How to Think More Effectively: A guide to greater productivity, insight and creativity

by The School of Life

In order to carry off any moderately complicated thinking task, we should understand that, at any single moment, we won’t have access to all the ideas we need. We’ll have to set down what we can, then wait and return with the distinctive intelligence of a new mood.

… they were blind to each other’s failings, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the floor they were dancing on. Neither was particularly kind, both were selfish, each had many secrets; yet there was something sweet about watching them together: their hopes were muddled and naive – but he was murmuring playfully in her ear; the scent on her hair was delightful; they were mortal creatures, for whom death was still an abstract, distant notion; they held one another, trying to brighten the brief passage between birth and death.

Centuries earlier, the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo (1475–1564) had defined his own attitude to his work as a sculptor. ‘The statue is already in the stone’, he wrote, ‘my work is to liberate it.’

In the minds of geniuses, we find – once more – our own neglected thoughts.

The goal is not to become artists or philosophers, but to do something that accompanies these tasks: to move from woolly first impressions to authentic details; to go from vagueness to focus – and therefore to give ourselves the best chance of reaching what we actually seek.

The difference between vagueness and focus is what separates great from mediocre art.

What helps in our attempts to know our own minds is, surprisingly, the presence of another mind. For all the glamour of the solitary seer, thinking can sometimes happen best in tandem.

The good listener takes it for granted that they will encounter vagueness in the conversation of others. But they don’t condemn, rush or get impatient, because they see vagueness as a universal and significant trouble of the mind that it is the task of a true friend to help with. The good listener never forgets how hard – and how important – it is to know our own minds.