THINK AGAIN BOOK SUMMARY

Part 1: Personal Thinking

Most of us take praise in our knowledge and expertise in staying true to our beliefs and opnions.That make sense in a stable World, where we are rewarded for having conviction in our ideas. The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing World. Where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do rethinking.

Rethinking is a skill set but it is also a mindset. We already have many of the mental tools we need. We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust.

We are swift to recognize when other people need to think again. Unfortunately, when it comes to our own knowledge and opinions, we often favor feeling right over being right. We need to develop the habit of forming our own second opinions.

Our thinking and talking is based on three professions:

1. Preacher: Our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy. We deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals.

2. Prosecutor: Recognize a flaw in other people is reasoning, we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case.

3. Politician mode: We are seeking to win over an audience, we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents.

Scientific Thinking

Rethinking is fundamental. Doubt what you know, be curious about what you do not know and update your views based on new data. . When we think we are smart, we change our minds less (confirmation - Seeing what we expect to see and desirability bias- Seeing what we want to see). Do these biases not only prevent us from applying our intelligences but also twist our intelligence into a weapon against the truth. Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking. The brighter you are the harder it can be to see your own limitations.

We do not start with answers or solutions; we lead with questions and puzzles. We do not preach from intuition, we teach from evidence. Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. Requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong, not for reasons why we must be right and revising our views based on what we learn.

In preacher mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral weakness, science mode a sign of intellectual intergrity.Prosecutor mode, we allow ourselves to be persuaded in admitting defeat, science a step toward the truth. Political mode: we flip-flop in response to carrots and sticks in science we shift in the face of sharper logic and stronger data. “The purpose of learning is not to affirm our beliefs; it has to evolve our beliefs. Intellectual, curiosity and openness.”

Process of Thinking

Starts with intellectual humility (knowing what we do not know, make a list of areas where we are ignorant).Recognizing our shortcoming opens the door to doubt. As we question our current understanding, we become curious about what information we are missing. That search leads us to new discoveries, which in turn maintain our humility by reinforcing how much we still have to learn. If knowledge is power, knowing what we do not know is wisdom.

Our convictions can lock us in prison of our own making. The solution is not to decelerate our thinking it is to accelerate our rethinking. When people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same. The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we do not know. Good judgement depends on having the skill and the will to open our minds.We all have blind spots in our knowledge and opinions, which give us false confidence in our judgement and prevent us from rethinking.

We need to learn on confident humility, having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution/even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to purse new insights.Confiden humility can be taught and doesn’t just open minds to rethinking it improves the quality of our rethinking.

In armchair quarterback syndrome, confidence exceeds competence while imposter syndrome competence exceeds confidence people who believe that they deserve their success. Let us welcome imposter syndrome as a good think: it fuel to do more, try more. The upside feeling of imposter syndrome is motivating us to work harder, work smarter and make us better learners.

Great thinkers do not harbor doubts because they are impoters.They maintain doubts because they know we are all partially blind and they are committed to improving their sight. They do not boast about how much they know, they marvel at how little they understand. A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.In order to unlock the joy of being wrong we need to detach our present from our past, our opinions from identity. When we define ourselves by values rather than opinions, we buy ourselves the flexibility to update their practices in light of new evidence. Admitting we are wrong does not make us look less competent. It is a display of honesty and a willingness to learn.

Relationship conflict personal, emotional clashes that are filled not just with friction but also with animosity. Task conflict clashes about ideas and opnions.Relationship conflict is generally bad for performance but some task conflict can be beneficial. It has been linked to higher creativity and smarter choices.Ralationship conflict is destructive in part because it stands in the way of thinking. Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought preventing us from being trapped in overconfidence cycles. It can n helps us stay humble, surface doubts and make us curious about what we might be missing. Avoiding an argument is bad manners, silence disrespects the value of your views and our ability to have a civic disagreements.

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Part 2: Interpersonal Thinking

Debates are not wars that we have to fight constantly; they are more like a dance in that we have to move back and forth and create harmony. We have to carefully listen and find common arguments and agree with some of the other side's arguments. We need to step back and acknowledge their valid points instead of constantly supporting our argument with more reasons. We should not go into either defense or offense mode, we have to see the debate as dance and use stronger and fewer. The person most likely to persuade you to change our mind is you. You get to pick the reasons you find must compelling and you come away with a real sense of ownership over them.

Motivation Interviewing: We can rarely motivate someone else to change. We are better off helping them find their own motivation to change. It all starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. The goal is not to tell people what to do it to help them break out of over confidence cycles and see new possibilities. Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors.

Motivational Interviewing involves three key techniques that is asking open-ended questions, engaging in reflective listening, affirming the person’s desire and ability to change and summarizing, explaining your understanding of other people’s reasons for change. The objective is not to be a leader or follower but a guide. Not only does listening encourage others to reconsider their stance towards us but also it gives us information that can lead us to question our own views about them.

Influential Listening: Attentive listener makes people less anxious and defensive. "Communicators try to make themselves look smart; great listeners try to make their audience feel smart". They help people approach their own views with more humility, doubt and curiosity. The power of listening does not lie just in giving people the space to reflect on their views. It is a display of respect and an expression of care. Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift attention.

Part 3: Collective Thinking

One of the best ways to learn is to teach. Hallmark of an open minded is responding to confusion with curiosity and interest.

How to teach kids to think like fact-checkers.

1. Interrogate information instead of simply consuming it.

2. Reject rank and popularity as its reliability.

3. Understand that the sender information is often not its source.

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Rethinking need to become a regular habit. Traditional methods of education do not always allow students to form that habit. Lecturers are not always the best method of learning, they are not enough to develop students into lifelong learners rather consumers. Good teachers introduce new thoughts but great teachers introduce news ways of thinking. Collecting a teacher’s knowledge may help us solve the challenges of the day but understanding how a teacher thinks can help us navigate the challenges of a lifetime. Education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads. We develop the habits as we keep revising our drafts and the skills we build to keep learning.

Rethinking is more likely to happen in a learning culture, where growth is the core value and rethinking cycles are routine. Learning culture thrive under a particular combination of psychological safety and accountability. Psychological safety a climate or respect, trust and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. In learning cultures, people do not stop keeping score. They expand the scorecard to consider process as well as outcomes. The goal is a learning culture is to welcome these kinds of experiments to make rethinking so familiar that it becomes routine.

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Conclusion:

We all have notations of who we want to be and how we hope to lead our lives. They are not limited to careers! From an early age, we develop ideas about where we will live, which school, whom to marry and so on. These images can inspire us to set bolder goals but the danger of these plans is they can give us tunnel vision, blinding us to alternative possibilities.

Reasons why happiness is a risk factor for depression:

1. When searching for happiness, we get too busy evaluating life to actually experiencing it.

2. We spend too much time striving for peak happiness, overlooking the fact that happiness depends more on the frequency of positive emotions than their intensity.

3. When we haunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose.

4. Western conception of happiness as an individual state leaves us feeling lonely.

Our happiness often depends more on what we do than where we are. It is our actions-not our surrounding that brings us meaning and belonging. In careers instead of searching for the job where we will be happiest, we might be better off pursuing the job where we expect to learn and contribute the most. We are mostly likely to find our meaning in actions that benefit others. Happiness is less a goal and more as a by-product of mastery and meaning. The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily. Rethinking is a tool for leading a more fulfilling life.?