How to Think Better
One of my good friends and mentors always says, “On a long enough timeline, everyone’s a hypocrite.” While this is extremely true from my experience, that doesn’t mean that I don’t try my damnedest to not be a hypocrite. And like you, I can spend a lot of time thinking about how dumb and irrational everyone else is. Well, since I try not to be a hypocrite, I’m always trying to improve my thinking so I’m not the irrational dummy that’s irritating everyone.
The problem is that we’re never going to be able to be completely flawless when it comes to our thinking. We’re wired for biases, self-deception, and a variety of other cognitive errors.
It actually wasn’t until 2019 when I even became interested in this topic. When I was cancelled by the YouTube community and had hundreds of thousands of strangers attacking me, I became obsessed with trying to learn as much as I could about human irrationality. I couldn’t understand how people could completely neglect facts and evidence, and then I started noticing it everywhere.
When I got sober in 2012, I learned a great lesson; if someone is doing something you don’t like, you better try pretty damn hard not to do the same thing. So, when I recognized group think, conformity, bias, and overall irrationality, I started reading like crazy.
The first book that really opened my eyes to cognitive psychology and strategies for decision making was Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. I’ve read this book multiple times, and I’ll honestly probably read it many more times because that’s how great it is. When I read it, I was like, “Holy shit. There are names for these issues we all have and people who have been researching this stuff for years.” Annie’s book introduced me about the work of Kahneman and Tversky as well as other topics like game theory and much more.
Since then, I’ve read dozens of books about how to think better and make better decisions. So far, I’ve read over 280 books this year, and I always have multiple books that I’m reading at the same time. Regardless of what books are in my rotation, I always have at least one book in there to remind me how dumb and irrational I can be.
And if you’re interested, I’ve put most of them together on this list that I’m regularly updating
Something I noticed about these books was that they were mostly targeted towards corporate America, and I don’t blame the authors. There’s a lot of money to be made in that realm. Then, there are many others that can have a little too much psychological jargon or were a little too self-helpish.
One day, I sat back and thought, “Why are all these books about thinking better to make more money? Why aren’t there books about making better decisions on a daily basis in our relationships and how we spend our money?”
This was actually not long after January 6th, and we all know what happened that day.
So, I got the idea to write my 6th self-published book, and it was going to be a book about how to think better and make better decisions, but it was going to be accessible to the average person. I spent a lot of time writing this book, and I was even working a full-time job along with being a father, running a YouTube channel and doing all my other project. I got about 50-60% done when I hit a block and shifted my focus to starting The Rewired Soul podcast because I really wanted to talk with authors and introduce more people to awesome books.
Welp, it’s been months since I touched that project, annnnnnnd I got laid off at the beginning of September, so I have some free time on my hands.
Now would be a great time to finish the book, but that’s not what I’m going to do. Part of being a better thinker is having intellectual humility and continuing to learn and grow. Since I took my break from writing that book, I’ve learned a lot more. Not only have I learned more about these topics, but I’ve learned how to be a better writer and how to structure books in a much better way.
But I’m not just going to trash everything I’ve written because I’m sure people can benefit from it.
The other day, on Twitter, I asked my followers this question:
I was mainly asking this for some other writing projects I have planned, but it made me decide Substack is the perfect place to release what I’ve written so far.
So, that’s what this post is all about. I’ll be releasing what I’ve written here. Hopefully you benefit from some of it, and it’ll give me the opportunity to get feedback and play around with some ideas. Before posting, I’ll be going back through and doing some editing and possibly some slight tweaking, but they’re pretty short because I was planning on formatting the book in a way where people could easily open to a section that might be helpful in various situations.
I may post these daily or just 2-3 times per week. We’ll see. I have plenty of other things I want to write about, so I’ll still be doing that as well. I’ve just been super busy with working on some promotion strategies for my previous books, so I figured this would also be good content for when I don’t have time to write.
Any and all feedback in the comments are welcome, and don’t worry about hurting my feelings. As long as it’s constructive criticism, I greatly appreciate it because I’m always trying to improve my writing.
Be sure to Subscribe to the Substack so you don’t miss any posts, and I’ll see you soon!
I’ve been working on organizing all the books I’ve read, and I have multiple lists of books on becoming a better thinker. There are lists for education, social issues, critical thinking, self-deception, and biases. For the rest of the categories, click here.
I’m always open for a conversation and to be shown what I might be missing or where I may be wrong, so feel free to email me at TheRewiredSoul@gmail.com