Your Brain on Uncertainty
When you’re uncertain, your brain activates two key regions, but handling uncertainty isn’t about suppressing emotions in favor of logic. Instead, it’s about coordinating both parts of yourself to respond more effectively.
✨ Better Thinking
Humans are prone to cognitive biases. Don’t rely on your intuition to make important decisions. Instead, understand the most common mental models to improve your thinking. Build your very own metacognition toolkit to face choices with a calm, informed mind.
Popular articles in this category include be careful of the optionality fallacy and the Occam’s razor fallacy, avoid falling prey to illusory correlations, use checklists when you can’t trust your brain. Learn about the curse of knowledge, The Cobra Effect, and Parkinson’s Law.
Checklists: The Key to Smarter and Safer Work
From product launches to project management, I’m obsessed with checklists. And I’m not the only one. Systemic complexity means that we cannot rely on our memory alone to know what to do and when to know it. Checklists are a powerful tool allowing us to unload some of the cognitive stress of living our lives … Read More
The Curse of Knowledge
Have you ever had a teacher who was very smart but terrible at teaching? An expert who used so much jargon you could not follow their explanation? This is called the “curse of knowledge”, a term coined in 1989 by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber. It’s a cognitive bias that occurs when … Read More
Levels of Thinking: How to Make Better Decisions with Second-Level Thinking
Skipping meals to save time, but finding yourself exhausted and unproductive by the afternoon. Choosing a cheaper apartment to save money, but the long commute ends up costing you time and energy. You tried to make the most sensible choice, and yet… What went wrong? It’s easy to get carried away when making a decision. … Read More
The Affliction of Abundance
You’re about to launch a new product, but you can’t decide on the tech stack. You’ve been researching for weeks, worried that you might miss out on the perfect solution. Sounds familiar? This is FOBO – the Fear of a Better Option. It’s the lesser-known cousin of FOMO, and it might be secretly sabotaging your … Read More
Temporal Curiosity: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future
The idea of time travel has captivated human imagination for centuries. In H.G. Wells’ classic 1895 novel The Time Machine, the protagonist invents a device that allows him to travel through time, exploring the distant future. While we may still be far from physically traversing time, there is a way to embark on a temporal … Read More
The Alchemy of Generative Questions
We all know that children are curious. Very curious. In fact, children ask more than a hundred questions an hour. This is how they explore, learn, and make sense of the world. However, researchers lament that “over the course of their education, students and adults ask fewer questions and more passively accept facts as the … Read More
Manage your Mental Energy with Ben Wisbey, founder of Pylot
Ben Wisbey is the founder of Pylot, an innovative wearable to track your mental energy and help improve your productivity. We talked about the definition of mental energy and how it impacts our performance, accounting for fluctuating energy throughout the day, the results of their beta trials, and much more.
Get Hold of your Breath with Stefanie Broes, founder of Moonbird
Stefanie Broes is the founder of Moonbird, the world’s first handheld breathing coach. In this interview, we talked about the benefits of slow breathing, how to use real-time biofeedback to regulate your nervous system, breathwork as a tool for stress management, and much more.
Master AI Brainstorming with Jakob Storjohann, Founder of Ideamap
FEATURED TOOL Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help people make the most of their minds. Jakob Storjohann is the CEO and founder of Ideamap, which is part of Ideanote. Ideamap is a visual workspace for brainstorming where teams collaborate on ideas and … Read More