Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 16

How to Think Logically (And Permanently Solve Serious Problems)

If you want to solve life’s problems with greater ease, you should learn how to think logically, right?

Yes, but not so fast.

You want to make sure you’re using the right kinds of logic for the problems at hand.

You see, logical thinkers do what I’m doing now:

They put the breaks on such questions and start to spin them around.

Why? Because logic itself often involves digging deeper and analyzing different perspectives.

For example, one of the forms of logical thinking you’re about to discover would have you instantly ask… 

Is there more than one kind of logic for solving life’s problems quickly? Or can I explore alternatives outside of logic? 

A logical thinker might do the same thing to the very idea of a “problem” itself.

This is done by “mentally rotating” the topic at hand and seeing how it might in fact not be a problem at all.

It might be a path to a solution. 

Yours Free: A Private Course With Cheat Sheets For Becoming A Memory Master, Starting From Scratch.

>>> Click Here For This Special Free Offer.How to Think Logically: 9 Ways to Improve Your Logical Thinking Skills

At the end of the day, using the right form of logic is more about the best possible solution than the problem, but we do need to make sure we understand the problem first.

If you’ve listened to Elon Musk talk about first principles thinking, that’s a form of logic he’s using to help humans thrive on distant planets after earth dies. And communicate better here on our precious planet while we still can.

Those are real problems, and the right forms of logic are needed.

The best part?

There are a whole lot more ways to think logically to solve global and personal problems alike, so let’s get started 

One: Take A Deep Dive Into Logical Thinking

Improving logical reasoning begins by knowing the types of logic at your disposal.

Exploring the history of logic is well worth your time because it will help you see how humans discovered these principles and refined them over time through practice. 

As you’ll soon discover, many cultures have identified and used logical forms such as:

Philosophical logicInformal logicFormal logicModal logicMathematical logicParaconsistent logicSemantic logicInferential logicSystematic logic

Usually what people who want to think more logically are actually after is the first category, or philosophical logic. This is also called “reasoning” and includes the skills of:

DeductionInductionCausal inferenceAnalogy

Deductive reasoning is what we think of when we think of Sherlock Holmes, who builds his cases by arguing from general principles. He uses these to describe a specific series of events and solve various mysteries. 

Inductive reasoning is essentially the reverse of this process. Instead of using general principles to arrive at specifics, you use specific details to generalize. For example, you might notice that I post on this blog almost every week, and use inductive reasoning to logically determine that I am a consistent blogger. 

Causal inference helps you understand the scientific reason why and how things change. For example, why are you reading this article? I can logically infer that it is because you want to experience change and become a better thinker.

(Or maybe you want to experience more, such as all of these 11 benefits of critical thinking.)

Analogy or analogical reasoning involves making comparisons based on established examples or models. 

For example, we know that nearly every memory champion openly admits that they have normal memory that doesn’t work especially well without using mnemonic devices. By analogy, we can infer that any person with average memory abilities can become a memory champion. 

How long should you study logic? I’d suggest at least 90 days so you can get the bird’s eye overview and enough of the granular details.

Logical thinkers always make sure they have a bird’s eye view and the granular details at the same time.

Plus, as you’ll soon discover on this page, there are other fields you can read from to improve your logical thinking.

Two: Understand the Problems You’re Trying to Solve Deeply

Ever taken a quiz and realized you answered before thinking about the question? You could have gotten it correctly, but your impulses took over and you lost precious points. 

It’s not that you were being illogical. You just didn’t take the time to fully understand the question, and the reason why you failed to do so might have been logical. For example, from one perspective, in some contexts it might be perfectly logical to rush through an exam if you’re running out of time. 

But generally, we want to be sure that we deeply understand the problems we face. That is why Abraham Lincoln famously said:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” 

Lincoln is using an analogy here, one in which the “axe” stands in as an analogy. It speaks to spending the time needed to make sure you’re using the right tools for the job. Moreover, you make sure they are in top shape before you use them.

All the more reason to learn more about the different forms of logic. It will put more tools in your tool box and enable you to keep them sharp.

Here are 9 more critical thinking strategies to help you keep your axe sharp.

Three: Learn More About Language

A lot of people struggle to think logically because they don’t understand enough about what words mean.

Logical thinking involves nuance, so the more you know about words and their meanings, the greater mental precision in decision-making you’ll enjoy. 

To improve, here’s how to memorize vocabulary. It will help you add more meanings to words and add more definitions to those you already know. Learning word origins and how prefixes and suffixes work will help you too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWz80...

On top of learning more about words and their meanings, learning about language and logic will help, such as studying syllogisms and logical fallacies.

Bonus tip:

Go deep and learn as much as you can about fallacies so you really know your stuff. It’s easy to fall into thinking traps if you don’t.

For example, some people like to accuse others of slippery slope fallacy, without realizing that there are actually six kinds of this fallacy. 

If you want to think logically, it pays to be thorough. That’s why we’ll focus on thoroughness next.

Four: Read Quickly Without Sacrificing Thoroughness

Improving vocabulary is huge for improving logical thinking, and it will help you read faster.

But to improve your logical skills over time, you need to read thoroughly. 

I suggest you read bigger books and more of them, starting with the key textbooks in your field of interest. 

By going for the biggest and most authoritative books, you’ll be reading more logically.

Establishing foundations in your mind by reading authoritative textbooks will help you develop pattern recognition. This skill leads to faster use of the logical forms of inference we discussed in the first part of this article.

Five: Listen To Long Form Content

Short form content is causing people to make snap judgments and interrupt people before they’ve heard the full story. Logical thinkers protect themselves by practicing listening for long periods of time.

Not only is it helpful to read longer books, but you’ll learn to think much more logically when you listen to logical people think out loud.

Debates are a great way to do this and the Internet makes it possible to find many of them. 

It’s important to pay attention to both sides of the argument, however.

As you listen, practice thinking yourself by mentally rehearsing the evidence you would provide in support of your views. Also think about how you would respond.

Another tip:

Notice the holes in the arguments proposed by the debaters and list out the ways you would fill in the gaps. 

And if you want to remember more of what goes on during debates, Memory Palace Mastery is here to help.

Six: Expand Your Competence Using Multiple Media

I’ve just suggested that you experience “thinking out loud” and model it yourself.

But you’ll want to go beyond completing logical exercises in your mind. You should also:

SpeakWriteAnalyze

To practice speaking logically, engage in as many discussions as you can about real problems. Sure, there’s a place for talking about movies and sports. But if you want to know how to think more logically, you’ve got to practice it yourself in real time.

Writing is always key for developing logical thinking, so I suggest you keep a journal. This simple practice will help you see your own thinking process and improve it over time. 

Combined, you will have many opportunities for self-analysis. If you can record your conversations and look at transcripts of them, all the better. 

Seven: Ask Better Questions

A lot of us ask the typical W5 questions and let it rest at that:

WhoWhat WhereWhenWhyHow

But to practice thinking logically, you want to go beyond these questions. Ask in addition to these questions: 

According to whom?According to what precedent?Where isn’t this true?When hasn’t this been the case?Why now? 

There are many variations on these questions you can ask, and I cover more along these lines in our community’s post on how to think faster.

Eight: Learn Game Theory

One of the lesser known ways to learn logical thinking is to study games and metagames. 

In brief, game theory studies areas of competition where people regularly make decisions. These decisions are influenced by other people in the area and in turn influence others. 

By modeling the ways people interact in competitive contexts, you can learn to think more logically and avoid cognitive biases that harm your performance in life. 

You’ll enjoy avoiding many problems because game theory helps train your mind to anticipate the possible outcomes of various decisions. By thinking through consequences in advance, you save yourself a lot of trouble.

Note: You can perform game theory on the past as well by thinking through what would have happened had people acted differently. This is called working through the counterfactuals of a  historical situation and can be used on your personal life and large groups.

Some people think that game theory has limited value for everyday life, but I don’t think they’re being… logical about that. We all find ourselves in situations where we are influenced to act in certain ways and understanding these pressures will help you respond in much better ways. 

A key example is by using the Monty Hall Problem or Three Door Problem to make decisions. 

Logical exercises like The Monty Hall Problem help you think through what to do when you face choices in life.

Some people squabble over whether it is in fact logical to use this problem in life, but I can attest to its value.

For example, when I see an opportunity to do something different and feel like I want to default to my previous choices, I bring this game theoretical example to mind and remind myself to travel the “path less travelled.” 

Is the math on my side?

I think so, because I’ve gone on many adventures that logic dictates could not have happened had I chosen to stick with the same thing.

To learn more about these situations, check out the stories I share in The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being.

Nine: Use Rules And Embrace Limitations

 I didn’t use to like rules. In some ways I still don’t.

But one day I was enjoying dinner with Tony Buzan, memory expert, mind map innovator and co-founder of the World Memory Championships. 

I told him about how I sometimes would switch memory systems while under time trials for numbers and playing cards. 

He said, “The rules will set you free.” 

Tony Buzan with Anthony Metivier and Phil Chambers

This is important because life, as in memory training, often gives us the opportunity to use multiple techniques.

For example, when remembering numbers, we could choose the Dominic System or the Major System, though as I discovered, it doesn’t pay off to switch from one to the other during a time trial.

But by willing to limit ourselves and stick to the “rules” of just one system, we can improve our performance.

This is true in life too, where you can learn certain rules of thumb and stick to them.

To take another example, learning the logic of Chip and Dan Heath’s W.R.A.P. technique and practicing it over time has been tremendously helpful for me.

In fact, it’s so helpful, it is “illogical” to forget not to use it when making decisions. That’s why I memorized it using a special memory technique called ars combinatoria, something that was very important in the history of how logical thinking developed.

What rules of thumb that help you “limit” yourself to a productive form of thinking and decision making can you adopt? 

Thinking Logically Is A Rewarding Process To Enjoy For Life

Have you enjoyed learning these nine ways to improve your logical thinking? 

I hope so and hope you will make practicing some of these approaches a personal hobby.

You can easily practice logical thinking while meditating or working with an alternative to logic like Zen.

As a final tip, it would only be logical for me to recommend the opposite of logic. 

You see, there are practices like Zen which evolved to help us see and experience the limits of logic. Zen turns language against itself to help us experience mental relief from the problems we think so hard about. 

One of the best books that situates the topic in the larger realm of computational thinking for both humans and machines is Gödel Escher Bach. For a collection of koans to explore, The Gateless Gate by Mumon is an interesting source.

I mention the opposite of logic not only because it is logical to do so. To fully experience the rewards of logical thinking, you need to be able to step outside of thinking altogether. 

Questioning deeply is not enough. We need to question the process of questioning itself as a lifelong learning habit.

So on that note, let the questioning begin. Let me know which of these ways to improve your thinking you’re going to try out and what questions about logic do you still have?

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15 Secrets To Expanding Your Mind And Accessing More of Your Brain

Want to expand your mind? 

I sure have enjoying increasing my mental skills and pushing the limits of how much the human brain can learn.

Being the owner of an expanded brain comes with so many benefits too. For example, you can:

Remember moreMake better decisionsThink fasterConnect abstract ideasPlan further into the futureEnergize yourself when you’re downEnjoy mental peace on demand

The best part?

You don’t have to be so open-minded that your brains fall out. 

After all, there are a lot of sharks out there teaching woo-woo “techniques” directed at the gullible. 

But you can learn how to expand your mind based on scientifically valid processes that work quickly. 

Let’s dive in.

How To Expand Your Mind: 15 Activities And Tips 

The following practices are in no particular order of importance.

Usually they can be mixed and matched for maximum impact (such as juggling while reciting the alphabet backwards.) 

One: Juggling With Added Challenges

Hang on, you might be thinking.

Juggling? 

Well, yes. It expands your mind for quite a few reasons. 

Research shows that it:

Increase connections between the neurons in your brainImproves visionImproves memoryImproves oxygen and blood flow or improvement cognition

To get all the research in one highly readable account, check out The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture by neurologist Frank R. Wilson.

To take your juggling to the next level, include other skills, such as reciting from memory. I share how I learned to do this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yTiX...

To get started, get yourself some suitable balls and make it simple. Add one level of complexity at a time.

When you’re ready to supplement juggling with memorized material, I suggest you start with a song you already know. 

Then increase the challenge by reciting new content you’ve only recently memorized. You can also juggle while completing many of these powerful brain exercises.

Practice at least four times a week for best results.

Two: Seek Out Incredible Thinkers

 

If you want to know how to use more of your brain, you really can just let it rub off on you.

We know that people learn by modeling others, so one of the easiest and fastest activities for stimulating mental expansion is simply to be around great thinkers. 

Now, do you really have to be in the same room? 

Yes and no. Obviously, listening to podcasts and watching videos of great debates can play a role. 

But I’m pretty confident you’ll pick up more thinking skills when you’re together with people who regularly use more of their minds. 

Options include: 

Attending public lectures and mingling Going to meetup groupsJoining a chess clubGoing to a memory competitionHanging out with smart friends and family members

If you really can’t find people offline, seek out online discussion groups and forums where people demonstrate their expertise. 

It can take some time to find the right mix, but it’s worth the search. The search itself should expand your mind too.

Just keep this principle in mind:

If you’re the smartest person in the room, it’s probably the wrong room.

Three: Meditate 

Meditation is all the rage these days, and for good reason.

Few mental activities have produced as much scientific evidence of the benefits you can experience than meditation. 

Here’s a guide on how to meditate for concentration and focus that includes some of the best science.

I suggest you start simply:

Set a time for less time than you think you can sitSit in a chair or on the floorFocus on your breathLet your thoughts flow unobstructedWhen the timer rings, sit for just a little longerJournal to capture your reflections on the experienceFour: Use a Memory Palace

If you’re not familiar with this incredible mental tool, it works like this:

You select a location such as your home. Then you identify a journey you can easily navigate.

Like Hansel and Gretel, you place “crumbs” of association along this journey that help you remember information.

Using the same Memory Palace, you follow a couple of patterns that rapidly ushers the information into long term memory.

Once you have this simple tool under your belt, you can use it to extend your knowledge of many topics and skills. For example, you can:

Learn the planetsMemorize the presidentsRemember the periodic table of elementsRecall geographical information from mapsAbsorb new vocabulary within minutes

And that’s just for starters. To master this skill, I’d like to invite you to this special program:

Five: Read With Momentum

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of hogwash out there about so-called “speed reading.”

Yet, you can learn how to read faster. 

The trick is in selecting books worth reading – books that will actually expand your mind. 

To do this, I suggest you create a vision statement. What is it that you want to accomplish or experience in life? 

Next, do some research and identify 1-3 key texts on that topic. 

For example, when I wanted to learn about consciousness, I quickly came across a book called Gödel Escher Bach.

To find more related books, I simply looked at the list of works cited and picked a couple. This process quickly led me to reading both Spinoza and Hume. 

Of course, you’ll find that not every lead proves worth the time in the end. But learning how to separate the wheat from the chaff cannot take place if you don’t encounter a few bad apples along the way. 

In other words, bad books also expand your awareness of what doesn’t work too. It’s win-win no matter how you look at it from this perspective. 

Six: Practice Philosophy In Everyday Life

If you do any serious amount of reading, you’ll wind up covering a fair amount of philosophy. 

But to enjoy an expanded mind, reading is not enough.

You have to do philosophy. 

There are a few ways to do this.

For one thing, Gilles Deleuze thought that doing philosophy involves the creation of new concepts. 

Now, “new” doesn’t necessarily mean “unique” or “original.” There’s also the power of concepts that are “new to you.”

For example, I often come up with my own pet phrases for concepts that have certainly existed before. But because I craft them by interacting with them, they take on a special emphasis. 

Nir Eyal presents research from science on how and why this kind of interaction helps people focus and gain traction in life. Ramon Llull, Nietzsche and many other people have promoted this form of self-invention throughout history too.

Seven: Learn Ars Combinatoria (The Art of Combination)

Ars combinatoria is a big topic, but here are the broad strokes:

Basically, you create a Memory Wheel. On this wheel, you place individual letters. These letters represent larger concepts. 

For example, if you want to remember how to act in certain situations, you would place letters on your Memory Wheel to remember those actions.

Instead of arguing, for example, you might choose to:

S: Say nothing

T: Take a deep breath

O: Open the dialog with a new question after suggesting a quick

P: Pause

Now, you might be thinking…

Hang on! Learning acronyms sounds like limiting the mind, not expanding it.

I understand the objection, but in this case, nothing could be further from the truth. 

Sometimes by limiting ourselves to pre-memorized options, we wind up increasing our options. Then we’re able to learn more and enjoy the benefits of objective reasoning as a result.

It’s a big topic and there are more ways to use this technique for expanding your mind. Learn more about ars combinatoria today.

Eight: Learn Multiple Languages

If you really want to use more of your brain, learning just one other language won’t do. 

Of course, there are challenges when it comes to learning more than one language at a time. But with strategy these are readily overcome.

The benefits of learning another language are huge because even just a small amount of multilingual study will:

Reveal connections between culturesTeach you the history of how languages evolved historicallyStimulate critical thinking skills thanks to exposure to multiple points of comparison

You’ll also meet many more people you can chat with, and some of them will be the “next level” thinkers we discussed above. 

Nine: Learn New Manual Skills

We’ve already talked about juggling. But there’s also:

Musical instrumentsTypingFencing (swords and yes, building picket fences)DrawingKnitting, etc.

You might laugh at knitting, but one of my best friends is an avid knitter. He’s really brilliant and very successful and attributes some of his ability to concentrate and remember conversations to his knitting habit. 

I’ve certainly noticed he pays more attention when we speak even though he’s clacking away at a new sweater or scarf.

Ten: Practice Multisensory Visualization

A lot of people visualize, but they make a weird mistake:

They limit visualization to seeing mental pictures. 

This habit prevents them from expanding their minds effectively.

Instead, make sure you touch on at least eight of the major multisensory modes. We call them the “Magnetic Modes” in our community.

Try these visualization meditations to get started in a way that incorporates multiple sensations.

Eleven: Practice Self Inquiry

It can take a while to understand the idea of asking yourself questions. It certainly took me a while. 

But it’s very powerful and can help you experience consciousness in a whole new way. 

Basically, the tradition is very old and appears in everything from Advaita Vedanta and Zen to hermeticism and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I believe it has stood the test of time because it is an incredibly powerful cognitive activity.

My favorite questions are:

How do my thoughts behave?Are my thoughts useful?What value do my thoughts have?Who is having this thought?Where is this thought taking place in my mind?

There are many more and the core idea is that they offer a “pattern interrupt.” Instead of being constantly lost in thought, you manage to experience the consciousness that your thoughts arise in. 

This leads to experiences of tremendous mental freedom, as I shared in this TEDx Talk:

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

Twelve: Macro and Micro Travel

The more places you see, the more references you’ll have to locations, people and experiences. 

This is true at multiple levels of travel:

Other countriesOther cities and states or provincesOther parts of your city

No matter what’s going on, you can always take a walk to a part of the area you live in to expand your mental model of the world. 

Thirteen: Journal

Keeping a journal has been proven to improve memory and expand your experience of time. (See Richard Wiseman’s 59 Seconds for the research data.)

You can journal in a number of ways at the same time, including: 

Progress journaling (goals, books you’ve read)Biographical journaling (daily events)Gratitude journaling (things you’re thankful for)Dream journaling (recording your dreams)

The more you practice different styles of journaling, the more you’ll find the space in your mind expanding. 

Fourteen: Practice Empathy

Next time you’re meditating, try this simple exercise:

As you recite the alphabet from A-Z, think of people you know and embrace them with love in your heart. 

For example: 

A – AdamB – BonnieC – CarlEtc. 

Within just a few moments, you will have created positive emotions for multiple people.

Here’s another exercise:

The next time someone annoys you at the grocery store or when you’re backed up in traffic, catch yourself. Hold the person who has irritated you in your heart and forgive them. 

You’ll have more space in your mind for better quality thoughts this way.

Fifteen: Explore Your Dislikes

For awhile, klezmer was not exactly the kind of music I liked. 

However, to improve the quality of my mind, I took it upon myself to dive deep into several genres of music I normally avoided. 

I’m still not a huge fan, but as with embracing those we don’t like in our environment, spending some time with material you normally dismiss gives you more perspective. 

The best part?

It makes you appreciate the things you do like a lot more. 

How To Use More Of Your Brain Habitually

There are many more activities you’ll come up with along your personal journey of mental improvement. And I hope you’ll share your updates along the way.

To make sure that these strategies become habitual, schedule the activities in a calendar and show up. 

Plan to explore each for at least 90 days at a rate of at least four times per week. If you can get more sessions in, all the better. 

This approach works because your brain forms neuronal connections through repetition. 

So what do you say? Are you ready to expand your brain’s capacity?

Dive in and keep us posted on your progress. I’ll be right there with you!

How to Learn a New Language Fast: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re looking for how to learn a new language fast, chances are your emotions are getting yanked around. 

On the one hand, you’re filled with tremendous excitement!

You can almost taste the triumph as fluent sentences pour from your mouth. 

On the other hand, you’ve heard that your target language is really hard…

And you’re worried about memorizing thousands of words and the billions of potential sentences you’ll need to master.

Let’s put a stop to all those worries right now.

How?

With a small set of practical strategies. And let’s amplify the wonder, excitement and truly miraculous experiences you can expect by treating the language learning journey for what it should be:

A journey, not a destination. 

This mindset is really important because not one amongst us is truly fluent in our mother tongue. It’s not even a remote possibility when you look at the Oxford English Dictionary (if English is your mother tongue).

Yet, when you set proper goals based on L.U.C.K., the fastest way to learn a language can be yours.

What is L.U.C.K.?

It stands for “learn using correct knowledge.”

And that’s exactly what you’ll get on this page. Keep reading each and every word so that you know exactly how fun and easy learning any language can be. 

How To Learn A Language Fast: 15 Tips Step One: Learn How to Teach Yourself A Language First

Even if you find the best teacher on the planet for your target language, they can only take you so far. You have to be able to teach yourself too. 

To do that, you’ll want to learn the “meta learning” skills that make learning a language possible. These can be broken down into what I like to call The Big 5 Of Language Learning:

These five elements are based on a scientific principle called the levels of processing. They mean that you need to learn how to combine:

MemoryReadingWritingListeningSpeaking

It’s not a question of which one is most important. It’s the holistic combination of all them that matters in the end.

That said, there are ways to combine listening and reading, for example. You can do that by combining certain tools, like the story narration program I feature on my best language learning software post.

You can also get great writing practice at the same time you speak, by repeating what you put on the page verbally either before or after putting it down on paper. 

Both writing and speaking are very important for learning a language. By reading aloud what you’ve written, you double-down on the benefits and learn faster.

Any decent language learning class will make you go through these steps, but if you don’t also get yourself to do it on your own, you’ll struggle to learn your language. 

Step Two: Develop A Positive Mindset

So many people ask, How hard is it to learn a new language? 

What if this is the wrong question?

What if a better question is: what are the mental strength resources I need to keep consistent over the long term? 

When it comes to language learning, you’ll want to develop skills with: 

Setting realistic goalsFor example, if your language has a character set or new alphabet you need to learn, this might be your first goalIf you already know the alphabet, then your first goal might be how to introduce yourself, plus fifty new words related to some of your interestsCreating a practical scheduleShowing up consistentlyManaging your expectationsUnderstanding the different types of motivation when learning languagesAccept that mistakes will be made and be willing to learn from themExploring and acquiring the best language learning materialsDeveloping the courage to speak the language

Use a journal to set your goals. It will help you gain clarity on what really matters because you can see your intentions more objectively.

Some people will need to spend more time learning these skills than others. But they can all be learned and improved as you go.

Step Three: Choose The Best Possible Language Learning Materials

This step is tricky, but also very doable. 

First, just accept that some risk is involved. You might end up buying a book or course that just doesn’t suit you.

This circles back to mindset, particularly managing your expectations.

Personally, I treat it all as research and don’t get emotionally involved.

In fact, I allow myself to be open to revisiting any resource I’ve purchased again in the future, because we as humans can be tremendously fickle. It might not be that the book or course is bad. It’s entirely possible that we were either not ready for it yet, or just having a bad day, week, month or year. 

A subset of choosing the best materials for learning a language is to limit the amount of sources. When learning a language, we do want tons of input – but that doesn’t mean you want it from dozens of sources. 

There is an overwhelming amount of language learning material to choose from. Set limits and focus on completing just one book at a time.

Instead, I suggest you take a tip I’ve benefited from. It comes from my friend and language learning expert Olly Richards, who advises that we pick at maximum: 

One bookOne video or audio program One teacher

By doing this, we give ourselves ample opportunity to experience the levels of processing effect while not overwhelming ourselves with materials. Embracing limits helps us maximize our investment in the materials and enjoy the benefits of thoroughness. 

Again, you might find you acquire materials that simply don’t work. It happens. But overall, limiting what you bring into your learning life and maximizing your thoroughness with those materials will pay off soon. 

Setting limits leads to success!

My personal rule of thumb is to stick with something for at least 90 days. When I was learning Chinese, I did this with just one audio program, one book and one teacher and am confident it helped me be much more successful than I would have been by constantly throwing new “shiny new textbooks” in my path. 

Step Four: Learn To Use Memory Techniques

Some people object that adding mnemonics for language learning only adds one more thing they have to learn. 

I understand the objection.

But it’s ultimately illogical.

It’s kind of like saying learning to write the alphabet adds just one more thing to the goal of writing words and sentences.

Or it’s like saying you have to learn how to build airplanes before you build an airport. All of these examples make a kind of sense, but they still aren’t valid objections. 

Learning mnemonics can feel like having to build an airport before you can fly a plane. But the rewards are worth it and just as profound as the miracle of international travel.

In reality, learning to use memory techniques for language learning well is one of the best ways to rapidly accelerate your practice. They help because:

The Memory Palace technique allows you to rapidly scale the number of words and phrases you can rememberEffective association through multi-sensory visualization makes words and meanings incredibly “sticky”Using the method of loci mentally replicates spaced repetition software without sacrificing the benefits of active recall

In fact, the memory techniques optimize how you practice recalling information in a way that strengthens your memory overall. 

Step Five: Immerse Yourself With Sensible Input And Strategic Challenges

In the beginning, you might not understand anything. But as you learn, your pattern recognition will go up. 

There are a number of ways to keep increasing your sensible input. These include:

Meet regularly with a native speakerBe sure to bring a picture-based magazine. Learn to ask, “What is that?” and keep pointing at pictures. Record the sessions with your smart phone and listen back, trying to guess what you were looking at in the magazine. Watch movies with subtitlesWhen you find vocabulary and phrases you want to learn, write them down and memorize them. I recommend you create your own flashcards by hand using drawings and colors, like this:

It’s fun and easy to create your own mnemonic devices on flash cards. It’s also generally much more effective than using language learning apps.

Complete courses and textbooks thoroughlyThese will help increase the amount of patterns you’ll recognize as you continue your exposure to the language you’re learning.Read short stories and news articlesYou can do this by just reading or by creating your own translations as you go. My friend Luca Lampariello shares a number of tips on how to use translation to increase your fluency.Take a courseStrictly speaking, taking a course isn’t necessary. I’ve done it both as a beginner and as a more established student and find saving it for later much more useful. If you take a course, make sure the teacher uses the target language primarily. You’re not there to improve your mother tongue or teach it to them.Speak with natives onlineTools like italki and the Tandem app are great sources for finding people to speak with during dedicated sessions or in small doses by sending and receiving audio texts.As a rule of thumb, I like to give new people 2-3 sessions before deciding if they are a fit or not. Follow instagram and other social media accounts in your target language.Learn songs in your target language.

With all of these activities, you need to use your judgment. If you go for something too advanced, you’ll just get frustrated.

By the same token, if you aren’t challenged, you’ll quickly get bored. Get out of your comfort zone. It’s where you’ll find the treasure you seek.

Step Six: Invest Enough Time For Daily Practice (But Not Too Much)

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People think you have to spend five to six hours a day while learning a language. This just isn’t true.

By the same token, you’re not going to get very far with just 5 minutes a day. 

That said, if you’re strategic about it, you can learn a lot in 15-30 minutes a day. The trick is in breaking up the activities and making sure you’re getting in enough practice of all The Big 5. A schedule like this can work wonders:

Mornings: 15 minutes memorizing vocabularyAfternoons: 15 minutes of reading and listening using narrated short stories or news articlesEvenings: 15 minutes watching a movie (or the whole movie with about 15 minutes spent capturing words and phrases you find interesting)

Then, the next morning, you can memorize the new vocabulary you’ve gathered from the day before.

The exact amount of time you spend is not nearly as important as the consistency and focus you bring to each learning session. 

Also, vary the routine. If the routine I suggested is something you use on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays:

30 minutes in discussion with a native speaker30 minutes reviewing the discussion recording

It’s also important to schedule breaks. Taking a week off once in a while actually does your brain good when you’re learning. 

Scheduling breaks is important, as is learning how to get back on the horse when you fall from your plan.

The trick is making sure you don’t take off too long and then struggle to get back on the horse.

Here’s a simple tip:

Make sure your language learning sessions with speaking partners are booked in advance. That way, you’re taking some highly beneficial time off, but not with a dangerous open end.

Step Seven: Build Your Own Vocabulary And Phrase Lists

Many people ask, “How long does it take to learn a new language?” I believe the answer should be that the journey never ends. 

But for those who are in a hurry, they often come across the idea of “frequency lists.” These are compilations of words that are used the most often in any given language. If you’re learning Spanish, these lists can be especially seductive.

And they definitely can be useful. In some cases, they will accelerate how quickly you can get started learning the language.

However, they’re also incredibly limited.

Why?

Because no maker of such lists can know what contexts you’ll find yourself in or what you’re going to want to talk about.

That’s why when you’re reading news stories and translating them, it’s important to focus on information that’s interesting and relevant to you. 

Making your own lists of words and phrases to learn is incredibly important. Be prepared with paper or a journal to capture what you want and need to learn.

You’ll move along so much faster if you let yourself be informed by word lists, but also always take care to build your own. There are no “right” words to focus on and true fluency comes from being able to accomplish missions. 

Step Eight: Focus On Systems As Much As, If Not More Than Goals

Goals are important. But even more important are the systems that help ensure that you actually accomplish your language learning goals. 

Let’s say your goal is to learn 50 new words by the end of the week. Great! That’s perfectly realistic.

But it’s also meaningless if you haven’t sat down and charted out a systematic means of getting yourself to accomplish the memorization of those words. 

I suggest developing an if-this-then-that language learning habit stack. 

For example, let’s say you’ve developed a Memory Palace strategy and you’ve spent some time gathering the words you want to memorize. Your habit stack might look like this:

If I wake up, I go immediately to my learning place.If I go to my learning place, I open my Memory Journal to the list of words I’ve prepared. If I have my list, I start with the first word and memorize it using Station One of the Memory Palace.If I have memorized one word, I move on to the next. If I have memorized 10 words, I put my Memory Journal away and start mentally reviewing the words. If I have reviewed my words 3-5 times during the day, I test by writing them out by hand and speak them out loud. 

This is a little system that drives you towards completing the goal. And if you do something like this every day, by the end of the week, you will have memorized 50 words.

You might think even something as tight as this set of steps will take a long time. But nothing could be further from the truth. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without such a simple and elegant system. 

Step Nine: Use The Language Every Day

Have you learned only one word so far?

No problem. Use it. 

Or do you have only a few hundred words?

The principle is the same. Use what you’ve got. 

Talk to yourself as you’re walking down the street.

Tell other people about the phrases you’ve learned and repeat them.

Sing songs in the language you’re learning.

Make your shopping lists in the language you’re learning instead of in your mother tongue. 

Learning songs in a foreign language is a great way to learn vocabulary and phrases.

You need to get the words into the muscle memory of your mouth and your mind.

If you dedicate yourself, everything from brushing your teeth to tying your shoes and kissing your loved ones to sleep at night are excellent opportunities to practice.

Step Ten: Use History And Culture As Your “Secret Weapons”

As I’ve been learning German, Chinese and Sanskrit, I’ve made sure to not stop at the language itself. 

Reading novels, books of history and philosophy from the cultures not only gives you more exposure to the language. It helps you understand the historical and cultural forces that shaped it throughout history and continue to exert an influence.

I would also include serious study of geography and topics like social science.

Knowing about the region can help you understand a lot about how the language developed, and understanding issues related to psychographics can help you fall in love with certain matters of grammar.

This latter point is important because a lot of people waste time trying to understand the “why” of grammar instead of simply accepting it for what it is. 

That said, John McWhorter has shared some compelling reasons to believe that our language differences don’t distinguish us psychologically as much as we might believe.

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

 

These are interesting points to consider, and all arrive at the same benefits for you:

When you immerse yourself in the culture and its history, you’ll have more things to talk about with native speakers.

This point is especially important if you’re introverted or generally shy. But read widely and you’ll never be at a loss for conversation topics. 

Step Eleven: Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

A lot of people get hung up on little things when learning languages. They become perfectionists, without realizing that you need to make mistakes in order to learn. 

Develop the ability to laugh at yourself. If you struggle with self criticism, learn these Two Easily Remembered Questions That Silence Negative Thoughts. I’ve learned them in both English and Sanskrit, and that has been tremendously useful. 

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Being able to give and receive criticism is a powerful skill when learning languages.

Also, don’t be afraid to give criticism.

For example, if a teacher is frustrating you by correcting you too often, ask them to scale it down.

When I submit writing to language teachers, I ask them to please point out just three errors. That way I can keep things light and fun and focus on the biggest aspects to improve without overwhelm. 

But if you meet people who can’t help you or make the journey too serious and destroy all the fun, find someone else. There are plenty of fish in the sea. 

Step Twelve: Be A Stickler About Pronunciation

Let me be honest with you:

Pronunciation has always been my biggest struggle when learning languages. It could be genetics. I’ve been tone deaf my entire life.

Yet, I have managed to learn to play multiple musical instruments and a few languages. 

Time and time again, I always wish I focused more on pronunciation. 

Enter a concept called “chorusing” that I learned from my friends at Outlier Linguistics.

“Chorusing” is a great way to improve your pronunciation.

In brief, this technique is the audio version of using flash cards.

Using recording software like Audacity, you record a native speaker speaking a word or phrase. Then you copy and paste it multiple times so you can hear it repeated and really dig into the nuances. 

Next, you record yourself speaking it on a separate track.

Since a good audio recorder will let you see the sound waves, you can try to make your voice match certain characteristics visually.

But the more important aspect with this technique is you are training your ear to hear yourself and correct your pronunciation through direct comparison. 

The time investment on this technique is admittedly intense. But it’s well worth the effort, especially if this is a weak point for you as it is for me. 

Step Thirteen: Use Cognates But Beware Of False Friends

Many languages have words that are the same or very similar.

In Spanish, for example, you’ll find thousands of words that are very close in sound and meaning to their English equivalents. You might also see these words referred to as “loan words.” 

However, there are also a number of false cognates that mean very different things.

Always check so that you don’t wind up creating foundational errors that may be difficult to correct later. 

Step Fourteen: Add Another Language After You’ve Earned The First One

It’s normal to want to be a polyglot, or someone who speaks 3-5 languages well. But as far as I can tell, all the successful polyglots got there by being willing to establish mastery in just one language at a time. 

Once you’ve done that, you will be very well-versed in the meta learning skills that will help you proceed in leaps and bounds towards substantial speaking and understanding abilities. 

And then you can do cool things like what my friend Benny Lewis calls “laddering.” This technique is when you pick a textbook or course in a language you’ve already learned to start covering the next one.

For example, most of my sources of material for learning Chinese have been from books written in German. 

I love laddering, but am very glad I stuck with German long enough to enjoy great confidence speaking it before moving on. 

One exception to this suggestion that some people find useful is to spend some time learning Esperanto.

The reasoning here suggests that Esperanto is especially suited to helping learners understand more about how different languages work.

Frankly, I’m not convinced you have to become a grammarian or linguist in order to become fluent in a language. If anything, the world is packed with people who are experts in those topics who can’t even speak one other language. 

But if you’re still stuck, it might be worth looking into Esperanto for these reasons.

Or, you could look at a root language to see if it helps wake up your brain.

For example, a small amount of time learning Latin can open up Spanish or Italian for you to an incredible degree.

However, at the end of the day, the old saying that the hunter who chases two rabbits rarely catches either stands up here. Split your attention between more than one language only at great risk. 

Step Fifteen: Travel If You Can, But Don’t Make It A Must

I’ve been lucky and was able to spend years of my life in Germany. During that time, I made sure to live with people who spoke little or no English to make “total immersion” something from which I could not escape.

But I didn’t have the luxury of living in China when I first started learning the language. And it was absolutely not necessary.

In fact, after less than 3 months of studying the language, my time in the country was so distracting, I didn’t have time to study it at all. And that is typically what happens when you try to combine tourism with immersion. 

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Instead, use the tips on this page to create proper goals and the effective systems that will place you in the company of your target language each and every day.

Then, when you do get to travel, you can relax and focus on speaking and understanding much more around you. You’ll have earned it. 

The Best Ways To Learn A Language Begin And End With You And Your Strategy

A lot of people think that kids have some special advantage when it comes to learning a language. This couldn’t be further from the truth. 

In reality, kids take years to speak proper sentences, and many more to read and write at a sophisticated level.

But because adults have all kinds of skills in their mother language, impulse control and the levels of discipline needed to make it on the job market, you have a distinct advantage. 

You really just need to bring everything you know about being a mature and responsible adult to the process of learning a language. But that doesn’t mean you don’t bring childlike curiosity and fun to the game. 

The benefits of speaking a language are immense, ranging from higher salary to the brain health benefits of bilingualism. 

So what do you say? What language do you want to learn and are you feeling empowered now that you have these 15 power tips for learning it?

Reflective Thinking: 5 Powerful Thought Strategies For Improving Your Life

Want to know why the practice of reflective thinking has lasted for thousands of years?

Because being a reflective thinker improves your life.

And not just in abstract ways. 

The substantial improvements you can expect to experience range from:

Improved memoryOptimized decision makingReduced stressBetter relationshipsSuperior objective reasoning skills

So if you’d like a reflective thinking model you can add to your life, stick around. 

I’ve been practicing reflective thinking since I was a teenager and this post is for you.

What is Reflective Thinking?

I first came across this form of mental exercise when I read Albert Camus’ The Stranger in high school. It was the first time I realized it was possible to lead an interesting life, one much more exciting than the dreadful future I felt I was facing at the time.

Camus was an existentialist, which essentially boils down to using “radical honesty” and accepting the limits imposed upon our lives. We do that by reflecting on the human condition for what it is, not what we want it to be.

As I soon discovered, this tradition goes back at least as far as the Ancient Greeks. Socrates, for example, said three memorable things that demonstrate reflective thinking in action:

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”“I know that I know nothing.”“Look at how many things there are which I don’t want.”

In each of these examples, Socrates is turning the lens upon his experience of consciousness. He is looking at both the bigger picture of life and demonstrating something even more critical:

He is showing that self-examination by being a reflective thinker gives life more value He recognizes the limits of his knowledge (like an existentialist)He divides his quality of mind from external, material objects in the world

By examining these statements and what they mean, we can develop a working definition of reflective thinking.

It is a form of self analysis that creates a more valuable experience of consciousness by revealing what is truly important in life. Its main requirement is radical honesty so that you avoid self deception.

Major Philosophers And Psychologists Who Used Critical Thinking And Reflection

The psychologist Albert Ellis remarked that he never would have discovered the processes that ultimately led to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) if “I had not been strongly influenced by philosophers rather than psychotherapists.” 

(You can find this quote in the Albert Ellis Reader.)

This is an important observation (and example of self-reflection) because philosophers were doing the work of psychologists long before Sigmund Freud arrived on the scene. 

Albert Ellis was influenced more by philosophers than his fellow psychologists when working on a form of reflective thinking to help people lead better lives.

In fact, in the Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (the session of 28 October 1908), Freud remarked that he found reading Nietzsche challenging to his sense of self-importance. He observed that Nietzsche had already covered the core ideas of psychoanalysis and could barely get through half a page without encountering insights Freud thought he’d discovered on his own. 

There are many examples in Nietzsche to consider, but one of the strongest takes place at the end of Beyond Good and Evil. In the closing passage, he demonstrates reflective thinking by directing radically honest questions at this own career:

Did I seek where the wind bites keenest, learn to live where no one lives, in the desert where only the polar bear lives, unlearn to pray and curse, unlearn man and god, become a ghost flitting across the glaciers?

This passage is highly poetic, but read in context, Nietzsche is essentially asking: Did I try hard enough? 

Both Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche were hugely influential on the development of reflective thinking.

When applied to both our personal lives and our careers, this is one of the hardest questions we can ask ourselves. Yet, the benefits of taking on the rigors of this form of thinking are clear: 

Only by asking such hard questions can we identify our weaknesses and find the path to personal growth.

Other philosophers and psychologists with a particular focus on thinking reflectively include:

VoltaireSpinozaLeibniz (especially viewpoint dependency)Giordano BrunoCarl JungRobert LangsHow to Think Reflectively In 5 Simple Steps

Albert Ellis gives one of the finest reflective thinking models around: A.B.C.

A = AdversityB = BeliefsC = Consequences

Of course, not everything comes down to problems like adversity. You can think reflectively about positive things too, such as when you enjoy a painting or film. 

But usually we find ourselves reflecting when we need to solve problems and gain mental strength. So let’s focus on how we can reduce adversity in our lives by analysing our beliefs and the consequences we create. 

One: Identify Specific Thinking Goals

As I just mentioned, reflective thinking doesn’t necessarily entail problem solving. When you want to improve your ability to reflect, start with the end.

For example, you might want to:

Improve your objective reasoning skillsPractice positive visualization using aspects of your personal historyLearn to think more logicallyDevelop the ability to think faster

When you know what you want out of thinking reflectively, you’ll get more out of the process.

This was essentially John Dewey’s message in his book, How We Think (1910). In it, Dewey points out that, “Each phase [of reflective thinking] is a step from something to something,” and describes the process as a chain of consequences. 

Like Ellis, Dewey stresses the role of belief. But it can be abstract trying to figure out in both Ellis and Dewy how to find out where your beliefs are holding you back. That’s why a program like Self Authoring can be tremendously helpful. I describe an even more robust model you can try in The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being.

Once you have a specific goal in mind, you can “stress-test” it using mind mapping. This can help make your thought process more visual and actionable.

Two: Practice Self Inquiry

We know that Socrates favored the examined life. 

But how exactly do you exam life? 

The answer is delightfully simple:

Ask yourself questions. 

What kind of questions? 

Well, it turns out that there is a process known as “self inquiry.” It is thousands of years old and part of philosophical traditions like Advaita Vedanta and Zen. 

My two favorite questions are:

How do my thoughts behave?

Are they useful?

Why do these two questions work? 

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

 

They essentially cause you to pay attention to your experience of consciousness itself. 

In other words, you start to reflect on the experience of having a mind. Other reflective thinking examples you can experience come from related questions in Gary Weber’s Evolving Beyond Thought:

How real are my thoughts?Do my thoughts have value?Where does the sense of “real” and “unreal” come from?Where do my biases come from? What is my nature?

Some of these self inquiry questions are very challenging. I have found taking on the challenge incredibly valuable as I become a better thinker.

Three: Focus On The Right Problems

Albert Ellis pointed out that people often focus on their “primary disturbances.” 

He suggested focusing on the “secondary disturbances” instead. 

For example, many people with PTSD will focus on a scene of trauma. But since they cannot change the past, the real problem is the “secondary disturbance” caused by experiencing the memory.

To solve the problem, they need to focus on “the disturbance of being disturbed.” 

This way of thinking about it can feel counterintuitive, but once you start practicing thinking in this way, you’ll find great mental relief a lot faster.

Four: Be A Realist

Psychologist William James pointed out in Radical Empiricism that we often experience humiliation in the pursuit of goals, but not from failure. Instead, we experience disappointment of how the journey for success played out. 

This point brings us back to existentialism and radical honesty. A lot of people can use their minds to visualize success clearly. But because they are not realistic about either their goals or the journey they’ll have to take to get there, they suffer. 

A realist, on the other hand, reflects deeply about what success really is and what it really takes to get it.

And because hard work is always involved in achieving anything worth having, a realist can let go of the outcome and enjoy the journey. 

Thinking well leads to many wins in life.

Working this way creates a win-win because when you reflect back on the time you spend in moving toward your goals, your memories of the pursuit will not be disappointing at all. 

Five: Focus Your Reflections On Others

So far, we’ve talked a lot about focusing on yourself as an individual. There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, we’ve also noted William James’ warning that dissatisfaction comes more from the journey toward goals than failing to reach them. 

Another key strategy for getting more out of the journey is to make sure that you are focused on others in your thinking. 

By doing so, you can potentially experience Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-transcendence. As you may know, Maslow talked about the suffering we experience when we are not able to actualize ourselves. As Maslow says about the experience of someone capable of self-actualization:

“He is more able to fuse with the world, with what was formerly not-self, for example, the lovers come closer to forming a unit rather than two people, the I-Thou monism becomes more possible, the creator becomes one with his work being created, the mother feels one with her child.”

It is possible to establish and maintain a state of flow, like waves in the ocean.

Essentially, Maslow is talking about the state of flow, or the feeling of oneness, rather than separation.

But to really feel fulfilled, we need to transcend the notion that there is a “self” at all. Self inquiry is essentially designed to help you experience that, and it can be tough. 

But rest assured, As neuroscientists like Sam Harris have often pointed out, no research has yet discovered where the “self” exists in the brain.

So how do we get into a state of flow that helps us transcend?

A Powerful Reflection Exercise For Creating Flow

Seating on the floor or a chair, close your eyes. 

Starting with the first letter of the alphabet, bring a person you know to mind. For A, you might think of Amy.

(If you can’t arrive at someone for any individual letter, just skip ahead. Do the best you can.)

Reflecting on what you can do for others is very freeing.

Think about something you could do for that person. It doesn’t have to be monumental. The point of the exercise is to start reflecting on your ability to give.

By the time you’ve gone through the entire alphabet, you should be able to create a quick plan and then execute on it. Soon, you’ll start to feel amazing as you transcend your notion of the self.

Other Reflective Thinking Examples To Boost Your Progress

As you experience deeper reflective thoughts through the steps outlined above, here are some more activities you can explore. 

Take everything one step at a time. Learning better thinking processes is a marathon, not a race.

Study Word Meanings

One problem we see in the world today is a lack of linguistic skills. People understand their own language with less dexterity than ever before. As a result, they fail to benefit from critical thinking that would otherwise benefit their lives.

But when you know what words mean and a little about their history, your thinking power goes way up. 

Learning word origins can reduce your suffering by contextualizing it.

We’ve talked a lot about suffering on this page. And it’s a perfect example of how to reflect differently by looking at words.

“Suffer” has the Latin word “ferre” in it, for example. This is the English word for “ferry.” 

This suggests to us that our ancestors thought that pain had two aspects to it. The pain itself, and having to carry, or “ferry” that pain from one place to another. 

(If you haven’t already, please think back to Ellis and the primary and secondary causes of suffering he identified.)

To give you another example, notice that the word “accept” has the Latin “capere” in it. This means “to take.”

Using our reflective thinking abilities, we can notice that suffering might be part of the world. But our ancestors did not include tolerance or resignation in the word “accept.” 

When you see that the word “ferry” is literally in the word “suffer,” you can think differently about it – without necessarily accepting that you have to suffer.

In other words, although we might have to “accept” suffering, we don’t have to be resigned to “ferrying” it everywhere we go. We can seek relief even as we take on the pain. We can respond actively instead.

For more tips like this, check out these 9 Critical Thinking Strategies for lifelong learners.

Reflection-Based Meditation

The alphabet exercise I gave above is a form of reflection-based meditation. 

But you can also reflect on:

Your gratitudeCompassion for othersHopes and dreamsFears and concernsBeauty in nature and artThe role of change in the worldHow time passesThings you avoid but need to faceAccomplishments in your personal and professional lifeYour faith or personal philosophyCyclical patterns that show up in lifePositive and negative habits you haveYour personal identity and individualismYour education and knowledgeTechnologySocial topicsYour personal wealthReason vs passionYour memory

Basically, if you can find the theme, you can make it the topic of your reflection-based meditations.

You can use the Memory Palace technique to practice thinking.

Memory Palace Activities For Learning

People don’t normally think of the Memory Palace technique as a tool for critical thinking and reflection, but it most certainly is.

For example, we know that Roman orators used this technique to deliver their speeches. And it seems clear that their audiences used the same technique to remember what was said.

This enabled people to think deeply about what was said. 

This technique is also a means of understanding information that can be tough to process. Unfortunately, many memory experts say that you should understand information before memorizing it, but I have not found that to be the case at all.

Learn more about how to use this technique now.

Read Biographies Of Reflective Thinkers

Modeling other successful people not only shows you how success happens. It helps you identify steps to avoid. 

And this returns us to where we started: Know the goals you have for your thinking activities. 

If you want to cope with a problem, such as losing your sight, the reflections you’ll find in The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks is going to be much more useful than a general guide to thinking. 

Not only does Sacks share his own thought processes for coping with vision problems. He gives you references to the books he read so he could model success as he learned to cope himself.

To take another example, if you choose to transcend yourself and learn to reflect more deeply on others, you could zoom out from biographers and study great biographers. James Boswell is often considered the first, and Walter Isaacson is a great contemporary example of something digging deep into great thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs.

There are many biographies and biographers to choose from, so think about who has the success you want and read about that person. Pay special attention to descriptions of how they thought and how they validated their thoughts through dedicated practice. 

The Reflective Thinker Is An Artist, Scientist And Warrior Of The Mind

As you’ve discovered, there’s a lot that goes into practicing self reflection. The practice is thousands of years old and there are different ways to do it.

However, the commonalities amongst all the approaches are easy to spot:

You need to be honest and focus on reality in your thinkingYou need to be philosophical and even artistic through techniques like mind mappingYou need to analyze the process like a scientistYou need to go beyond yourself and consider others

Ultimately, this practice involves thinking about thinking itself. And that reminds me of Tony Buzan’s concept of the Warrior of the Mind. 

In books like Mind Map Mastery, Buzan urged us all to practice what he called “radiant thinking.” 

Since we always want to analyze what words mean, focus on that notion of “radiation.”

Each thought we think exudes energy. And in no small way, thoughts are energy. They exist because of the positive and negative electrons flowing their own brains. 

When you begin analyzing the experience of thinking from this perspective, you have become like a “warrior,” capable of standing up to any challenge.

After all, when you reflect on it… where else are challenges experienced, except in your mind?

Once you realize this simple fact, you really can improve everything. Everything you experience is experience in you and you alone. 

Hence the ancient Greek phrase: Know thyself.

Truly, you are the only one who can.

Positive Visualization: 7 Substantial Techniques For Lasting Success

If you want to experience incredible transformations leading to substantial accomplishments, positive visualization can help.

You just have to make sure you make them multi-sensory and based on one simple quirk no one else talks about. 

The best part is that this form of visualization is really simple and fun to do.

Are you ready?

Dive in and please enjoy this actionable list of easy steps and positive visualization exercises.

What Is Positive Visualization?

During the weeks leading up to my dissertation defense, instead of feeling my palms sweat and my knees shake, I visualized.

To make sure the practice was positive, I built in the proper outcomes based on a secret ingredient you’ll learn today. That ingredient is called multi-sensory visualization and it is very powerful.

I added breathing and muscle relaxation to ensure I was really present.

How?

Getting really tuned in with my body.

That means consciously feeling my feet on the floor. It means following the passage of air in and out of my lungs. And it means mentally noticing that the experience of having thoughts is itself physical.

All the worry and the strain could be dispelled simply by acknowledging it was there and directing oxygen at dispelling it.

Then, while going through the grueling rigors of the exam, I kept focused on my body. And as I answered questions, I positively imagined getting my degree. 

I didn’t just “see” this happening in my mind.

No, I made it multi-sensory by hearing the sounds of clapping from the audience attending my exam.

I felt the handshakes.

I experienced an imaginary version of the emotions that come from success.

I even tasted and smelled the celebration sushi dinner we planned for after the exam.

To give a simple formula:

Body + multi-sensory imagery + a focus on positive outcomes = Mindcrafting.

Here’s the best part:

When you have a positive experience, you can craft it as a tool for use later.

For example, I have revisited the experience of successfully earning my PhD on that day many times.

To do so, I put it in a Memory Palace. That way it has continued to grow in effectiveness over the years whenever I need positivity on demand.

In case you’re wondering, this positive visualization practice is scientifically valid. Here’s just one of many excellent studies by Dr. Tim Dalgleish on using a Memory Palace for positive visualization.

Positive Visualization: A Working Definition

You now know that this form of visualization is powerful and can be reused many times. It is also defined as:

A pleasant alternative to “monkey mind” thinking that wears you down with stressA multi-sensory experienceA mental experience that incorporates the entire bodyAn imaginary event that is used before, during and after a goalA process-based resource that you can benefit from on demand

7 Positive Visualization Techniques And Exercises

As you can guess by the fact that I’m sharing this information, I successfully passed my final exam and was awarded my PhD. 

Here is a list of the different visualization meditation routines I use personally. They are all science-based and will serve as a starting point for you to build your own “stack” of visualization tools. 

Again, please understand that the core technique I have been using improves mood and has been successful in helping people with mood disorders, PTSD and more.

That core technique is called the Memory Palace and is well worth learning. But before we dig into it, let’s start with some fundamentals of visualization so you can make sure you do it in a way that is actually positive in nature. This aspect can be a bit counterintuitive, so the granular details really matter. 

One: Focus Your Visualization Exercises On Practical Outcomes

As Richard Wiseman notes in 59 Seconds, many people who visualize slow or ruin their progress. 

How? 

They set impossible goals. 

You can definitely visualize yourself getting fit, but there are more appropriate parts of the process to focus on. And you want to make sure that the outcome is actually achievable in your personal context.

For example, a person with a particular skeletal shape might never be built like Schwarzenegger.

Yet, some will persist in creating such impossible visualizations instead of focusing on seeing themselves getting their shoes on and going out for a run.  

Likewise, a person who has not made a dollar in their life as a business person is spinning their wheels visualizing themselves as a billionaire, let alone a millionaire. 

It’s much more practical and therefore useful to direct visualization at learning how to make that first sale instead. That you can visualize the next most logical step in the process of reaching your goal. 

Here’s another way to look at it, and this is the secret ingredient that matters most:

You want to base your visualization practice on your existing competence. 

As psychologist Jordan Peterson lays out in Maps of Meaning, your path to learning and experiencing more success is secured if you take what you’re already good at and focus on the next step forward.

Basing your visualizations on existing competence is critical to ensuring you can take the next steps forward with success.

This point is important because you have in memory the skills that it took to get where you are now. You visualize what they are and then you imagine just the next step. 

Of course, that next step can be optimized, so let’s talk about how next. 

Two: Visualize Milestones Supported By Systems

Now that you know what not to visualize (impossible goals), let’s make sure that when you break down what you’re going to visualize, you have the support you need. 

Few goals involve any kind of direct path. Most things worth achieving require you to successfully bring together multiple moving parts. 

To visualize in ways that help you keep the big picture and the granular details in mind at the same time, it’s important to break goals down into milestones.

For example, when I wrote my dissertation, 100,000 words was an overwhelming number. Visualizing a printout the size of a phonebook did not help me. 

Positive visualization is helpful even for massive projects like writing a book.

However, what did help was visualizing myself organizing my outline, then writing 1000 words a day. 

I also visualized myself following a simple writing system. If I put my computer to sleep, I would have the document I was working on open so the next time I logged on, it would be the first thing I saw. 

Then I started following that system. (By writing this post, I’m following it now too.)

To help myself even further with that massive document, I recorded a simple guided visualization for myself. This quick recording focused on the feeling of accomplishment of both doing the writing and having finished the project. 

Whatever goals you are trying to visualize, break it down into smaller parts. And focus on creating and then following simple systems. That way you don’t need to wait for motivation. 

Instead, you just follow the steps involved in the system. And you’ll know those steps very well thanks to the power of visualization. 

Three: Make Sure Your Visualization Experience Is Multi-sensory

It’s a quirk of the English language that we say “visualization.” What we really mean is multi-sensory imagination. 

It can take some practice, but multisensory visualization is important for creating lasting transformation.

For example, when I visualize myself writing the millions of words I’ve produced across my career, “seeing” the action in my mind is barely part of the process. There are even people with aphantasia who can’t see images at all.

Instead, I focus on the feeling of the keys as I type. I hear how it all sounds and enjoy the taste of my favorite teas. 

The deeper into all of your sensations you can go, the more you’ll get out of the experience. It is truly inspiring and helps you notice more of the nuances involved in so many pleasures we usually dismiss.

Here’s more on how to visualize clearly when you want to reach the next level.

Four: Make Sure Your Positive Visualizations Are Actually Positive

A big problem a lot of people have is they disguise negativity in their visualization efforts.

For example, some people will follow a visualization script that says, “I get a raise and the promotion I finally deserve.”

It’s important to test your visualizations because it’s easy to think you’re being positive when you’re actually still stuck in negativity.

This kind of visualization encodes negativity because it implies entitlement. You might well “deserve” it, but nothing in this example visualization follows the rules we’ve laid out above. 

An alternative would be a multisensory visualization that focuses on existing competence and systems that lead toward getting a raise. For example:

I feel great as I prepare my notes for the meeting with my boss. I enjoy listing the positive boosts in revenue I’ve generated for the company and specifically connecting them to the evidence of my contributions. I remember to explain my plans for improving myself further by mentioning the new professional certification courses I’ve joined and am completing in my free time.

Notice how the goal of getting the raise remains, but the emphasis is on the performance in the meeting. The focus is on the positive demonstration of why the raise makes sense, not why the visualizer is entitled to it. 

Five: Script Your Visualizations

The best way to make sure your visualizations are in fact positive is to write them out.

Sure, it would be nice if someone knew you well enough to tailor-make a visualization for you.

But that’s not realistic, and you gain so much by doing it yourself.

Just as you’ll want to visit a tailor for clothes that truly fit properly, it’s important to script your visualization routines so they work for your unique circumstances.

For one thing, writing your own visualizations is itself an immersive positive visualization exercise. By putting what you want to create into writing, you externalize it, which gives it more dimensions as it grows in your imagination.

And the writing process helps you “stress test” that what you want is actually true and as positive as it should be.

Six: Choose The Right Time And Settings

When it comes time to practice the visualization itself, make sure you’re comfortable and won’t be disturbed.

I suggest a variety of locations, both in your home and in outdoor environments. 

Why?

It’s important to have fresh air, greenery and a bit of exercise to stimulate what is called “diffuse thinking.” This is what leads to those eureka moments where even more dots connect. 

People often give up too soon. Please don’t fall into that trap.

Seven: Visualize Frequently Enough To Make A Difference

The main problem I see with people who aren’t getting results from visualization is that they give up too soon.

Or they don’t practice frequently enough to really learn the nuances you’ve discovered today.

After all, we know that reading is not enough. You have to practice the right visualization exercises and you need to do so consistently.

The question is… how do you rig the game and expand your mind sufficiently enough that you cannot fail?

There’s no cookie cutter answer here, but I do have some tips:

Have a big enough “reason why” and test that reason (writing your visualization of the reason is a good place to start)Schedule a time to practice with something like The Freedom JournalPractice at least 4x weekly for 90 days

That might seem like a lot of practice, but in the grand scheme of things, it is nothing. You’re going to live those 90 days anyway, and the neurochemistry of habit formation shows how repetition is key.

Habit formation is really just a process of mindcrafting the neurons in your brain. Once this is done, you’ll find you just show up to the practice of positive visualization automatically.

Without getting too deep into the science of neurons and dopamine, I “visualize” it like gardening:

You have cellular connections in your brain that are like vines. (Vines are positive habits.)

The strength of those vines comes down to your consistency in showing up to water them and clear away the weeds. 

More weeds are always coming and water, if not fertilizer will always be needed. 

Be consistent with your visualization activities and you will improve how you’re doing it and experience more successful outcomes. 

The Ultimate Truth About Positive Visualization Exercises

In a phrase:

They work, if you do the work.

The good news is that this “work” is easy and fun.

But if you struggle, you now have powerful guidelines that can get you over the hurdle.

And if you find it hard to remember when and how to visualize, or you want to recite potentially dozens of positive visualization routines from memory, here is my FREE memory training course:

So what do you say?

Are you ready to dive in and visualize with renewed success? Which of these tips are you going to explore first?

Harry Kahne’s Multiple Mentality Course: An In-Depth Review

How would your life improve if you could perform six mental operations at the same time?

Do you think it would help you tap into more of your brain power?

Harry Kahne certainly did.

And he proved it many times, often by writing out quotes from books in both hands while talking to his audience about other topics. 

The strangest part?

He claimed his mind was perfectly average. He told thousands of people around the world that anyone could perform multiple operations at the same time. 

I agree, and here is why:

I’ve been practicing exercises from Harry Kahne’s Multiple Mentality Course for years. Although I can’t perform many of his impressive students, here are a few benefits I’ve experienced along the way:

Sharper thinkingMore free timeImproved numeracyBetter memoryUseful mental connectionsEnhanced abilities with memory techniques.

Of course, I’m not practicing these techniques to deliver stunt performances… the odd time I might recite the alphabet backwards while juggling:

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

 

The real reason I perform demonstrations is to aid my research into how to use memory techniques better. I’m also constantly crafting new brain exercises so others can experience mental sharpness that lasts.

Why?

For one thing, there’s a lot of warnings out there against multitasking out there – most of them very good. 

Normally, we’re told to avoid multitasking. But is this always a good thing?

But when it comes to using mnemonic devices to memorize, say, all the names in a packed room, we definitely need to multitask in our minds.

Directing multiple mentality at our use of memory techniques seems to me the finest possible use.

So let’s dive deeper into who Harry Kahne was and what multiple mentality is all about. 

Who Was Harry Kahne?

Harry Kahne proved that multitasking is indeed possible. 

He demonstrated this by performing demonstrations where he would write upside down with one hand, backwards with the other, all while reciting poetry.

Harry Kahne solving a crossword puzzle upside down and backwards while reciting memorized information.

Or, he might solve complex calculations with his feet while speaking to his audience as his hands wrote out newspaper headlines from memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ2S6...

 

Born in 1894, Kahne said that he started practicing multiple mentality during school. His teachers kept catching him daydreaming, so he devised a way to read his school books and daydream at the same time.

Clever! 

Derren Brown

By the time the 1920s rolled around, Kahne was touring as The Incomparable Mentalist.

I don’t know if Harry Loryane ever saw Kahne demonstrate his skills, but certainly these kinds of performances were common on the vaudeville circuit at that time. These days, Kahne’s work looks more like what we see from mentalist Derren Brown.

To help other people learn how to perform several operations at once, he explained how others can practice the same “mental gymnastics” he used to develop his skills. 

Multiple Mentality Course Review

Hopping into a time machine to attend a live lecture with Kahne is sadly not possible (yet). 

But we can find a PDF or webpage version of his teaching, and it is incredibly helpful. 

Here’s what you’ll learn:

One: Why People Fail To Exercise Their Minds

Kahne feels that schools focus more on socializing individuals than it teaches them to think. He also points to modern comforts as a source of weakening the mind, citing earlier survival requirements as being essential to better thinking.

Although I think Kahne is right that needing to hunt, farm, build shelter and raise a family without the luxuries of contemporary medicine required more thinking, I don’t quite agree.

For one thing, those skills have very little to do with writing poetry in reverse with your hands while verbally solving math problems. 

Also, we have the problem that the very reason we have so many luxuries comes from masses of people who have developed improved thinking skills. Kahne’s historical fallacy in this regard suggests that his objective reasoning might not have been as improved by multiple mentality as he claims.

Nonetheless, Kahne is correct that all of us need “warming up” when it comes to using our mental abilities better. In fact, this point shows up in creativity studies.

Just like your body needs warming up before exercising, your brain needs it too.

For example, Dr. Robert Epstein is a leading authority on creativity. In numerous articles, many gathered in his book, Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior, Epstein shows how a quick warmup improves creativity, focus and attention while engaged in more complex tasks. 

This is why I like to quickly memorize a deck of cards or juggle while reciting the alphabet backwards before sitting down to do any writing or language learning.

Two: Alphabet Exercises

Kahne explains that these are the most important aspects of his training. Having practiced them myself, I can see why.

First, he asks you to write out the alphabet backwards… from memory. Unfortunately, he doesn’t teach you how to memorize it in reverse order, and gives the bad advice that you should write it out 50 times to learn it.

That’s too much work! So to reduce all of that unnecessary repetition, I teach you how to memorize it backwards in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. 

In addition to working with the alphabet in reverse order, Kahne asks you to:

Pair the alphabet’s extreme ends by mentally reciting them, i.e. A-Z, B-Y, C-X, etc.Start at the center of the alphabet and pair them in reverse order

I would also suggest that you learn the number of each alphabet letter. You can rapidly do this by using the pegword method and a Memory Palace.

Three: Writing and Verbal Exercises

Starting with 3-letter words, Kahne asks you to write one word while spelling another out loud. 

For example, as you write S-K-Y to spell “sky,” you would spell pen, i.e. P-E-N.

It’s actually trickier than it seems – give it a try!

Next, work on writing one word forwards while verbally spelling it backwards. Then, write a different word backwards while verbally spelling it forward.

From there, move on to 4-letter words and beyond.

There are many ways to increase the challenge of Kahne’s multiple mentality exercises. For example, you can visualize other things while performing them.

For an additional challenge, try visualizing something completely different. For example, as you’re spelling “tree” and writing “cart,” imagine a tent.

Four: Write Words From Memory

Kahne asks you to find forty words and write them on paper.

Then he asks you to crumple the paper up and write all those words again on a fresh piece of paper. 

I think he’s quite misguided in asking you to repeat this 25 times or more. You could just learn how to memorize vocabulary and get the list correct the first time.

For a great word generator, I suggest the IAM memory training website. It generates words, numbers and other memory competition-related material for you. It also lets you test your results.

Or you can just grab a deck of cards and memorize those.

Memorizing playing cards is a powerful form of brain exercise that uses multiple parts of your mind.

Five: Recite Poetry While Writing Your Name And Address

Now we’re talking!

Although Kahne gives no instructions on how to memorize poetry, this is a great exercise. 

As Kahne points out, however, your address is going to be rather easy. 

To increase the difficulty, recite a poem while writing out the address of a friend. 

Six: Word Recombination

Next, Kahne suggests that you take the 4-letter words you memorized and start recombining them.

For example, if you memorized fish and cart, you would spell something like “fictrash.”

Or, if you intermingle them in order, it would be one letter from each word interleaved:

F-C-I-A-S-R-H-T

It’s actually REALLY hard to do correctly, and typing presents a different kind of challenge. You can think of it as the mental version of preparing your fishing line.

This particular brain exercise is kind of like preparing fishing line in your mind.

Kahne suggests you spend 20 minutes daily on intermingling the letters of words.

The only change to this exercise I would suggest is that you quickly do this after memorizing vocabulary from the IAM lists. And I’m not convinced you need to spend quite so much time on the exercise. Probably 5 minutes will do.

Seven: Intermingle Entire Texts

There are many more exercises in the Multiple Mentality Course. I’d be robbing you of the opportunity to discover them for yourself when you read it.

But to skip to the kingpin of them all, imagine memorizing three verbatim texts, say a poem, a speech and a list of 3-digit numbers.

As you recite the memorized speech, you write the poem with your left hand and the digits with your right hand.

How will you get there? 

Practice with just writing first.

For example, write the first word of the speech, then the first word of the poem, then the first string of digits. Carry on from there, alternating as you go through all three pieces of information, unit by unit. 

Will Multiple Mentality Really Help You? 

Ultimately, I cannot say. 

But practicing these skills has been noticeably beneficial to me because I suffer from brain fog if I don’t get enough mental exercise.

Plus, I have so much chronic pain to deal with, I need the mental strength these activities bring in order to cope. 

And all the more so, given that I myself have to memorize speeches and deliver them well.

Even if some of the ways I use these exercises are not as elaborate as Harry Kahne’s demonstrations, given all the challenges I face, I need all the mental robustness I can get. And these activities deliver.

Taking on challenges is key to mental growth throughout life.

The real reason I think these exercises work is simple:

They promote cognitive switching, which is known to help people establish mental flexibilityThey improve memory because you are exercising itThey expand hand-eye coordination because you are writing in challenging waysThey exercise verbal memory because you are reciting information in a novel format

Beyond that, they get you working with information in ways we’re not used to doing. This simple “out of your comfort zone” stretching provides mental dexterity we wouldn’t have otherwise. 

And if you think about it, the other ways of developing such skills of the mind are very similar:

Reading a lot, drawing from your memory frequently, combining ideas in different ways. 

Those things are draining, however.

That’s why using Kahne’s exercises as warmups has helped me do all the things I do, both in memory and running this site. Think about how many years I’ve been juggling the MMM Podcast, Blog, YouTube channel and the courses – talk about multitasking!

All that said, here are my main concerns:

Kahne’s social criticisms are obviously not correct. It’s also strange to me that Kahne doesn’t teach mnemonics. 

But that’s okay. It gives me the opportunity to fill in the gap through a free course I invite you to sign up for now.

When you add memory techniques to the exercises we’ve talked about today, I’m sure you’ll find all of Kahne’s exercises beneficial.

In fact, I’m not sure I would have been able to use ars combinatoria without having practiced them first. And that skill has been very beneficial to me indeed.

What other mental exercises do you know that exercise multiple mentality? 

11 Benefits of Critical Thinking That Rapidly Improve Your Life

Can you guess how many benefits of critical thinking you’ll enjoy along your journey of mental mastery?

The number is huge and here’s why:

The value of learning to think critically compounds over time.

In fact, the more you practice, the more positive outcomes you’ll experience. 

So let’s dive into these benefits and point out some tips that you probably haven’t applied before. 

The best part?

We’ll exercise our critical thinking skills as we go as I demonstrate a few ways I’ve used critical thinking myself. 

Why Is Critical Thinking Important?

See what I just did there?

I asked a question to demonstrate the first major benefit.

Asking and knowing why something matters helps you:

Place it in contextLearn about its historyUnpack and analyze its parts

For example, we know that human civilization only really starts going when people started to think. 

And that probably only became possible because our ancestors discovered how to irrigate land for farming. 

Although human history is obviously more complex than that, it’s also pretty simple: If you don’t have to spend all your time hunting and foraging for food, you can rest and think more. 

The more you can rest and think, the more you can think about maximizing your free time, which is ultimately what gave rise to the Internet we’re using to communicate with each other now. 

This means that more free time and better communication between people make critical thinking so important.

Why?

Because the better you get at thinking critically, the more free time and better communication you will enjoy. 

11 Incredible Benefits Of Critical Thinking

The following list of the benefits you can expect from thinking more critically are in no particular order of importance. 

But that doesn’t mean they can’t be ordered. You can benefit a great deal by thinking through which of these benefits you feel are the most important. Use ordering as a means of practicing your objective reasoning skills.

One: Critical Thinking Gives You Practice In Multiple Disciplines

Want to be able to think faster?

Use “mental rotation.”

When I was in university, and even to this day, I used this critical thinking skill.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you are given a problem to solve, such as inner city poverty. 

It’s a huge benefit when you can look at the problem from several perspectives, rather than just one. For example, you can mentally rotate through:

Political perspectivesPsychological perspectivesBiological perspectivesEthnographic perspectivesHistorical perspectives Economic perspectivesEthical perspectivesEtc.

The critical thinking benefits of “rotating” through these perspectives happen because they exercise your thinking skills. As your perspective grows, you can spot more possible options for the next benefit.

Think of “mental rotation” like a moving windmill of possible mental models you can move through while enjoying the benefits of critical thinking.

Two: Avoid Unnecessary Problems

The more perspectives you have, the more models you can mentally navigate. These models (like the ones listed above) help you imagine different outcomes. 

Essentially, you enable yourself to create multiple versions of the W.R.A.P. technique taught in the training on ars combinatoria, an early critical thinking tool you might want to explore. It’s just one of several critical thinking strategies you’ll want to learn.

Of course, not all problems are avoidable, and it would not be appropriate to think critical thinking will create some kind of friction free paradise. 

But although some decisions will always create new issues, you can seriously reduce the negative impact of those decisions in advance simply by thinking things through with the widest variety of mental tools you can find.

Three: Brain Exercise

You get brain exercise from critical thinking for a few reasons.

When you shift through multiple perspectives, you’ll be promoting cognitive switching. Research shows that this mental movement is the healthy equivalent of walking for your heart and lungs. Only in this case, the benefits are directed at your brain.

In this case, you’ll be getting even more benefits thanks to how critical thinking gets used in conversations. For example, a fit brain is much more likely to use objective reasoning and avoid the traps of subjective reasoning. 

Here are more brain exercises I think you’ll enjoy.

Four: Personal Time Expands

Now, we’ve talked about how critical thinking was used to help entire societies expand their free time. This works at the individual level too.

For example, if you run an online business and want more free time, nothing will help you faster than applying critical thinking skills to how you can release yourself from certain tasks.

If you’re a student, you can learn techniques like interleaving, just one way of several authentic ways to read faster. 

But, if you don’t have critical thinking skills to help cut through the rubbish and pseudoscience out there, you could wind up losing time instead of gaining it.

Five: Communication And Your Use Of Language Improves

Conversations become so much more beneficial when you can use multiple forms of critical thinking in real time.

Like any area of skill, you will learn new vocabulary when you study critical thinking. 

New words directly lead to improved language abilities. 

Plus, you’ll gain a sense of which kinds of words and phrases to use in which contexts. 

Linking thinking with better use of language has always been part of the memory tradition we discuss on this blog. It goes back at least as far as 90 BCE where it was codified in Rhetorica ad Herennium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3rts...

 

Six: Scientific Living Improves Health

When you use your mind well, you’ll be able to make much better decisions related to your health.

For one thing, instead of always taking your doctor’s word for it, you’ll learn to understand the math behind their decisions and decide just how much it applies to you.

This relates to the use of language as well. For example, how many people know that “doctor” is the Latin word for “teacher.”

Using critical thinking can help you correctly assess the roles of people in your life, such as knowing that “doctor” means “teacher.”

If you start to think about your own medical professionals in this light and treat them as the starting point for educating yourself, you’ll probably make much better health decisions.

Plus, when you know word origins like this, an important skill for critical thinkers, you’re able to think faster on your feet.

That is very beneficial for our text major set of benefits:

Seven: Catch Yourself In Conversations

How many times have you found yourself in a loop of self punishment after saying something you regretted?

According to psychoanalysts like Robert Langs and Robert Haskell, we “encode” unconscious ideas in how we speak. 

Now, some critics think these thinkers were reaching after hidden meanings that aren’t there. Although it is true that some of the evidence presented by both is questionable, at least in Langs’ case, he was protecting the identities of his clients.

I feel that Langs has compelling ideas and one of the issues he faces is simply that his theory attempts to account for criticisms leveled at it. As a result, there is a history of people going on the attack rather than having a decent conversation about the topic.

And that’s said because if Langs is even remotely correct, we could all stand to reduce a lot of unnecessary problems from our lives by holding our tongues in advance, rather than feeling badly about the innuendo encoded in our speech later.

Eight: Intellectual Honesty Increases

I give the Langs example because the contemporary world is filled with bad actors willing to criticize theories or ideas they haven’t fully explored or tried. 

That leads to intellectual dishonesty and it harms many people. 

But if you’re willing to admit that you haven’t looked at something enough to think critically about it, you do everyone a favor. You also save yourself a huge amount of time and energy because you don’t have to backtrack, watch your back or have part of your brain monitoring the environment for threats created by a lack of integrity. 

Nine: Critical Thinking Promotes Independence

People who fail to acquire the advantages of critical thinking never experience as much independence as they could.

Obviously, we always want to consult others. That need is never going to go out of fashion.

But there are many situations in life where we simply don’t have the luxury of getting a second opinion. And when that happens, we want to be able to rely upon ourselves. 

The problem is… what if you can’t remember how to use the tools of critical thinking?

Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. 

Once you can remember the critical thinking tools and perspectives you’d added to your mental toolkit, you can use the same Memory Palace technique to train yourself to use them almost on autopilot. 

Ten: Better Career

Who enjoys the best jobs on the market?

The people who can think on their feet and consistently make great decisions. 

Not only that, but they’re able to accomplish other lifestyle goals a lot faster because they have great careers. 

Think about it. When you have a great job, you’ll enjoy:

Better salaryGold standard health insuranceRetirement packagesCompany perks like travel expenses and a carNicer offices to work inCloser access to higher level colleaguesThe pleasures of contributing more, etc.Eleven: Everyone Becomes A Better Citizen Of Planet Earth

Of course, you don’t have to be (or even want to be) a top level employee or executive manager. 

Improved critical thinking benefits everyone. Think of our entire planet as “Team Together” and make sure you bring your best game.

You can enjoy the benefits of contributing to your fellow humans no matter what roles you choose in life.

Merely by learning the importance of critical thinking and applying it in daily life, you will be helping other people. 

How Many More Benefits Do You Want? 

As you can probably tell, there’s a fair amount of crossover between these benefits. 

And that means you can expect a lot more than eleven benefits as you practice critical thinking in your daily life.

I know because I taught a fourth year Critical Thinking course for several years as a professor.

I saw many students experience all of the benefits on this page and more. 

If I were to sum it up in one word, it would be that they flourished. 

This means that they were more than happy. They enjoyed an abundance of positive rewards, and all because they took a bit of time to learn how to think better.

So what do you say? Are you ready to start practicing your thinking skills? Let me know in the comments section and together we can contribute so much to the world. 

 

Objective vs. Subjective Reasoning: Everything You Need to Know

Have you ever made a decision, only to realize you could have been more objective and less emotional?

It happens to people all the time, and that’s usually because they don’t have decision parameters.

In other words, they don’t have systems of thought that help them use objective reasoning. 

That’s important, because it’s definitely not something that happens on autopilot.

This point is also important:

It’s not that subjective reasoning or emotional reasoning is bad. Objective reasoning is not some kind of superhero force of good battling the dark forces of subjectivity.

But without placing our subjective experiences and ideas within the context of as much pure objectivity as possible, we rob ourselves of important opportunity. 

What opportunity?

The opportunity to harness the power of context. Moreover, we want to enjoy the fullest possible field of context so that we can successfully weigh all of our options before making critical decisions. 

What Is Objective Reason? A Working Definition

Objective reason goes beyond decision-making and your overall critical thinking strategy skill stack. Being able to reason objectively also helps you understand history, psychology and many other topics much better. 

And when you can reason through any topic using multiple layers of reasoning, you’ll remember more as you understand the contexts at play much better.

When defining objectivity, we need to look at standards of thinking. In other words, we want our definition to include:

LogicImpartiality and balancePractical mattersTheoretical mattersTime for deliberationPsychological biases that interfere with objectivity

Objective reasoning involves a balancing act of several elements, including logic, data and awareness of many cognitive biases.

In a phrase, objective reason is a mental thought process that requires logical consideration of a situation or topic that is informed of the possibility for distortion from subjective bias. 

For example, people using objective reasoning will be: 

Highly self-aware of their mindsAware of a variety of tools for analysisInformed about the role of science and data in making good decisionsWilling to take time for research and deliberationWhat Is Subjective Reasoning?

People using subjective reasoning tend to either avoid or not know about the importance of objective tools, theories and the need for scientific data. 

Data is a key part of learning to reach reasonable conclusions.

Instead, they rely upon their personal opinions, experiences and tastes. If they think outside of their personal context, they will tend to refer only to other people they know. 

For example, they will say, “I don’t know anyone who has had this experience,” and allow that small, personal data set influence their decisions. 

By contrast, an objective reasoner will say, “Although I don’t know anyone who has this experience, I’ll do some research to find out what scientific studies exist so I can expand my awareness.” 

This form of reasoning is objective because it looks to the external world for information rather than relying solely on the individual’s first-person experience and ideas. 

Is Objectivity Even Possible? 

Good question.

The answer is yes. 

However, we need to realize that the tools of science and data appear in the human brain’s of individuals. This creates the fact that each and every person experiences everything subjectively. 

This fact does not mean that we as individuals cannot use objective reasoning to access facts that are true regardless of our subjective opinions and experiences.

We just need to be aware of the fact that we all experience cognitive biases. In fact, we need them to survive.

For example, humans are biased for evolutionary reasons critical to our survival. But in the modern world, researchers like Daniel Khaneman have shown many ways we can avoid some of the traps of subjective reasoning and become objective where it is useful to do so.

In addition to learning about cognitive biases, it is useful to also study game theory books and texts on critical thinking. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer is one of my favorite critical thinking books of all time. You Are Not So Smart is a close second.

How To Be Objective In Your Decisions

Now that we have a working definition of objective reasoning, let’s dive into some tips that will help you use objectivity to make better decisions.

I’ll share even more of my favorite books along the way.

One: Keep Learning About The Differences Between Objective and Subjective Reasoning

Now that you’re here, the journey has just begun. And it’s very important you keep studying this topic.

Here’s why:

It’s nice to learn about things, but that doesn’t mean you will completely understand them, let alone remember the key points. 

To really benefit from developing objectivity in ways that will benefit you for life, find books that will teach you:

The history of reasoningCultural/geographical differences that influence reasoning (like proxemics)Philosophical issuesPsychological issuesDecision making books related to specific topics (business, family, health, etc)

It’s a great journey and the more you learn about this topic, the more you can learn about it as your brain makes deeper connections over time.

Two: Practice Objective Reasoning Frequently

On top of educating yourself, the key to making objective decisions well is practice.

The great thing about many objective reasoning tools is how they can be deployed almost anywhere.

Practice involves a few components:

The decision to startOngoing analysis of your thought processesLearning to identify and separate your subjective reasoning impulsesCreating distance and delay between your subjective ideas before making decisionsAnalyzing your own subjectivityPerforming needed deliberation and/or researchStress-testing your conclusions by imagining various outcomesMaking the decision and following up with “postmortem” analysis

I realize this sounds like a lot of steps, but in many situations, it takes just a short while to go through the process. 

In fact, during earlier periods of history, people frequently used a mental tool called ars combinatoria to help them with critical decision making.

Three: Use Writing

Writing is a key tool of reasoning.

They say that the pen is mightier than the sword. It seems to help us think better too. 

There are a number of ways to use writing to help you make objective decisions. For example, you can:

List the pros/cons of a decisionCreate a to-do list for people you can consultBrainstorm some research resources to search throughMind map a series of possible outcomes after making a decisionEmail yourself a written version of your thought-processesFour: Discuss Frequently With A Variety Of People

Many people say that you are the average of your five closest friends. 

I’m sure there’s some truth to this statement, but I wouldn’t rely on it. 

Instead, try to have conversations with as many people as you can, of all ages and all stations of life. 

Frequent discussion with people from all walks of life stimulates more reasoning abilities.

This is important because you’ll build your pool of perspectives based on lived experience.

And because there will be a large number of positive and negative experiences, you’ll have a stronger “radar” for what might be better for you. Plus, you’ll have a better sense of what kinds of decisions to avoid.

Remember O.T.E. as one of the most powerful resources you can have: Other People’s Experience.

Five: Talk To Yourself

Eckhart Tolle does a great job of pointing out how we drive ourselves insane with inner dialogue in The Power of Now.

However, that doesn’t mean all dialogue is bad. 

Just as writing and speaking with others helps you gain an objective set of perspectives, you can also benefit a great deal by using your inner monologue.

Asking yourself targeted questions leads to better decisions.

I personally like to ask a lot of “if?” questions. For example:

If I make this decision, what will be gained?If I don’t make this decision, what will be lost? 

You can also ask questions that help determine how you are behaving around a situation. For example:

Am I making this decision in order to win? Am I making this decision in order to avoid a loss? 

Sometimes when you frame things in this way, you’ll notice that you may well be trying to avoid a loss, only to notice that the loss is quite small compared to what you could gain. 

But without asking yourself such questions, you’ll never know. 

Six: Schedule Critical Thinking Sessions

Scheduling time for thinking is key to developing your reasoning skills.

If you want to get sharp at using objective reasoning to make better decisions, you need to practice. 

Why wait until you’re forced to make a decision to use your skills? 

Every day, you have the opportunity to set aside some time to journal and go over the decisions you face now and in the future. 

For example, I like to journal frequently during morning walks. I find a bench and spend 20-30 minutes going over the decisions I’ve either already made or need to make in writing.

Using a journal to contextualize my subjective reasoning and arrive at objective conclusions has helped me make many better decisions in life.

There are many ways to journal during these sessions. You can:

Use pros vs cons listsDescribe possible outcomesCreate to-do lists for completing research and due diligence projectsMind mapBrainstormTest motivations and rationales

The important thing is to create the time and space for deep reflection.

Seven: Create Clarity Around Your Motives and Intentions

We’ve all heard the advice that you need to “know your why.” 

However, this statement is a bit misleading and will potentially weaken you. 

Is “knowing your why” as important as people make it out to be?

Here’s what I mean:

Is just one “why” really enough?

If you’re making any kind of serious decision, you probably want to have at least five reasons why you’re doing something.

Not only that, but try this alternative reasoning exercise:

List out at least as many reasons “why not.” By completing this step, you create a set of counterarguments that can help you avoid decisions that may prove destructive. 

Another way to get great clarity around decisions in an objective way is to use the W.R.A.P. model taught in Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath:

Widen Your OptionsReality testAttain distancePrepare to fail

The W.R.A.P. formula is easily remembered and incredibly powerful for elevated decision-making.

This easily remembered formula is very useful for avoiding errors and generating reliable ideas and possible paths to solutions you likely wouldn’t find in any other way.

Eight: Create Benchmarks

Once you have your “why” in order and have applied W.R.A.P. it’s important to set benchmarks.

These are specific milestones on the way towards your goal. They matter because many goals take a long time to reach and need to be broken down into smaller tasks. 

Benchmarks also help you make decisions along the way, so it’s useful to schedule in regular periods of review so you can pivot or augment a certain process when and where needed. 

Nine: Create Metrics For Measurement

As you make decisions and execute on them, you’ll want to have a means of knowing whether or not you were successful.

It’s often said that you can’t manage what you don’t measure, but I think we need to go a step further. 

It’s important to measure results in order to reveal clues for attaining more progress in the future.

We need to become aware of the benefits and potential cons of measurement. For example, we can wind up getting so involved in gathering and analyzing data that we wind up in collector’s fallacy. 

So as useful as metrics certainly are for testing the validity of the decisions we’ve made, it’s important to cultivate and maintain an awareness of the potential traps in data. This is one of the core points of The Tyranny of Metrics, which anyone interested in objective thinking would do well to read.

Ten: Explore Other Kinds Of Objective Thinking

In addition to the W.R.A.P. formula, referring to other thinking models is one of my favorite things to do.

For example, the Triz principles have many useful processes that can get you thinking in multiple ways. 

Although something like Triz applies to design and engineering, it will still be beneficial. Thinking through such principles, you expand your perspective and can look at your area of expertise with greater objectivity through another lens. 

Eleven: Revisit Your Assumptions Frequently

Again, objectivity is something that you experience from within your subjective mind. 

This means that no matter how objective you may think you’ve become, your objectivity can still go stale or become corrupted. 

One great way to ensure you keep sharp is to develop a regular rereading strategy. 

We also change as we age, so it only makes sense to revisit our thinking, ideally by going through the same sources that formed our thought processes in the first place..

Plus, the world is always transforming too.

How To Remember The Steps Involved In Objective Reasoning

Now, you might have noticed the nuance involved in developing reasoning skills that will last for life.

But the good news is that you can remember everything quickly. 

To do that, I recommend learning the Memory Palace technique.

With it, you can take something like the W.R.A.P. model and rapidly remember everything. 

You can also create a mnemonic calendar to help you remember to show up and practice the skills we’ve talked about today, like journaling. 

Anyone Can Develop, Maintain And Improve Their Objective Thinking

Identifying your cognitive biases and learning about logical fallacies are admirable learning projects.

It’s just important to understand that the task is never done. 

To be truly objective, you not only need to make sure you nurture yourself with multiple viewpoints and learn to be a solid researcher.

You need to continually revisit the process in order to compensate for change. 

Your subjectivity won’t go away either, so it’s important to develop the ability to contextualize it amongst the multiple factors that go into being an individual with a sense of self. 

Above all, practice making decisions with these tools frequently. Analyze the results of the decisions and allow the data to help guide future choices you make. 

None of this should be a chore. Quite the opposite!

Once you have the steps involved honed into habits, it’s all fun, rewarding and helps you live as a better citizen of planet earth.

It’s a win-win for everyone involved. 

How to Retain Information Quickly: 11 Surprisingly Powerful Tips

If you want to know how to retain information quickly, we can boil the process down to one simple term:

Strategic repetition. 

Now, I realize you’ve come to this blog about memory techniques to get rid of repetition. 

I’m sorry. That’s not how it works. 

We always need to repeat what we want to remember. In fact, why remember something at all if you don’t need to repeat it? 

The key differences with strategic repetition vs. rote repetition are these. Strategic repetition is always:

FunCreativeSkills boostingScientifically proven

Even if some repetition will always be necessary for learning, it doesn’t have to be painful. And you often won’t have to repeat nearly as much if you get it right.

So if learning how to retain knowledge in ways that are engaging and stimulating strikes you as a good thing, stick around. On this page, we’re taking a deep dive into ways to retain information that you’re going to love.

Why Can’t I Retain Information? The Surprising Truth

It’s not IQ.

It’s not genes. 

It’s not laziness.

The reason why most people can’t retain information is that they simply haven’t trained themselves to do it. 

We can take it a step further:

People who can’t learn quickly and recall information on demand not only fail to use memory techniques. They haven’t trained their procedural memory so that they use them almost on autopilot.

You cannot “mind read” books. Use proper study and memory improvement techniques instead.

You see, anyone can learn about memory techniques. But without practicing them consistently enough so they become second nature, all that information is just data. 

The science here is very simple. We’re basically looking at four kinds of brain processes that you just need to link together:

Encoding information strategically using elaborative encodingDecoding information strategically using active recallSerial positioning with the primacy effect and recency effectsHabit formation so that you start using the strategies automatically

We’ll pick up each of these scientific matters in greater detail as we go along. With each tip I’ll share, you’ll discover simple ways to harness the power of each principle. 

How to Retain Information Quickly: 11 Proven Tips1: Use Exaggerated Associations

The fancy, scientific term for using exaggerated association is “elaborative encoding.”

But you might be wondering… what is an association?

Good question. It’s one of the most powerful mnemonic devices you can use.

Basically, you’re going to look at the target information and find something you can connect to it. 

For example, if you need to memorize someone’s name, you’ll look at the first couple of letters. When I met someone with the complex name Gangador Dianand, I just thought about a “gang” first. 

Next, I associated that sound with a rap band known to dress as gang members. Then I had them bang on a door. 

Using a rap band as a mnemonic device while studying helps you retain information in a fun and engaging way.

That’s the association part. The elaborative encoding part is when you imagine those gang members larger than life and hear the sound of that banging extremely loud. (In your imagination, of course.)

It’s this process of exaggerating the association that makes it so memorable. And that’s what helps with the next tip.

2: Use a Memory Palace

When you want to retain info, you need to revisit it. 

And after exaggerating an association, the best way to rapidly remember something is to know where you stored it in your memory. 

Enter the Memory Palace. 

This special mnemonic device is just a mental recreation of a building you’re familiar with and can easily bring to mind.

Here’s an example: 

Let’s say you need to memorize some details on a map. If you use Natalie Portman and Art Spiegelman to memorize that Spain and Portugal share a border.

First, you exaggerate an interaction between them. Then you place that association in a room.

Later, to practice what memory neuroscientists like Boris Konrad call “active recall,” you revisit that area in the room and simply ask yourself:

What was happening there? 

If you’ve made the association exaggerated enough, your two characters should come to mind and the letters in their names should trigger the target information. 

3: Test Yourself Strategically

In order to properly benefit from active recall, it’s important that you test yourself. 

Unfortunately, a lot of people cheat. They try recalling the information for a second or two, and then give up, exposing themselves to the answer.

That’s called rote repetition. It’s painful, boring and rarely helps with retaining information. You want to use the best possible mnemonic strategies instead.

However, if you have a journal or piece of paper in front of you and the target information is nowhere in sight, cheating is impossible.

Then, when you write out what you memorized using exaggerated association, you get the benefits of active recall.

Even if you make mistakes, you’ll still train your memory to work better. Over time, you’ll get stronger and stronger.

4: Interleave

A lot of people “force” themselves to get through one book at a time.

I have a PhD, two MAs and a BA and I can tell you this:

I never do this.

Instead, I take many breaks while reading or taking courses and strategically “interleave” my study material.

This term means that you take breaks often and switch things up. By reading more than one book at a time, you switch from a focused state to the “diffuse mode,” which gives your brain space to remember more.

The research on this goes back at least as far as Karl Duncker who wrote a book about the psychology of productive thinking back in 1935.

More recently, Barbara Oakley has featured contemporary data that substantiates these findings in her famous course, Learning How to Learn.

(Dr. Oakley’s course is also a printed guide and one of the 3 best speed reading books in the world.)

5: Use Proper Reading Techniques

I just mentioned speed reading, but be careful. There’s a lot of garbage you’ll come across in that world. 

For example, most of what you’ll read about reducing subvocalization is a farce. Worse, skimming vs scanning strategies are usually poorly understood.

The broad strokes of learning how to read faster boil down to this:

Have goals, missions and systems that help you frame and stick with a focused reading programLearn to use “priming”Extract information strategically (see How to Memorize a Textbook)Use memory techniques to recall the informationMake sure you test yourself using the active recall strategy discussed above (without cheating)6: Improve Your Reading Comprehension Skills

The first way to understand better is to change your definition of comprehension.

Many people get frustrated and toss their hands up in the air the instant they don’t understand something.

This is an incorrect approach because we read challenging material so that we might understand better. Without challenge, there is no growth.

Instead, learn the best reading comprehension strategies and practice them consistently. For example, I used to look up on charts and grafts and give up on them completely.

By redrawing charts and grafts, you not only improve memory retention, but also comprehension.

Now, I draw them with my own hand to understand them better. This step is essential because not only do I understand them better. I also remember more.

7: Mind Map

Mind mapping helps you retain information, especially when you revisit your mind maps strategically. 

For example, Phil Chambers has given the excellent suggestion that you revisit each mind map at least ten times. Leave a Roman Numeral each time you do so you can remember where you are at in the revisiting sequence. 

But… what is mind mapping? Put simply, it’s a graphical means of simplifying key ideas using colors, images and keywords. 

Let’s say you want to memorize words in a foreign language. A mind map is a great way to do it. I rapidly retained information about cooking in German, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I7h9...

Here are more mind map examples you can model.

Mind mapping works as one of the best ways to retain information if you optimize it for that purpose. So I suggest using the Phil Chambers tip I just shared to make that happen. 

Mind mapping is an incredible wait to retain more information quickly.

8: Write Summaries

We know that we need active recall to remember quicker and with greater longevity. But we also need to percolate information and make connections.

Writing summaries is one of the best ways to do that. And it doesn’t have to take long.

I suggest keeping a notebook just for summaries of your reading. Commit at least half a page for each book you read and pour out what you remembered in at least 2-5 sentences. 

With a small amount of practice, this incredibly simple habit will be the portal to remembering a lot more, much faster. And the best part is that it helps with making connections between different books you read as well.

9: Discuss with others

As with summarization, a great way to practice active recall is to speak with others about what you’re reading.

Frankly, I’m puzzled by why people would read anything they weren’t going to have conversations about. But it happens.

If you’re having trouble remembering what you read, join discussion forums. Go to meetup groups. Or just run past the ideas from what you’re reading with friends. 

Frequent discussion is key if you want to absorb more information and maintain it in your memory.

If you really can’t find others to converse with, speak the key points out loud, either to a pet or to yourself in the shower. The point is to verbalize what you’ve read in your own words. This helps you remember much faster and without a ton of repetition.

10: Meditate Your Way To Better Memory

It might seem like meditating is far flung from improving your memory.

However, many studies show just how profound meditation is for concentration and focus. Others show how people of many different ages experience improved recall from just four short meditation sessions per week.

Add yoga to the mix for more scientific proof that these traditions prove the best way to retain information without having to learn a bunch of memory techniques.

11: Study Your Personal Rhythms To Maximize Them

I know a guy who used to beat himself up for not being a morning person. 

In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Daniel Pink reveals the conclusions from over 700 studies. 

It turns out that only 15% of the population performs well during the morning. 

Finding your best time of day is highly personal. Explore with a spirit of experimentation.

This means that a huge percentage of people would learn better at different times of day, including later in the evening. In fact, some people remember far more when they study before bed.

How do you find out?

Experiment and track your results. 

If you’re willing to keep a journal for a few weeks, you can work out your optimal times for learning and choose them. 

Of course, there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?)

Your best times of day can and probably will change as you age or as factors around you evolve. 

This means you’ll want to keep testing and journaling while being willing to pivot throughout your life. 

The Ultimate Tip For Retaining Information

Another word for the willingness to pivot is “flexibility.” 

Flexibility is the key to improving memory retention.

When you combine all the tips I’ve shared with you today, your memory is going to be incredibly flexible. And it will always trend towards higher and higher levels of improvement, even as you age. 

Since most of us want to be lifelong learners, this should be an issue.

Keep practicing the approaches I’ve shared on this page. The more you explore, the more you’ll discover even more interesting and powerful ways to make learning easier and fun. 

After all, the more you can remember, the more interesting and fun things become. And the more you learn, the more you can learn. That’s thanks to the power of connection, which is truly the most rewarding memory technique we’ve got. 

So what do you say? Are you excited to get out there and learn more using enhanced memory abilities? 

How to Think Faster And Avoid 9 Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making

When someone asks you a question, how long does it take to come up with an answer?

Depending on the situation, your answer might range from “pretty fast” to “way too long!” If you’re like many of my readers, you would like to learn how to think faster.

Today, we’ll stress test the idea of thinking faster with good old Ulysses Everett McGill from the Coen brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? — otherwise known as Dapper Dan.

Dapper Dan thinks he’s sharp. Thinks on his feet. Gets him and his fellow escaped convicts out of trouble… right?

Not so fast! As much as Dapper Dan might believe himself to be a quick thinker, he’s just not as smart as he thinks. Or as smart as he wants everyone else to believe.

Here’s one of the big problems with the desire to think faster: a lot of people want to have faster thinking because they’re concerned about how they look to others. They’re not so worried about accuracy of thinking — they just want to “think fast.”

So instead of going down the Dapper Dan road of quick (but mistaken) thinking, let’s look at how to process information faster AND more accurately.

Here’s what this post will cover:

Why Do You Want to Think Faster?WRAP Your Way to Faster Thinking9 Factors That Slow ThinkingThink Fast! 4 Ways to Improve Your SpeedQuestions to Ask for Faster Thinking9 Tips to Help You Think FasterBook RecommendationsHow to Be a Quick Thinker

Ready to learn how to think faster? Let’s get started.

Why Do You Want to Think Faster?

One of the very first questions you should ask yourself is, “Why?”

Knowing your “why” is important, as is knowing your “why not.”

Are you interested in accuracy, or are you motivated by the Dapper Dan approach? The problem with the latter is that it tends to lead you into trouble.

Even if you know the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? you might not know it’s an adaptation of The Odyssey. Looking back at the ancient Greek epic poem, you’ll notice that Ulysses wasn’t that intelligent of a fellow, but boy could he talk the talk.

Ulysses seduced people into thinking he was a lot smarter than he was in reality, and it got him into a lot of trouble (including needing to take a trip to the underworld to try to get himself out of trouble).

One of the important things we learn from The Odyssey is how to make better decisions by not being like Ulysses. We learn how not to “Dapper Dan” our way to bliss and pretend we’re smart.

Instead, we can learn how to think faster in a legitimate way.

So after you decide whether you want speed (Dapper Dan and Ulysses) or accuracy (the Magnetic Memory approach), list out why you want to think faster.

Do you want to look better to others? Or do you have tangible performance needs, like:

Time limits on your examsHigh demands of your sports teamA decision-based profession

Rather than worrying about what someone else thinks about the grades you get, focus more on getting good grades later on. A good grade’s function is to qualify for more opportunities to study for additional qualifications (if that’s what you want).

It’s the opportunity to learn more and become progressively smarter over time.

Let’s quickly look at our other examples. If you’re able to think fast on the field, you perform better. And if you’re in a decision-based profession – like a doctor or lawyer – you want to be able to think faster on your feet and think accurately.

The vital part is combining and following those avenues of connection to create stable landing pads in the future. It’s not about the speed — it’s about the landing and how hard or soft it is based on the integrity of the thoughts you’ve compiled along the way.

Now you know why you want to think faster, let’s take a look at a model of decision-making that can help you get there.

WRAP Your Way to Faster Thinking

Rather than the Dapper Dan approach to thinking, I prefer to think slower, more thoroughly, and W.R.A.P.

But what does W.R.A.P. mean? Earlier this year, I read the book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, on Olly Richards’ recommendation.

In Decisive, the authors talk about how to make better decisions, faster and more accurately. In their model, W.R.A.P. stands for:

Widen your optionsReality testAttain distancePrepare to fail

Ever since I read the book, I’ve been using the W.R.A.P. formula for everything I do in my life. I think I’ve been good at a version of that throughout my life, but once I memorized it in one of my memory palaces, I’ve been using it ever since.

Next, let’s look at some of the factors that might be holding you back.

9 Factors That Slow Thinking

You’ve decided you want to think faster and more accurately. But what if hidden factors are standing in your way?

Let’s break down nine things that might hold you back from quick thinking.

1. Lack of Preparation

One of the factors that slows down thinking is not understanding how to prime.

But what is priming? In a nutshell, it’s a phenomenon where you respond differently to a stimulus based on how you experienced that stimulus previously. The stimuli are often at least conceptually related.

I listened to a presentation by Damien Patterson when he talked about this amazing way he used to pass exams in school. Then he went on to immediately denigrate his approach by saying, “this isn’t the most scholarly way of doing things.”

I went up to him during a break in his presentation and had a quick conversation with him. I told him he should congratulate himself for doing what speed reading experts call priming.

I made him aware that it was a major industry that teaches people how to read faster — and that’s why he got top grades instead of the more diligent students.

Those other students were fumbling around and not using proper learning skills. They didn’t have the thoroughness of accelerated learning techniques to get their studying done right the first time.

When people don’t prepare properly and invest in accelerated learning techniques (like priming), it slows down their ability to learn. And even for the people who do, another factor that slows their thinking – and the value they get out of the material – is that they aren’t thorough about taking the course.

2. An Overflowing Calendar

How many people do you know who schedule time just to think?

The answer is probably none (or not many). But this is one of the essential factors that will help you think faster.

Let me ask another question: have you had your thinking time today?

This is not a hypothetical question. Have you literally checked off the box on your to-do list that says, “Yes, I did my thinking time.”?

If not, this is a problem. If you want to speed up your thinking – really accelerate it – schedule some thinking time.

At the end of the day, if you’re not making time to think, you’re not going to be able to practice it.

3. Substance Abuse

Much like the engine of a vehicle, the human body is not made to run on junk.

Smoking, drinking, and other types of substance use and abuse will severely slow your thinking. By keeping your body clean and efficient, it’s able to use the fuel you give it.

For example, if you drink, you make the liver work harder to process out the alcohol. And if you smoke, it’s like clogging up the air filters in your car’s engine.

Instead, keep your machine running clean.

4. Mental and Physical Injuries

Similarly, other kinds of injuries also impact your ability to think faster.

Back at the beginning of 2020, I hurt my shoulder. It took me a while to get back to the gym, and while I was working through the injury it impacted my thinking speed.

Harvard Health shared findings showing that “moderate-intensity exercise can help improve your thinking and memory in just six months.” There are both direct and indirect impacts: physiological changes as well as indirect action on the brain itself.

Both physical injury and brain injury can slow thinking. When I developed bursitis in my shoulder, I noticed a dramatic reduction in my memory capacity. I did a podcast interview and made a mistake in one of my memory demonstrations.

Now, this might not seem like a big deal to some of you, but I very rarely make mistakes when it comes to memory. I’m sure it came from the injury because I was very slow and foggy at the time.

Once I could get through physical therapy and get back to the gym, I felt so much sharper. It was like night and day.

5. Behavioral Health Issues

Depression is also a significant contributor to delayed thinking.

Many people who suffer from depression report symptoms of “brain fog” as part of their experience. This cognitive dysfunction can mess with your thinking speed and your reaction time, memory, and executive functioning.

But it’s not just depression that can be an issue. Medications can also slow your thinking, as can normal aging.

6. Poor Nutrition

Think back to the car analogy we used earlier. Proper nutrition is like giving your vehicle the right type of fuel so it can run smoothly.

When you consume too much sugar, dairy, wheat, and other allergens, it’s terrible for your brain and your speed of thinking.

No one diet will work for everyone, so part of your research into how to think faster will involve trying out elimination diets, rotation diets, and just generally experimenting to see what type of foods make you feel (and perform) your best.

I personally cleaned up my dietary act. I got rid of the booze, wheat, sugar, dairy… and my life changed. My brain got so much sharper. So much faster. And my memory improved, too.

I know we can’t make everyone do the same, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to convince you why it’s so important.

7. A Lacking Lexicon

This one might surprise you: many people can’t think faster because they don’t have a large enough vocabulary.

When I interviewed Jesse Villalobos – a Magnetic Memory student – on my podcast, he basically said he loves that I use big words because it helps with his thinking.

Coming back to the idea of speed reading, there’s new research debunking it. Studies show that the only way to read faster is to have a more extensive vocabulary and significant knowledge of the field.

I dig deeper into the idea in this post about speed reading.

8. An Excess of Edutainment

A lot of people ask me, “Wheres the meat?”

But what does M.E.A.T. mean? Here’s how it breaks down:

MeaninglessEdutainmentAbsurdlyThriving

It seems to be thriving a lot more on the internet. Instead of aiming to deepen their knowledge on a subject, people think, “Oh, I just want to look for short videos that are all cut up and spread across a couple of hours, so I don’t have to focus or concentrate or engage with the knowledge.”

Don’t be one of those people.

9. Digital Amnesia

I think the kingpin of all of these factors is digital amnesia.

I can’t tell you how often viewers will tell me they wish I made shorter YouTube videos. But if they took a second to look around, there are plenty of shorter videos on the Magnetic Memory Method YouTube channel.

They’re already showing signs of digital amnesia because if they can’t find short videos from me, then there’s something going on with their field of perception. They’re looking on devices that hide half the content.

And this is not how intelligent people go about studying things. You need the largest possible screen so you have the biggest field of perception possible — this is how to eliminate digital amnesia.

The smaller your field of perception, the less room you have for the seeds of detail that grow into knowledge.

Here’s where the Dapper Dan effect comes back in: “I look cool because I have my tiny little device.”

My advice? Get away from the influence of this small device as much as you can. The convenience is killing so many people and ruining their brains. It’s also destroying their ability to see information in context.

It’s Drama Theory 101.

The shorter the content you consume, the more often you have to “turn on the engine.” If you constantly stop and start the engine of content, you end up with cognitive drain.

But what can you do instead? Train yourself to sit and pay attention! Grab your pen and paper, and go through our notetaking training:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U64aw...

One of the biggest challenges we face in our quest to think faster is the accumulation of the nine factors above.

So instead of letting them slow down your thinking, let’s look at what you can do instead.

Think Fast! 4 Ways to Improve Your Speed

We’ll get more into how to incorporate the W.R.A.P. approach to faster thinking, but first, let’s tackle an important way to make sure everything you’re learning sticks.

1. Implement Immediately

The first thing to do as you’re learning how to think quicker is to speed up your implementation.

One easy way to do this? Immediately after you read this post, put all of the recommended books into your online cart at your favorite book retailer and hit submit.

Why? Because you’ll follow the speed of implementation rule — every minute that goes by where you don’t take action, it gets less and less likely you ever will.

This will guarantee you never think as fast as you want because you’ll never get to the next stage. Instead, speed of implementation is a principle for thinking faster because it helps you make decisions as quickly as you can.

And my strong recommendation is to only read in physical form, especially books that contain any kind of information of substance.

For example, if you see a recommendation from a reliable source telling you what to do to fix a problem, don’t overthink it. Get your priorities straight, and then follow the advice within 5 minutes of getting it.

Then, when the book arrives, read the whole thing right away.

2. Get S.M.A.R.T.E.R.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned my friend Damien Patterson. He believes in L.U.C.K. — which comes from one of his books.

LearnUsingCorrectKnowledge

And by using this correct knowledge, we get S.M.A.R.T.E.R.

SeriousMatureAbsolutelyReadyToEmbraceReality

The reality is, 6-minute video clips are not going to help you think faster. Instead, they train you to think within a small field — and you cannot expect to think faster if you reduce the field in which thinking happens.

You have to expose yourself to longer forms of content to see “thinking out loud” demonstrated and think along with it.

I get frustrated with so-called education “experts” who praise the “snippetization” of content because it gets more people through to the end of courses. But who cares how much content you get through if it’s eroding your ability to think coherently and consistently across time?

In the real world, you need to demonstrate and capitalize on your ability to focus and concentrate.

If not, reality will smack you, and you’ll hit the ground so hard you don’t know what hit you. Your brain is rotting every minute. We’re all dying. It’s just a fact of being alive, and recognizing that fact is part of having good critical thinking strategies. And you can accelerate the death of your brain by constantly exposing it to snippets of content.

Or you can increase your attention span by giving your brain longer content to focus on! You know which of those approaches I recommend.

3. Exercise Your Brain

To accomplish this increased attention span, you need brain exercise.

One way to get brain exercise is by thinking as correctly as possible — to do the best you can in the moment. Do it regularly, frequently, and in a way that my mentor Tony Buzan would.

He says, “follow the rules and the rules will set you free.”

To me, what it means to be free is to study Frequently with Relevant information that improves your life in a spirit of Experimentation and Entertainment.

That’s where memory techniques come in. Practice frequently with relevant information that isn’t compressed and squished into 6-minute snippets. Find longer content that allows you to think out loud — all in the spirit of implementation (and in an entertaining way).

4. Set Aside “Thinking Time”

No matter what condition you face – be it trauma to the brain or body – thinking must be practiced.

But we all know how busy life can be. How do you set aside time to think, with all the other things you have going on?

Let’s take a look at a few different approaches.

Digital Fasting

You have to actually set time aside, not just think about it or promise to do it. And one great approach for setting aside time to think is to do a digital fast.

There are two kinds of digital fasting:

1. Walkabout Digital Fasting

For this walkabout, you will leave your house with no device whatsoever. Maybe you take a small journal to write in. But the most important thing is to physically separate yourself from technology.

You might go to a cafe or your favorite park. Choose somewhere that you can do nothing but think. You can also choose to bring along a physical book to read during your fast.

You might consider what to think about on your digital fast, or you can allow yourself time to think about other things as well.

The most important thing is to set aside time for U.S.S.R., or Uninterrupted Silent Sustained Reflection.

2. Creating Digital Borders

I used to avoid Instagram completely. But I finally figured out a way to enjoy the platform without getting trapped in it. Here’s how. (You can learn more about this approach in Nir Eyal’s book Indistractable.)

I open Instagram one time per day, or less often. I have a time limit set (there are apps and phone settings that will limit the amount of time you can spend, and I recommend using them) and don’t go beyond it.

I curate my feed so I only see posts about language learning, philosophy from the stoics, and other knowledge-based content.

I go in, I fart around, post what I want to post, and then leave for the day. And the dopamine spike I get from using the platform is more significant than if I was always in there refreshing.

It’s a bigger payoff because I’ve earned it.

This is a weaker form of digital fasting than totally avoiding digital content, but it can help ease you in.

Journaling

I love journaling because it’s a fun way to digital fast.

I really like Yanik Silver’s Cosmic Journal. It’s a beautiful art object that involves randomness exercises within a structure.

Rather than getting your dose of randomness from digital sources, you can get it in a way that’s compelling and directs your thoughts in different ways.

And even if you don’t choose a specific guided journaling practice, just spending time with your thoughts and writing them down is also excellent.

Mind Mapping

Another technique I highly recommend is Tony Buzan’s Radiant Thinking.

I’m still a student of mind mapping myself, but radiant thinking looks like this:

It radiates out of a central image and also radiates internally — and arrows point around from different topics.

Mind mapping is a way to train yourself to think faster, but you need to set time aside to do it. That’s why mind mapping is such a great way to get in your digital fasting time. It’s a win-win.

This past year, I’ve done so much mind mapping that people might think I’m a little weird. I go out with these giant pieces of paper and a big stack of colored pencils. And I don’t care what people think because I’m not Dapper Dan-ing myself.

Instead, I’m focused on just the outcome, not confusing activity with accomplishing. Just focusing purely on how activity leads to accomplishment, and making sure those activities lead to accomplishment.

Feynman Technique

Another way to think faster is to learn the Feynman Technique.

This video shows how to apply an advanced version of the technique:

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

You need to craft the best possible approach that makes sure your activity leads to accomplishment. You want to avoid the Dapper Dan problem and the confusion of activity-as-achievement.

Now that you have these four ideas in your head let’s look at how you can create a system that helps you ask better questions.

Questions to Ask for Faster Thinking

As you get deeper into your quest for learning how to process information faster, you’ll want some heavy-duty techniques.

The following will help you create a little system in your head that enables you to ask better contextual questions.

Contextual Awareness

From the time we are young, we’re taught to ask the 5 Ws (and 1 H):

WhoWhatWhereWhenWhyHow

As you learn how to think faster, you should always have these contextual questions in your mind. There’s a little bit more finesse with the “who” part, but some of the others are relatively simple.

Let’s break down two examples, using “what” and “when.”

What?

Ask the following questions:

What is it?When was it created?What is its size?What are its dimensions?What are its parameters?What function does it have?Where was it created?When?

We don’t just want to ask “When?” but we want to ask “When” in terms of “What is the actual history by which our understanding of it was built?”

So you don’t want just to say, “Well, they built this particular device in 1812.” Instead, you want to go much deeper — you want to think about the story that tells how we know that history.

For example, let’s take the Industrial Revolution.

First, we need to know when it was generally said to come into existence. But we also need to know what the prevailing tendencies were before its inception that enabled it to thrive? What’s the genealogy?

This would also include the key players. If you want to examine the development of schools, you need to look at education for the previous 100 years.

By incorporating the 5 Ws (and 1 H) as you read, as you have discussions, and as you build up your ability to think faster, the questions will help you finesse out what matters.

This will help you ask the best possible questions to think better and faster. It’s not about the conclusion. It’s about the quality of the questions.

Next, let’s examine the other kind of awareness you want to practice.

Benefit Awareness

This type of awareness is like “Who?” plus.

When you’re talking about who created something or who said something, ask yourself, “To what benefit?”

Who gets the benefit? Whom does this serve?

As Michel Foucault stated, the definition of power is the ability to conduct the conduct of others. Or, similarly, William S. Burroughs said, very brilliantly, that control seeks to control control.

When you seek the truth, take a moment to check if someone fought long and hard to make that thing true for their benefit. This is a problem amongst scientists because they sometimes base conclusions upon who benefits — but it’s not a problem with science.

Science doesn’t have these problems because science is a tool. It’s the collection of evidence that either confirms or denies a hypothesis. And it helps us make better hypotheses so we can better confirm or deny our ideas about things.

You always want to understand that many people can’t embrace reality because they’re not smart enough yet. This is why it’s vitally important to be S.M.A.R.T.E.R. (Serious Mature and Ready To Embrace Reality).

Benefit awareness will help you cut through the noise and think faster.

And with enough awareness, you can have the best of both worlds. You can have useful philosophical thinking tools and avoid your own cognitive biases.

If you’re stuck in Dapper Dan mode, worried about how people perceive you, then it will be more challenging. But if you’ve got the Dapper Dan problem in check, you’re already ahead of the game.

If you need more help, I put together a special audio presentation called “How to Think” that you should enjoy.

Finally, let’s look at nine different recommendations that will help you with quick thinking.

9 Tips to Help You Think Faster

Before we dive in, a word to the wise: using just one of these tips will help you learn how to be a quick thinker, but you’ll get even more out of this post if you start to combine them.

Which one(s) will you choose?

1. Start a long-term thinking project

The first tip is to have both a long-term project and a memory vision statement. Not sure how that vision statement should look? Here’s a video that will help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFz31...

My current long-term project is to understand Hermeticism and memory tradition. I’ve been reading many books as part of the project, including Frances Yates’ book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.

For your long-term project, I recommend no fewer than 10 or 15 books on a particular subject.

These learning projects help with thinking faster because the bigger your field of vision and understanding is, the more the seeds of knowledge have room to grow.

To take action on this tip, watch the video above, and create your own learning vision statement.

2. Join a discussion group

The next tip helps you both think out loud and experience thought in action.

Online discussion groups are okay (especially right now), but when it’s safe again, go and meet other people in the real world. You’ll see thinking out loud demonstrated to you and observe your own thinking out loud in the context of the people hearing you.

Coming back to the idea of the short 6-minute videos, you’ll get a small portion of the organic action (where soundwaves manipulate the physical structures of your inner ear) but it’s just not the same as being together with people.

Sitting together and discussing, picking up interrupted conversations, it’s all part of the extended thinking that you must practice to think faster.

I try to be a part of a discussion group once a week, and I notice that my thinking is sharper and my mind is more vivid when I do. It has a lot to do with the chemicals created when our brains are with other brains.

To take action on this tip, find an in-person or online discussion group around your topic of choice.

3. Meditate every day

Meditation is a great way to think faster, especially if you memorize a text and make it part of your meditation. What text you choose is up to you.

I also meditate in silence, but my preference is to meditate by reciting texts (especially verses in Sanskrit).

This is very powerful because your meditation allows you to concentrate for an extended time and in a way that produces semantic and echoic material. The muscle memory in your mouth is now linked together with the production of thought.

Instead of fighting against ideas, allow them. I spent a decade fighting my thoughts, and then I learned how to sit just to sit — it’s so much better to let the ideas that come up just flow.

I’ll often meditate with a journal or a piece of paper. That way, when a thought arises, I can write it down and then let it go.

And I also find that you get much more focus at the beginning of meditating on a particular text. After a while, a text’s focus power tends to wear out a bit.

To combat this, you can either pick up new material or recite the text in a different order each time. When you rotate your texts, everything gets primacy and recency in the serial positioning and helps them not wear out as fast.

To take action on this tip, choose a single short text to recite during daily meditation.

4. Track your dreams

You want to track your dreams. But why?

You’ll focus on whether you can trigger greater awareness of the present moment by remembering your dreams. When you remember your dreams with more accuracy, depth, and volume, it exercises your memory.

You want to be able to 1) remember your dreams, and then 2) increase the depth, duration, and volume of recall, which triggers lucid wakefulness.

As you begin to practice recalling your dreams in a dedicated manner, you’ll start to realize that the distinction between lucid dreaming and dream recall may be suspect. And you may begin to become more aware of when you’re daydreaming.

Being in a fantasy is being in a fantasy, whether you’re awake or asleep.

But is there a difference between sleep dreaming and wakeful dreaming? The distinction is that our wake-time fantasies tend to be a lot more about the past we think happened, an alternate version of the present, or something about the future.

If you start to track your dreams and associate them with your dreams scientifically, you’ll want to learn proper associative thinking with dreaming. You can also begin to examine your dreams to see if and how anxieties may manifest in your dreams.

To take action on this tip, keep a journal beside your bed and make it a point to write down every dream you remember as soon as you wake up.

5. Incorporate diffusion

Another great way to think faster is just to let things go or let them percolate.

Here are some of my favorite approaches to practicing diffusion:

Go for a walkPractice digital fastingTake cold and hot showersApply your skills in other areasTake a philosophy courseWrite fiction

Cold showers are a great tool to increase your discipline. And by switching over to using your skills differently, you can give your brain a break. If you write a lot about non-fiction topics, take a break by switching over to fiction. Change up your mode.

In all these cases, thinking speeds up because you’re practicing thinking in different ways.

I highly recommend reading Alex Pang’s book Rest, where some of these ideas came from.

To take action on this tip, pick one of the tasks above and practice diffusion independently.

6. Cultivate body awareness

Another tip for thinking faster is to be aware of your body. Charisma on Command has a great YouTube video about how to think 10x faster under pressure that I suggest you watch.

That video includes one great tip about how to send a signal to your body so things slow down and calm down so you can think.

When a lot of people get stressed, they start to clamp up. But this just causes your brain to get paralyzed — if you can relax instead, it will help you think faster (and better).

To take action on this tip, pay attention the next time you get stressed. Do you get tense? If so, take a deep breath and see if you can relax instead.

7. Avoid analysis paralysis

This post has been a fun way to learn how to think better… think, think, think, think. But there’s a trap we need to learn how to avoid.

You don’t want to get into analysis paralysis. That’s what happens when you overthink something and mentally rotate it one thousand ways and never take action.

So how do you get out of analysis paralysis? The first step is to acknowledge the issue, revisit W.R.A.P., and then segment your decisions.

Have you widened your options too much? Have you reality tested for too long? Have you attained too much distance? Do you need to get closer?

And if you find yourself overthinking your Memory Palaces, here’s a video about how to fix it:

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

To take action on this tip, give yourself a deadline to make whatever decision is in front of you.

8. Just get started

This tip is sometimes easier said than done. But you have more time than you think — because many people treat time incorrectly. They make it a problem when it could be the solution.

You accrete value over time when you practice thinking (and carve out the time to do so). The value comes when you’re consistent.

To take action on this tip, think F.R.E.E. (frequent practice, relevant thoughts, with experimentation and entertainment).

9. Create the Rhizomatic Effect

Finally, use memory techniques to create what’s called the Rhizomatic Effect.

Rhizomes are the roots that run deep and interconnect plants of a similar species. Ideas and memories can be thought of in the same way: interconnected and self-replicating.

When you use everything you learned here today, you will end up with aha moments that just happen. “Aha! This connects with that. And that connects with that.”

Do you think you could think faster if you could connect things in your memory? You bet! You want your thinking to be decentralized so it can spontaneously come up with great ideas all the time, from all over the place.

That’s what a good memory palace network can do for you if you use one and fill it with good stuff.

To take action on this tip, start to practice all the information included in this post. There’s no instant formula for success, but with consistent practice, you’ll begin to have those aha moments.

As Magnetic Memory Method readers know, no comprehensive post would be complete without a list of some of my favorite books on the topic.

Book Recommendations

I’ve mentioned each of the books below in this post. Here’s a bit more about each one and why I recommend them as you learn how to think faster.

Decisive — Chip & Dan Heath

I mentioned earlier that this book is where I learned the W.R.A.P. model (Widen your options, Reality test, Attain distance, and Prepare to fail).

This book will help you make better, faster, and more accurate decisions. Remember, it’s a model I’ve used ever since I read the book.

As the authors say, “Decisive offers fresh strategies and practical tools enabling us to make better choices. Because the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference.”

Find the book here.

Indistractable — Nir Eyal

If you would like to know more about controlling your attention and choosing the things that are going on in your life, get yourself a copy of this book.

It’s a quick and fun read, as well as being science-based. It even has a cool device in the back that I highly recommend.

The author asks, “In an age of ever-increasing demands on our attention, how do we get the best from technology without letting it get the best of us?”

I also interviewed Nir for the podcast, where we discussed how to create an indistractable life (and techno-panic-free focus). The interview is a masterclass in how to remove distractions.

Find the book here.

Decoding Your Dreams — Robert Langs, MD

I spent a lot of time with the author of this book and read a substantial percentage of the books he wrote.

This book talks about dream interpretation in a way that’s not commonly discussed. Rather than a giant index of “what it means when you dream about falling off a cliff,” it gives you a means of testing why you respond to your dreams in the way you do.

This book teaches that, “Dreams — once you learn how to interpret them — are actually an extraordinarily reliable commentary on the way you live your life… you can make sense of the inner truth concealed in your dreams.”

Find the book here.

The Victorious Mind — Anthony Metivier

I would be remiss not to mention my book that covers how to stay focused. The Victorious Mind helps you learn to free your mind and master your memory.

The book blends detailed step-by-step instructions with scientifically proven practices, including how to craft and use your own Memory Palace to help you think quicker.

If you want to learn how to think faster and dig deeper into what we covered today, this book will set you along your way.

Find the book here.

Ready to think faster, today and every day?

How to Be a Quick Thinker

With the information you learned today, you can avoid the Dapper Dan trap and think fast (and accurately). Rather than flailing around and using flashy tricks to get yourself out of trouble, you can think on your feet and do what’s best for you and your memory.

You know why you want to think faster, how to avoid the nine factors that slow down your thinking, four ways to improve your thinking speed, as well as the nine tips we just covered.

So what’s next?

Now it’s time to put what you learned into action. You can’t do everything at once, but practice the speed of implementation rule and put at least one thing into use right now.

And if you want to learn more about how to think faster, pick up your copy of The Victorious Mind and permanently kick Dapper Dan mentality to the curb.