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CHILDREN MUST BE TAUGHT HOW TO THINK, NOT WHAT TO THINK.

I have come across countless educators who keep parroting the above quote by the late American anthropologist Margaret Mead. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), each time I have asked them to explain “how to think”, they have either run away or merely repeated the same thing over and over again.

To be fair, it’s not an easy question to answer, for it holds the key to pretty much everything that comes under the vast umbrella of education. Therefore, it’s going to take some effort on our part before we could begin to unravel the mystery. Are you prepared? Read on, then.

Understanding our thoughts

What are thoughts, exactly? Ask yourself this question and simply observe your mind. This act of thinking about thinking can be meditative, if done with attention and care. Take a moment and try it. Observe how the thoughts rise and fall, come and go, on their own. It happens quite naturally, just like the flow of your breath.

How does this process work? Let’s break it down in simple steps. You gather information (audio, visual, etc) through your perceptions, the information then interacts with your memory and a new thought (along with a feeling associated with it) pops up in your head. On a closer inspection, you’ll find that you are not the thinker of your thoughts. In fact, if you try to supress them, you’d rarely succeed. The only thing that you can control is how you’re going to react to a particular thought — that’s all.

This contemplative meditation helps you to not identify with your thoughts and instead see them objectively. It’s a crucial step. As long as our thinking remains clouded with emotions, we’ll have trouble finding the truth. This is the reason why most of us are such good advisors for others, but struggle when it comes to our own problems.

From thoughts to thinking process

Linguistic thinking is slightly different from the thoughts described above. It is something we deliberately do in order to accomplish a task. It is indispensable to us. It is the basis for planning, explicit learning, moral reasoning, and many other capacities that make us human. We can use it as a tool and sharpen or modify it as per our needs. How powerful this tool would be depends on how well we harness our mental capabilities.

At a fundamental level, there are two kinds of thinking: strategic (figuring out what to do) and executory (how to do). We are generally very good at execution than strategy. From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense, because mulling over strategic questions was never a priority. For most of history, the strategic goals would have been obvious: to find sufficient things to eat, to reproduce, and to keep the tribe safe. Execution was where all the urgent and genuine difficulties lay: how to light a fire in rains, or where to find wild strawberries.

The downside of such evolutionary behaviour is that today, when our needs have gone in the opposite direction, we are still prepared to work more on execution than strategy. We concentrate more on making money than figuring out how to spend it optimally. Similarly, corporations are much more committed to the efficient delivery of their existing products and services than on stepping back and asking afresh what they should truly help the customers. Similarly, our planes are much more impressive than our notions of what we should travel for. Do you see the problem?

Another important thing worth noting about execution-related thinking is that it can easily be done by a computer. You want to learn Chinese? A software will teach you. You want to attack someone? Perhaps a robot would do that. But, should you prioritise learning a language over attacking an enemy? — this question requires strategic thinking. And this is what we must stress upon if we are to do well in this day and age.

The big question: How to Think?

Once again, let’s divide it into small steps and work on each step to develop effective thinking.

• First of all, you’ll have to devote some specific time to thinking. Treat it as a dedicated task. What you are doing while watching a movie or in the middle of a meeting is not thinking but getting distracted. Recognise that difference.
• If you haven’t been working on training your mind, start right now. Think of your mind as a car and your thinking skills as its driver. First you need a well-functioning car before you can use your driving skills to get anywhere. Work on your mind as you work on your body. Start with simple steps. Pay a close attention to what you eat, how much you sleep, what kind of information you consume.
• Two key areas of mind training are focus and enquiry. Both can be significantly improved with the help of certain meditations.
• Outside your mind, you would need certain amount of domain knowledge along with the first principles in order to think effectively. For instance, if you are thinking about writing a book and you know nothing about the writing process or books, then you are going to struggle. Similarly, the idea of first principles is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. Reasoning by first principles removes the impurity of assumptions and conventions. What remains is the essentials. This brings clarity.
• Once you assign a given task to your mind and provide it with a healthy environment, it is going to lead you towards answers. We are naturally good at execution, thanks to evolution, remember?

This is only going to be the first step of your intellectual journey. But that’s crucial, nevertheless. Once you’ve taken the step, don’t hesitate to write to me.

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