Why we should all learn more about our thinking
The same morning is never the same morning
Every morning runs the same way and feels completely different, and we barely notice the mind that quietly makes the difference. I want to begin there, with the one instrument we use for everything and understand the least. Each week, a look at how our thinking works, where it slips, and why seeing it more clearly makes us freer rather than merely cleverer.
„I think, therefore I am.“
The same morning is never the same morning
Everyone knows it. Beep, beep. Beep, beep. That sound. Ah yes, the alarm. You open your eyes and take in the world around you for the first time that day. The light is bright, you blink and screw up your eyes. Your bare feet on the floor make you shiver, and yet the smell of coffee, or of breakfast in the morning, gives you a comforting warmth.
Most of us will recognise this scene. How we experience it, though, varies enormously, depending on the time, the season, the temperature, our stress levels, how we slept, whether it is a Monday or a Sunday morning and whether work or a holiday comes next. The sequence may be the same, yet the way our brain interprets all these signals, and with it the reality we feel, differs a great deal. What is remarkable is not the work going on in the background, but how rarely we notice it. Perception is subjective, most people know that much. Why it is, and what that means, they do not.
Why we should think about our thinking
Our brain is astonishing. Everything we feel, think and do begins here. It gives us our intuitive gut feeling and can solve highly complex mathematical problems. It steers us through our lives and lets us experience them through a perspective entirely our own. And yet, in everyday life, we rarely give much thought to how our thinking works or how it shapes us.
We assume we can all think clearly already, after all we do it every day. But by that logic we could run a marathon simply because we walk to the fridge each morning. Sadly, neither is the case.
And yet our thinking is the source of our whole life. It decides not only how we perceive the world, but also what meaning we give to what we perceive. It shapes, to a large degree, how we see ourselves, how we judge other people, how we communicate, conduct relationships, learn, love and live. It shapes our decisions, the way we handle uncertainty, our goals and, in the end, the stories we steer by.
And still we learn remarkably little about how our mind works. At school, in training or at university, we mostly focus on content, built up subject by subject and neatly kept apart. If we are lucky, we pick up a few study techniques, flashcards, spaced repetition or writing summaries.
But we rarely learn how perception gets distorted and how our convictions form, how stress and pressure change our judgement, which shortcuts we take when we decide or how to reflect on ourselves.
That's exactly why I write here.
Who I am
I'm Luc, or more precisely Dr Luc Albrecht. I trained first as a natural scientist, in biology and chemistry, added specialisms in neuropsychology and the neuroscience of learning along the way, and later did my doctorate with a cognitive-science focus on Critical Thinking and decision-making. That this subject interests me beyond the academic has biographical reasons too. During my own experience of cancer it became very clear to me how vulnerable our thinking becomes under fear, pressure and uncertainty. Even with a scientific background, in moments like those you are not simply rational, composed and beyond influence.
Since then one question in particular has stayed with me. How can we understand our thinking better without imagining that we stand fully above it?
That's what this newsletter is about.
What to expect here
Each week I'll offer a glimpse into our thinking, and into my own thoughts. We'll look at how our thinking works, the traps it holds and the shortcuts it takes without our noticing. We'll examine why convictions are often more stable than good arguments, what self-reflection really means and what it means to think critically. We'll look at learning, productivity and personal development through the lens of cognitive science, and ask how we can make better decisions in everyday life, at work and for our lives.
Not because it will make us perfectly rational, but because we become freer once we understand better what steers us from within.
From next week we'll go deeper into the world of our thinking.
If you too want to sharpen and widen your own thinking, I'd be glad to have you along the way.
Until then, I wish you a good week.
— Luc
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Reflection starts with dialogue.
If you’d like to share a thought or question, you can write to me at contact@lucalbrecht.com
Thinking from Scratch
by Luc Albrecht
Exploring how we think, decide and create clarity
