Dan Erwin: Decision making

The Surprising Habit of the Smartest People

If you really intend to excel in your field, it’s a smart idea to learn from the most inspiring, intelligent people in the world. To be specific, we know that brilliant people tend to read a lot, are very self-disciplined and set goals for themselves—achievable goals. In addition, my reading and studies—even since childhood—have indicated that one of the very best habits supporting success, a habit smart people use a lot, is the practice of metacognition: thinking about your thinking. 

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Metacognition simply refers to your awareness of your thought processes. Whenever you reflect on your own ways of analyzing how you are thinking about a problem or decision, questioning whether that’s the most helpful way of thinking about it, that’s metacognition. “I’ve been thinking about the problem this way. Are there some other ways of thinking about the problem—or opportunity?” is the relevant question. From a business standpoint, I’ve noticed, even in top multi-billion-dollar firms, only a small percentage use metacognition. But those who do, not surprisingly, tend to be corporate leaders. Clearly metacognition is a learned behavior, not humanly inherent.

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