Thinking About Thinking

Kelly's insight about wine applies perfectly to how we think about personal growth. Just as mindlessly drinking more wine doesn't make us better wine connoisseurs, frantically doing more doesn't make us more successful humans. When we apply Type 2 thinking to our lives, it shifts everything - from how we parent (quality time over scheduled... See more

If you did a lot of maths at school you are used to being given problems of the first type, and when you see a problem you want to find the analytic solution. It’s a good instinct, since analytic solutions are efficient. As long as you have the right method you can quickly reach an exact answer.

Lots of being smart is working out when you’re... See more

Anthea often uses metaphors to develop and convey new conceptualizations. This approach is in keeping with studies about the significant role of metaphorical thinking in creative intellectual processes in science and beyond. In Clash of Paradigms: Actors and Analogies Shaping the Investment Treaty System, for instance, she likened the system to a... See more

learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old... See more

This advice may sound familiar; it lies at the heart of books like Blink and Gary Klein’s The Power of Intuition, which promise to help readers harness their gut feelings. But for executives taught to methodically frame problems, consider alternatives, collect data, weigh the options, and then decide, cultivating emotional self-awareness may seem... See more

Just like those lines, I think all of our various tests of intelligence aren’t as different as they seem. They’re all full of problems that have a few important things in common:

• There are stable relationships between the variables.


• There’s no disagreement about whether the problems are problems, or whether they’ve been solved.


• There have clear

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