Clear Thinking

Clear Thinking is a guide to making better decisions built on recognizing crossroad moments in everyday life, finding the best path forward with a 4-step framework, and then applying it all to what matters most in life.

One time, while working for a moody CEO, Shane heard him yelling in his office. “They needed to be put in their place,” he later told him. As it turned out, the caller tried to report an important problem. Mere weeks later, the CEO was fired — the problem he ignored had severely hurt the company.

“If he had been thinking clearly, he might still have his job,” Shane writes. Countless books explain how to think more clearly, but first, we must recognize the moments when thinking clearly is most important. “Rationality is wasted if you don’t know when to use it,” Parrish says.

There are 4 primary enemies of clear thinking we keep falling for:

The emotion default is when we react to our feelings instead of reason and facts. The ego default holds us back whenever our self-esteem is under fire. The social default keeps us in line with what’s considered normal, polite, and appropriate in our larger social circle. The inertia default is our natural resistance to change and new information.

Each of these defaults can torpedo our thinking, but when they act together, all hell breaks loose. The angry CEO, for example, fell into all but the social default at once. Someone presented him with new, uncomfortable information, which he didn’t like. Furthermore, how could a lower-ranking person try to tell him what to do? Finally, he gave in to his rage.

Willpower alone isn’t enough to combat these defaults, Shane writes. We must create “an intentional environment where your desired behavior becomes the default behavior” — and that requires 4 key strengths!

When the phone rings with bad news, we don’t need to throw a tantrum. We need “the pause-and-plan response,” as researcher Kelly McGonigal calls it. But in order to take a breath when things get tough, we already need to be the kind of person who stays calm in such situations. This is where the 4 key strengths come in, according to Shane: Self-accountability means taking responsibility both for your mistakes and the bad stuff in your life that isn’t your fault. A good response can quickly improve even a terrible situation, but complaining is never a solution. Self-knowledge is about recognizing and adjusting to your abilities and their limits. Work with your strengths and weaknesses where possible. Don’t try to change everything about yourself. Self-control is the ability to endure your emotions without acting on them. Personally, I’ve found meditation the single-best way to develop…