How to Think More Effectively: A guide to greater productivity, insight and creativity (Work series)

It is an implicit faith in their own perfection that turns people into unbearably harsh judges.

For the sceptics, understanding that we may be repeatedly hoodwinked by our own minds is the start of the only type of intelligence of which we are ever capable; just as we are never as foolish as when we fail to suspect we might be so.

They aren’t just lying or dodging tough decisions. Their behaviour is symptomatic of a nuanced and intelligent belief that few ideas are totally without merit, no proposals are completely wrong and almost no one is entirely foolish.

The good thinker is, to a large extent, first and foremost a sceptic.

The sceptical person will be drawn to deploying softening, tentative language and holding back on criticism wherever possible. They will suggest that an idea might not be quite right. They will say that a project is attractive but that it could be interesting to look at alternatives as well. They will consider that an intellectual opponent may well

Love is built out of a constantly renewed and gently resigned awareness that weakness-free people do not exist.

The single greatest spur towards a loving perspective on others is awareness that we are also imperfect.

The consolation comes in refusing to view defects in isolation.

Part of thinking effectively is knowing, at one level, the likelihood that we might not be thinking well and so proceeding with humility and an appreciation of our mind’s characteristic tricks: this mind may be tired but unaware that it is so; it may be under the sway of emotion but certain it is calm; it may be judging a situation in the present a