Extreme Thinking
September 10th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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Here’s a great article I just read (actually a transcript of a presentation), written by a scientist about how to think:
Extreme Thinking
This article suggests three principles for making a contribution to society:
- Define a meaningful purpose for your work (the why).
- Develop a long-term vision (the what and the how).
- Create social roles that reinforce the behavior you desire.
I’ve written previously about the first two at length. The third principle is something I’ve always used without even thinking about it. It means that you can improve your performance by imagining yourself in a social role that reinforces your behavior more strongly. For example, if you want to learn faster and retain better, pretend that you’ll soon be teaching others whatever it is you’re learning. Whenever I read personal development material, I’m always looking for ways to combine it with my existing knowledge base and come up with new insights I can share with others. Even as I read the article, I was silently asking myself, “What can I learn from this that might be of benefit to others?” I think this helps me retain what I learn much better because I’m telling my brain, “Pay attention and focus — this is important.”
There are many ways to apply this idea to improve your performance. How could you use your imagination to role-play in such a way that you’re more likely to perform well at a given task?
Beyond using your imagination, you can also create a new role for yourself in reality. For example, by launching this web site last year, I’ve taken on the role of personal development blogger. That’s more than just being a private person with an interest in his own growth. By doing this I’ve put myself into a role that increases and supports my commitment to grow, so consequently I’ve worked harder on this part of my life in the past year than I ever have before.
What new role could you create for yourself in the real world that would reinforce a positive new behavior?
Of course, the reverse is also true. If you assume a role that will reinforce a negative behavior, then your performance will be poor. How motivated are you to learn something new when you adopt the attitude, “This is pointless — I’m never going to use this stuff?” How likely are you to succeed at starting your own business if you’re entire social network consists only of lifelong employees?
Btw, I got both the card game and the bar game correct in the article. How nerdly of me….
September 10th, 2005 at 7:19 am
Point 3 is a very good idea. I know someone who became a substitute teacher so he could learn to speak freely to crowds. The idea paid off big time!
September 10th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Steve,
Thanks for pointing out the article. It was very thought provoking, and fits right in with many of the principles you’ve defined. I wish the author had expounded on the principles for creating successful social groups that he mentioned at the end of the article. Perhaps you can give us your thoughts on the topic.
Cheers,
Mike
P.S. I got both games as well. Probably that computer science and math training.
September 10th, 2005 at 10:12 am
I think point 3 is part of what you called willpower in your series on self-descipline. (Creating an effective beachhead.) I like this idea a lot.. In college, the class schedule is a pretty good opportunity to do this.
September 10th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
Btw, I got both the card game and the bar game correct in the article. How nerdly of me….
i can’t get how two cards are enough to verify that the rule is obeyed. what if the cards are configured as:
A B 2 1 ->4 6 E C
in that case, when i only check the first and fourth cards, i may say the rule is obeyed; but in fact the second card breaks it.
i guess there is something missing in the game explanation. (like only A,B,1,2 are written on cards)
September 10th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
@nec: I believe the rule was that if there’s a vowel on one side of the card, then there must be an even number on the other side. This rule doesn’t apply to the second card in your example because there isn’t a vowel on the card. So the rule can’t possibly be broken. Note that the rule didn’t force anything upon consonants — those can have any number on the other side (even or odd).
September 10th, 2005 at 5:44 pm
yeah, sorry. it was obvious. not being a native english speaker caught my thinking style (i’m smart, believe me please :P)
btw, i enjoy a lot your articles.
September 10th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
the author of that article, Michael Nielsen, has an another essay titled as “Principles of Effective Research” which has a good taste on personal development like Steve Pavlina’s articles.
Don’t make the title fool you. just replace “Research” with “People”, or “Life”, etc.
September 11th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Being a role-player with an interest in personal development, I am not a bit surprised that you recommend rule number three (though I haven’t seen the idea systemized like that before).
When playing a character (or version of yourself as you’d like to be), if you believe in it, other people will too. And you’ll perform much better as well.
I keep many characters in my head for various situations (such as the creative artist, the überintelligent theorist/writer, the corporate representative, the activist etc). I dress up differently depending on what character I need at the moment and in general try to tune into the persona I want to be.
Works like a charm.