s a key tool that has been in use for a very long time, and really got rolling with the introduction of ars combinatoria.

As Timothy Perfect and Bennett Schwartz show in Applied Metacognition, metacognition and memory go hand-in-hand.

For example, think of a time when you’ve remembered something about your personal life and asked, “Did that really happen?” 

Reflecting in this way draws upon your autobiographical memory. Asking, “is this memory true?” is stepping away to think abstractly about the nature of the truth and reality of your mind.

Metacognition need not be a strictly personal process. 

As the authors of Social Metacognition show, thinking about the thoughts of others can help you avoid scope neglect.

How to Improve Abstract Thinking: 3 Abstract Thinking Exercises

Because there are different kinds of abstract thinking, when looking to become a better abstract thinker, it’s important to match the exercises to the goal. 

For example, if you want to avoid common human errors that involve thinking, you need to look into cognitive biases.

Or if you want to improve your mathematical imagination for large numbers, you might want to look into Hilbert’s hotel and various exercises teachers have created for expanding your mind using this paradox.

As much as I like learning about those matters to improve my own abstract thinking, here are my personal favorite exercises:

The NIMBY Exercise

If it’s new to you, NIMBY means “not in my backyard.” It’s used when people of a certain class lobby for environmentally destructive processes, so long as they are built far from home.

This abstract thinking exercise involves you writing a simple letter to a community.

Here’s the assignment:

Think of the richest neighborhood you know or can imagine.

Then write a letter you will place in the mailboxes of the wealthiest people convincing them to build a maximum security prison in their own backyards. 

This exercise will stretch your abstract thinking because it’s very hard on two levels. First, you’ll need to convince them why maximum security prisons are good and why it would be good for them to be located so close to the homes of the wealthy.

Good luck!

Rules For The Entire World Exercise

Imagine that you are the boss of the entire planet.

You have all the power.

However, in order to maintain this power, you have to create the perfect set of rules that everyone must follow.

The rules must be flawless and treat everyone equally.

In 500-1000 words, craft a document that lays out the perfect set of regulations that everyone will be able to follow in perfect cheer.

This exercise will stretch your thinking because you have to consider the many different personality types and the many ways our personal interests clash with one another. 

Have fun!

The Wordless Exercise

We talked about metacognition above. One of the best ways to start thinking about thinking is to try and quiet your mind. 

To practice, start by sitting on the floor or on a chair in a quiet place. 

Allow yourself to notice all of the words and images floating through your mind. 

Practice telling the difference. What’s happening in language and what is pure imagery. Is there any difference? Or do they feel the same? 

When you start to get a sense for the difference – or lack of difference – see if you can stop your mental content from flowing. 

One way to help yourself in this task is to imagine every image and word that flows on your mind being written as it appears on a large chalkboard. 

As soon as they appear, wipe them away. 

To practice abstraction, go further than imagining that they have been wiped from this imaginary chalkboard.

Imagine that your mental content has been removed completely from the world. 

Keep practicing until all that remains is the “background” of your consciousness itself. 

For a simple variation, try something suggested by Byron Katie in Who Would You Be Without Your Story? 

To complete the exercise, imagine that you have no past. 

This is a lot like the Zen exercise of trying to imagine what your face looked like before you were born.

(Note: This is just an exercise. You won’t actually be erasing anything precious from your past.)

Abstract Thought Is A Tool For Life

Please don’t make these exercises a one time affair. 

To really expand your abilities with abstraction, you want to revisit this area of mental ability many times throughout your life.

If you’d like further help, check out the list of better thinking posts on this blog. You’ll find many critical thinking exercises and resources that will keep you engaged for a long time. 

And as you’ve seen with the flag example, we think abstractly each and every day. Every icon on your laptop and smartphone involves some level of visual abstraction. 

The more you think about the various visual symbols you encounter each and every day, the more you’ll be prompted to that metacognitive level that is so precious for achieving life’s most profound offerings.

And to help you remember to pay attention to the surrounding world, I’d suggest signing up for my FREE memory improvement kit:

It will help you “abstract” your environment and use it as a tool called a Memory Palace. It’s very helpful for remembering all the new things you’ll notice as you improve this level of your mind!

Marek Kasperski on Tony Buzan’s Legacy And Mind Map Mastery

Ever heard of a note taking technique that involves vibrant colors and keywords and asked yourself…

What on earth is this mindmapping stuff all about?

I used to ask myself that question too.

Then, one day I started to dig into the topic seriously.

I soon discovered that Tony Buzan had developed a number of laws for mapping the mind well.

So well in fact that he claimed it could to “radiant” thinking.

Sadly, Tony Buzan has left fans of accelerated learning for the great Memory Palace in the sky.

But we’re very fortunate that Marek Kasperski has picked up the mantle.

Thanks to his valiant efforts, we have an incredibly talented instructor who will be taking Tony Buzan’s unique views on mind mapping as a learning, creativity and memory tool into the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q11rI...

About Marek Kasperski

Marek Kasperski is Vice President of the Tony Buzan Company.

He’s committed to helping you achieve your highest ideals through memory techniques, mind maps and a wide variety of mental techniques that have been proven time and time again to work.

All you have to do?

Show up and work with the techniques.

Marek is also the Global Chief Arbiter and president of G.O.M.S.A. (Guild of Mind Sports Arbiters) where you can learn more about one of the incredible competitions you can take part in and how to qualify to compete.

Visit Tonybuzan.com for more information about this unique set of skills and learning techniques like the Memory Palace.

You won’t regret it!

Is Intelligence Fixed? The Surprising Answer

Is intelligence fixed? Of course not. 

Think about artificial intelligence. It’s been improving each and every year.

And so has human intelligence.

As you’ll see, this has been proven by looking at the improvement of IQ scores over the years.

However, there is a catch. Lately, IQs have been slipping again. 

This means that not only can your intelligence change. There are guaranteed ways you can improve it.

You just need to be willing to set specific learning goals and then show up to complete them.

Because if you don’t, your intelligence can degrade.

So if you’ve been hoping to get smarter, stick around.

On the page we’re taking a deep dive into malleable intelligence and putting the power of change directly into your hands. 

Is Intelligence Fixed?

In Genetics and Education, Arthur Jensen famously said that “intelligence, by definition, is what intelligence tests measure.”

In other words, intelligence cannot be fixed because it is the tests that define it, not some intrinsic quality of the brain. 

And since tests are changing all the time, this means that the definition of intelligence also changes. 

Updated definitions are normal in science. Even the definitions of crystal and fluid intelligence have changed over time as new ways of looking at the topic have evolved. 

What Exactly Does “Intelligence” Mean?

Of course, the word “intelligence” needs more definition. According to James Flynn in What Is Intelligence?, we need to look at a bare minimum of six categories:

Mental acuity (dealing with problems you’ve never seen before)Mental habits (ability to learn new things and apply them, like memorizing new vocabulary and using it in context)Mental attitudes (the willingness to apply oneself to developing mental habits)Knowledge accumulation (the more you know, the more you can know)Assimilation speed (as you develop pattern recognition, you’ll learn faster)Memory (ability to access information)

Taking on new challenges and learning new things automatically changes your intelligence. The more you take on over time, the more flexible your intelligence can become.

In each of the definitions of intelligence Flynn lists, change is a given. Even by virtue of seeing a problem you’ve never encountered before, your intelligence undergoes change. 

How could it not? 

So, when we’re asking questions like, is IQ genetic or learned? 

The answer doesn’t matter.

Here’s what does:

Intelligence undergoes constant change.

We know this because new information is always coming at you and always exercising your memory. Even your dreams can cause your intelligence to change as they bring you new insights about yourself or trigger old memories from your past.

The real question comes down to the category of mental attitude, which itself boils down to the question of mental strength. 

What Does Malleable Intelligence Mean? 

Have you ever heard about neuroplasticity? It means that our neurons literally reorganize and “rewire” themselves. 

In other words, the structures of our brain change the brain as they grow.

Since “malleable” means “changeable,” then the meaning of malleable intelligence is changing intelligence. 

Because we know that the brain physically changes, so too must the content of the brain transform. And it’s only because the brain is malleable (changeable) that we’re able to learn anything at all. 

As discussed in the Handbook of Intelligence: 

“IQ scores can change significantly in a short period of time but, more importantly… targeted interventions can improve performance on the cognitive processes assessed in intelligence measures, contradicting the belief that our intelligence is fixed.” 

Echoing Flynn, the authors of this handbook talk a lot about the importance of mindset. If you want to change your attitude you can.

The Attitude Of Parents Is Critical

Researchers have shown that how parents think about the malleability of intelligence deeply influences their children. Parents who express to their children that their intelligence can be shaped help actualize positive transformation. 

Similar studies have shown that teachers and professors have the same effect on their students. If the instructor believes that your intelligence is fixed, then they might influence you into behaving as if it is. 

However, if they know that intelligence is malleable, they are much more likely to help you improve your level of intelligence.

A Sad Personal Example Of A Negative Professor

It was my third year as a teaching assistant during my PhD. I was teaching under the main professor of a course called The Networked Imagination. It was all about the history of the Internet. 

On the first day, the professor I was assisting stood in front of over 500 students in the lecture hall. She said that 90% of them

would fail. 50% of them wouldn’t even pass the first exam. 

Crazy, right? 

It is, but it happens in schools all the time. 

And it needs to stop.

Is There Hope?

The scientific finding that we influence each other’s ability to improve our intelligence means one thing: 

Parents and teachers in particular must be educated about intelligence and also think critically about the role it plays in the daily lives of their families.

However, in another book called How to Improve your Mind, Flynn acknowledges a very sad fact: 

“There will never be a time when everyone wants to think critically.”

This is especially sad given the free availability of some of the best critical thinking strategies for everyone. 

How to Increase Your IQ (Starting Today)

I agree with Flynn that critical thinking is the key to improving your intelligence. Even if your IQ does change with age, you’ll still benefit from being able to question the role of intelligence in your life. 

How do you develop solid critical thinking skills? You can start by educating yourself about:

Analytical thinkingLogical vs. rational thinkingReflective thinkingIndependent thinkingReasoning skillsObjective vs subjective reasoning

And that’s just for starters. You can also complete some critical thinking exercises and read critical thinking books.

But of all of Flynn’s six categories, memory is probably the most important if you want to improve your IQ. 

If IQ can be improved, increasing your memory skills is probably the most likely way to do it.

Memory Isn’t Fixed Either

One of the fastest ways to improve each of the six categories of intelligence identified by Flynn is to develop your memory skills. 

In Memory and Intelligence by Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder, the authors make it very clear that we need to take action in order to learn. 

They found that children who make associations based on stories learned faster and recalled more with greater accuracy.

If you’re interested in using memory techniques to boost your intelligence, it’s a good idea to start small. 

For example, you can learn to memorize the planets in order or size or distance from the sun.

Or you could commit all the presidents to memory and even add in all the US States. You might even add a prayer to memory.

If you do that, isn’t the question of whether or not intelligence is fixed easy and obvious to answer?

Before you know the planets or the presidents in order, you always had the potential to do so. After you’ve learned just one new planet or name, you have changed your intelligence. 

And if you’d like to get started with a slightly more ambitious memory improvement program, give this free course a try:

If The Real Problem Is Mental Attitude…

Now that we know fixed intelligence is a myth, what about attitudes? After all, a lot of people certainly seem to be stubborn and beyond change. 

Fortunately, there are a few things we can do. 

One thing we can do is simply work on expanding the mind. Changing the terminology from “changing” to “expanding” could be just the trick a stubborn person needs. 

You can also work on improving your concentration. As I discussed in The Victorious Mind, one reason so many people can’t learn memory techniques is that they can’t focus long enough to complete a memory goal. 

It’s not their fault. The Internet is literally using the fact that our brains are malleable to ruin our attention spans. The problem has been well-studied and is called digital amnesia.

Ultimately, attitude change brings us back to the role of influence from parents and teachers.

According to the authors of The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change, social influence is the best way to change the perception of intelligence. 

However, they also note “success breeds complacency.” This finding lends some credibility to some of the criticisms that we’re now living in an age of decadence. 

Originally, Flynn’s research didn’t jive with the idea that society is decaying. IQ scores just kept going up and up. 

Recently, however, they’ve started going down again. And this could well be as a result of bad attitudes and the kind of bickering we’ve seen on social media platforms constantly eroding the critical thinking we talked about above. 

My suggestion?

Recognize that intelligence never was fixed and never will be. We lived through an incredible information revolution since the birth of the Internet, and it does not have to sour. 

Have the courage to stand up for the malleability of intelligence and let everyone know that improvement is possible.

But so is decay, and therein lies the risk.

Since it’s proven that intelligence can change for both the better and the worse, which side of the battle are you going to serve?

Scott Gosnell on Bruno and The Shadows of Ideas

Scott Gosnell’s translations of the memory improvement books of Giordano Bruno are legendary.

They have enabled English readers around the world to access some of the richest ideas for using the Memory Palace technique around.

Now, Scott is launching a revised and updated edition of his first translation:

On the Shadows of Ideas.

Frankly, this is the most important Kickstarter campaign I’ve ever seen.

Why support it?

A few reasons.

First, this incredible book will help you understand the classic method of loci in a deeper way.

If you want to explore the Renaissance approach and learn more about using a memory wheel, On the Shadows of Ideas is essential reading.

Even better:

You’ll discover an incredible way to apply it to reflecting on life’s many challenges.

It’s an epic book, and the best part is that supporters of the current Kickstarter campaign can also sign up to get all of Scott’s Bruno translations.

You can also get access to a course that Scott is putting together – a learning experience I’m tremendously excited about!

In this interview, Scott and I dive deeper into the ideas in this book and the implications for your practice with mnemonics.

We also discuss the production of this kind of educational material from Bruno’s era to our own, its challenges and the wide open potentialities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnKt...

To support the Kickstarter campaign, check out the trailer video and select your support level.

If you have any questions, you can find Scott:

TwitterBottle Rocket ScienceWindcastle VCMore On Giordano Bruno on the MMM Podcast

Scott and I have discussed Bruno’s memory works a few times before:

On the Composition of ImagesOn Scott’s first edition of On the Shadows of Ideas (De Umbris Idearum)

Enjoy this episode and I look forward to seeing you with your copy of this new edition!

The Memory Palace Of Hannibal Lecter – Legit or Pure Fantasy?

Normally when we think about the Memory Palace technique, it’s for virtuous outcomes. 

For example, medical students use it to learn the skills that help them save lives.

Hannibal Lecter?

Not so much.

In fact, this fictional doctor has such a horrible memory problem, the ways he uses the technique almost puts it to shame. 

Good thing then that it truly is the stuff of fiction. 

The question is…

How exactly is memory and the Memory Palace technique presented in the vast number of stories that have sprung from the original Thomas Harris novels? 

Let’s have a look and think through some ways you could turn a bad relationship with your memory into a force for good. 

An Overview of Hannibal’s Memory Palace 

The first interesting thing about Hannibal Lecter is not so much memory, but language learning. For example, Lecter is said throughout the stories to be have studied: 

LithuanianEnglishItalianLatinJapanese

I raise the point partly because it lets me make a scientifically valid pun: bilingualism is proven to be good for your brain, especially if you become a polyglot.

I also point it out because it’s part of Hannibal’s character as a well-studied individual, particularly one who murders many of his victims to teach lessons. 

“Lecter” connects to words like “lecture” and “lector” which means reader in Latin.

But the name is also close to lēctūrus, which has meanings related to choosing, gathering and even stealing – the exact behaviors of serial killers.

The Memorable Buildings In Lecter’s Life

The next thing we should focus on are the buildings Lecter might have used for his Memory Palaces. Theoretically, these might include:

Castle LecterMedical school buildings in ParisBaltimore medicalThe Norman Chapel in Palermo (Cappela Palatina)His own officesHis prison cells

As far as I can tell, few of these buildings would be like the Norman Chapel, which is a very different way of approaching the Memory Palace technique. 

By his own definition, Lecter’s Memory Palaces aren’t about storing information related to learning faster. 

Instead, he primarily uses his “Memory Palaces” to mentally revisit the places being imprisoned prevents him from seeing. 

Since he seems to know a lot about architecture, it’s little surprise he uses old churches. In fact, the most famous Hannibal Lecter Memory quote is:

“My palace is vast, even by medieval standards.”

This quote proves that he’s not really using memory techniques.

Few, if any memory masters would have only one Memory Palace. My friend Nelson Dellis, for example, has over 300!

The best part? Memory Palace examples are in abundance for anyone to take inspiration from.

The Major Memory Themes Associated With Lecter

I feel that the series of books, movies and serial episodes aren’t so much about what Hannibal Lecter likes to remember, but what he has repressed. 

True, Hannibal refers to ancient memory improvement books like the Rhetorica ad Herennium. But we never see him using the technique to learn anything.

Instead, the dramatic focus is always on the negative aspects of his relationship to memory.

For example, there’s a symmetry between him being an astute language learner only to spend quite a long time without speaking to anyone.

He’s also said to have repressed memories of his sister.

Lecter’s self-induced forgetting later has a symmetrical relationship in the novel Hannibal. We see this when Lecter hypnotically induces Clarice Starling into serving as a proxy for his murdered sister. 

It is ultimately repressing memories that turned Lecter into a killer, and there’s nothing I’ve seen in the series about using the techniques to remember information. 

Rather, as Jessica Balanzategui has pointed out, memory serves throughout the stories as a symbol for repression and desire.

To be clear, the series does talk about him using this technique as a “mental system.” But it never shows him using it – certainly not for any positive outcomes like language learning or passing med school exams. 

It is primarily depicted as a tool used to escape the punishment he deserves.

Resources For Creating Your Own Memory Palace

When we focus on the positive, Thomas Harris talks about what is usually called the Roman Room technique. 

Harris attributes it to Cicero, who is often mistakenly credited as the author of a book from 90 BCE that contains Memory Palace instructions called Rhetorica ad Herennium.

This technique is also sometimes called the method of loci or the journey method.

For “next level” applications, you’ll also want to learn the Major System, Pegword Method and develop a PAO system.

One inspiration you can take from the Lecter approach of using medieval buildings is raised by memory expert Chester Santos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnhM3...

As Santos suggests, you can mentally transform rooms in buildings so that your memories stick better when using a Memory Palace.

You can even try doing this with invented or virtual Memory Palaces. 

For the best possible success with this ancient memory technique, pleasure consider giving my free course a try:

Don’t Wind Up Like Hannibal Lecter!

Listen, I’m a fan of crime fiction.

I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade. 

I’m grateful for anything that draws attention to any mnemonic devices.

But mental health issues are real. People who do not deal with bad memories in appropriate ways can wind up leading criminal lives. 

That’s why a lot of my recent work has involved teaching people how to use the Memory Palace technique to deal with harms created by issues like PTSD and depression. 

If that’s you, consider going through this guided meditation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fahIE...

If you need more help, consider reading my book, The Victorious Mind.

The Memory Palace is a powerful technique, so what do you say?

Are you ready to use it as a force for good? 

9 Deadly Critical Thinking Barriers (And How to Eliminate Them)

Want to know why the biggest barriers to critical thinking are so insidious? 

The answer is simple:

It’s because they’re lurking inside you. 

And if you don’t know that these barriers are standing between you and exploding your thinking abilities, you’re powerless to improve your situation.

Starting right now, let’s identify and remove the biggest barriers. 

You’ll experience greater clarity of mind just by knowing what they are and how to get them out of your life. 

The 9 Most Common Barriers to Critical Thinking (And How to Overcome Them)

As you go through this list, keep a journal.

Write down the ones that pose the biggest issue for you.

Then make time on your calendar to deal with each. 

Rest assured, without putting in the time, nothing will change.

But when you do, your independent thinking abilities will explode.

One: Letting The World Revolve Around You

Most of us experience inner talk.  And it’s normal to include yourself and your experiences in the topics you think about.

But those who have excellent critical thinking skills know how to contextualize their SRIN. 

What is SRIN?

Self-referential Inner Narrative. 

Others call this the “blah blah blah” monkey-mind.

No matter what you call it, if you can’t think about contexts larger than your immediate self, it will be impossible to think critically. 

Here’s what to do instead: 

Notice when you say or think things like, “I don’t personally know anyone this has happened to.” Stop and think about the larger context at the level of your neighborhood, your city, your region, your country, your continent, your hemisphere and the world. Where relevant, include the entire universe.Imagine a topic through the eyes of at least one other person. In autobiographical memory studies, this is called shifting from the field perspective to the observer perspective.Ask about what would be true even if you did not exist. 

For more help, these critical thinking examples will help you think through other perspectives.

Two: Lack Of Critical Thinking Skills

If you want to remove the obstacles to critical thinking you’re experiencing, some study will be involved. 

Critical thinking books abound and it is worth spending time with some of the best. Look for books that include examples and exercises. 

You’ll also want to think about a particular goal for critical thinking that you have. For example, do you want to think better as a student preparing for law school? Or do you need thinking skills for being a better contributor to your family or neighborhood? 

Setting a goal can help guide which resources you choose and your study and practice plan. 

Three: Not Knowing Your Cognitive Biases

We are all included to make serious errors in our thinking.

But we’re not alone in making them. Far from it. 

In fact, because all of us operate from having a human brain, psychologists have identified patterns.

These are called cognitive biases.

One that I suffer from quite badly is called “recency bias.” Basically, it’s very tempting for me to judge reality based on the most recent events, rather than looking at the broad scope of history.

I use all of the tips on this page to cope and improve. One of the most helpful is to engage in continual discussions with friends about history as I continue to read history.

The more you know and discuss the past, the more you are automatically reminded of a bias like this.

What cognitive biases are strongest in your life? 

Four: Being In A Hurry

We’re all in a rush once in a while. 

But it’s one of the biggest critical thinking challenges all the same. 

If you don’t stop and think, mistakes are so much easier to make. 

One of my favorite tools for making sure I don’t rush into making decisions without thinking about them is called W.R.A.P.

Widen Your OptionsReality TestAttain DistancePrepare To Fail

As can see, it has tools in it to help you slow down.

It’s also a superior alternative to “trusting your gut.” In fact, Chip and Dan Heath who came up with it in their book Decisive did a lot of research on it for the book. 

They show that relying on gut instinct is often very harmful. (And it’s often a cognitive bias that drives us to rely on it anyway.)

How do you remember to use the W.R.A.P. technique? You need to get thinking about it deep into your procedural memory. 

For that, a Memory Palace will help. Grab this free course so you know how to create and use one:

Five: Lack Of Scientific Literacy

Unfortunately, a lot of people leave school not knowing how to evaluate research. They often have limited numeracy skills.

They also barely understand some of the core principles of science, such as:

Sampling and generalizabilityProbability and coincidenceCorrelation and causationDifferentiating fact from opinionLogical reasoning

To remove these barriers from your life, make sure to learn what science is really all about. This is the kind of understanding that can help save your life as you think better. 

Six: Exhaustion

Of all the most common barriers to critical thinking, not being well rested destroys our decision-making abilities. 

Sleep and memory go together, and we need to remember to think critically in the first place. Please be sure to privilege your rest. 

Seven: Lack Of Communication Skills

Thinking is more than a two-way street. It’s a complex network of many freeways, highways, streets and cul de sacs.

You need to communicate with many people and you need to do it well. 

Some people don’t have a big enough vocabulary, so need to learn how to remember more words.

Others lack writing skills.

Yet others are not yet able to read fast enough so that they can talk and write enough to effectively communicate.

One way to improve in all these areas is to create a 90-day research and communication goal. 

For example, I spent 90-days learning about the art of memory in the sixteenth century. To practice building my communication skills, I spoke with many people about it, wrote frequently and read the suggestions I got from others. 

To remove your critical thinking barriers, spend the next 90 days reading about it. Find a philosophy discussion group. Start a blog or journal privately about what you’re learning.

It will help you tremendously.

Eight: Fear Of Failure

A lot of people are so afraid to make mistakes that they never take action. 

Well, critical thinking is itself an action. If you never get started, you won’t be able to learn from the mistakes you will inevitably make. 

This barrier circles us back to the problem of the ego and SRIN. You might be overly protective of yourself because you’re stuck in a self-referential loop.

How to get past this comes down to:

Recognizing the issueCommitting to get past itSetting a plan for when you’re going to start taking risks

One quick win would be to join a debate club. This will give you meeting deadlines and specific topics for which you need to be prepared. You’ll have removed this common barrier in no time.

Nine: Inability To Improvise

Of all the critical thinking strategies out there, you need to be able to think on your feet. 

One of the reasons people fear failure so much is that they’re just not used to opening their mouths, making mistakes and being able to pivot. 

I’ve learned to do this by giving lots of speeches from memory and other kinds of presentations. 

And I’ve also learned and memorized a lot about logic and philosophy, in more than just one language.

Spend some time learning a language to break through this barrier. Practicing speaking in a new language will give you verbal dexterity that improves your ability to improvise in your mother tongue. 

The Best Time To Remove Your Barriers Was Yesterday

Thanks for reading this post.

There are obviously more barriers than the ones we’ve gone over today, but as you can see, the nine I’ve listed are massive.

My suggestion?

Get started on just one at a time.

Follow-up with the resources I’ve provided.

Familiarize yourself with those cognitive biases and improve your science literacy. 

And if you want to get started practicing your writing skills, feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below. 

And if you ever spot me suffering from issues in my thinking, please let me know. I always want to improve!