Thinking About Thinking

Most people don't see the point in thinking about thinking.

One of the key themes I try to get across with this blog is the importance of metacognition. Simply defined, metacognition essentially means thinking about thinking or knowing about knowing. Everything that has to do with personal improvement rests on the belief that you can think about the way you think, to be able to learn from that process, and eventually to change it to your advantage.

A lot of people recognize "smart" people as people who are simply innately geared towards easily understanding complex concepts. However, in my experience, this is not the case. The malleability of characteristics which help people learn has long been underestimated. The relatively recent discovery of neuroplasticity tells us that the structure of the brain is, in a lot of ways, extremely malleable even in late-adult life. An interesting tangent to this is this Economist podcast about an author who investigated how to change certain attributes of children.