10 Powerful Lessons From the Book “Think Again”

1. Think like a scientist.

🤓 A scientist is always in a rethinking loop which enables discovery of new knowledge.

🙏 It takes great humility and insatiable curiosity to live a rethinking life. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.

2. Develop Confident Humility

😊 Humility isn’t about lack of self-confidence. It’s about being grounded. Knowing that we are both flawed and fallible.

❌ Never losing sight of this reality. Confidence is about self belief.

3. Detaching Opinion from Identity

🤠 We should avoid becoming too attached to our ideas and our beliefs. We shouldn’t let it become part of our identity. 

😊 Stay a little detached. That way, when we find out that they are wrong, it’s easy for us to rethink and let go of old ideas.

4. Argue about HOW, not WHY

👉 Once you start discussing HOW people start noticing the gaps in their knowledge and the flaw in their conclusions and become less argumentative.

👉 They become more amenable to explore other choices and the disagreement turns into constructive speech.

5. How to win debates and negotiate well

🤠 Focus on fewer but stronger points. Too many arguments, including some not so strong ones, dilute the merit of your strongest points . 

👉 The opponent can easily refute your weakest point and make your overall argument look bad.

6. Changing mindsets

🤓 We can’t motivate people to change, but we can help them.

👉 Motivational Interviewing helps in doing that. It involves the 3 key techniques.

· Asking open ended questions

· Engage in reflective listening

· Affirming the person’s ability and desire to change

7. Dealing with Polarised Mindsets

🤓 We live in a divided world. Across a range of complicated issues. Presenting the opinion of the other side makes matters worse. 

👉 You dig your heels in and become more entrenched in your beliefs. There is no scope of rethinking.

8. Rethinking for Kids

🤠 The practise of doing multiple drafts instead of just one. Especially in creative projects. 

👉 The general view is that making students re-do something is discouraging. It implies a poor effort. But that’s just poor communication.

9. Learning Organizations

😊 Strong process accountability (alongwith outcome accountability) leads to consistent long term success. 

👉 Just focussing on outcome accountability is like a hit or miss. You will have little control on delivering the desired outcome.

10. Career Planning

🚫 We need to stop asking kids what they want to do when they grow up.

👉 By asking this and forcing kids to choose something, we can cause what is called Identity Foreclosure. 

🤠 The kids settle on something prematurely without exploring enough choices .