Knowing how to do this is one of those meta skills that can completely change your life. A while ago, I got into the start up advice world to help out a friend who was considering starting up, and I found a common message along the lines of “become the type of person who notices gaps in the world.” That sounds good in the abstract, but how do you become that person if you aren’t already? (For the startup question in particular, Paul Graham has answers.)
- Use Spaced Repetition Systems
- Use situation-based/application/“real world” cards because your brain is an association machine.
- You can prime your brain a surprising amount
- Examples (note that you probably shouldn’t use cloze deletions excessively because they have a tendency to lead to superficial pattern-matching, but I converted standard question-answer cards to cloze deletions here for the sake of space.):
- When I encounter any complex information system, I will think about [cloze (mimetics)]
- Whenever I decide to do an activity very seriously, I should have the mindset of pursuing [cloze (virtuosity)].
- Whenever I want to pursue virtuosity in a task, I will do [cloze (deliberate practice)].
- Whenever I think about a big tech company, I will use [cloze (aggregation theory)]
- Although they are attractive, I should always be skeptical of [cloze (theories of everything.)]
- in the free time between getting home from school and going to my room, I will [cloze (exercise)]
- Junk food [cloze (nauseates)] me.
- In those examples I only showed one card per “topic”, but in general you want to add 3-5 cards that get at this way of thinking in different ways.
- See some of the tips from You can change your self-identity as that’s really a subset of changing the way you think
- Find other ways to program attention
- Use Curius, and find people that you think are interesting and want to think more like.
- Subscribe to blogs and newsletters by people you want to think more like