24: How to Unlock Your Strategic Mind

What does it mean to be good at thinking? Or more importantly, thinking strategically?

Most people answer this question by saying that in order to be good at thinking, you have to be knowledgeable. And while knowledge is certainly a critical input for good thinking, it’s just an input. It’s not the actual practice of being able to think well.

Good strategic thinking is the culmination of mental processes that enable us to analyze, reason, solve problems, make decisions, and generate creative ideas in an efficient manner.

In other words, it’s a skill. But we don’t treat it as one.

It’s something we can get better at and refine, a muscle that we can strengthen, and yet outside of our daily work, we do very little to develop that muscle. And it’s a special muscle, because thinking strategically demands that we employ all kinds of cognitive abilities at once.

In this house episode of Unseen Unknown, Jasmine and Jean-Louis break down his steps for how to think strategically, and to keep getting better and better at it.

Don’t take your ability to think strategically for granted. Many of us only do a fraction of what is possible with our minds, but there is a lot more power available to us when we start to cultivate our thinking skills.

Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode and further reading:

• The issue at Houston Airport — Occupied time & design. (Caus)
• Episode 369: Wait Wait...Tell Me! (99% Invisible Podcast)
• The Truth Behind Japan’s “Seven Minute Miracle” (BBN Times)
• Episode 130: Diana Chapman: Trusting Your Instincts (The Knowledge Project Podcast)
• Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns & Leadership (Andrea Mantovani on Medium)
• Conspicuous Commitment Is The Next Era Of Status (Concept Bureau)

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