How We Think -- I've Been Reading...

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This is a simple relatively short list of ideas culled from a handful of books on how we can and should think. It comes from books about logic & intuition and left-brain & right-brain and problem-solving.

Sleep well before and after an intense mental workout.

Breathe deeply and slowly to calm the reptilian brain.  [ This is the only conscious way to affect it. ]

Let the mind wander a bit.  [ This is its default mode effortless mode. It's important not to overwork our self-control focus 'muscle'. ]

Decide and silently state your goal.  [ This pushes selective attention into effect. It automatically filters out things not relevant to the object of focus, the goal. ]

[ Separate the crucial from the incidental information. Avoid early decision-making or free-association thinking as that leads to premature conclusions. ]

Silently state the situation to clarify things.

Freely imagine many paths to the goal and if you need to step back from conscious effort and change your focus to something else (a stroll in the woods or your magic pen or what's for dinner).

Deduce a solution which best fits the situation & goal -- the clean elegant solution.

Blunder-check to get the most precise effective linear variation/sequence-of-actions.


That's it. There is more which a person might do, but this list seems like the crux of the matter. It's still too big for efficient fast chess play, but it's getting there. It covers ways to use and to avoid problems with the reptilian brain, the mammalian (memory & image) brain and some primate brain issues. It shows how to use left & right brain to get full use of your toy and it is all based on real science which shows this works in reality. At least pieces of it do. Whether one could learn this entire list and really do this in some rigorous way is beyond me. I can easily see parts being practiced and done regularly. Anyone wanting to think better and get results could start here and it would probably be a good improvement on what we're already doing. At least that's what the book cover blurbs say.

Enjoy!