Why Clear Thinking Takes Practice
“The mind is the crown of creation. It can think. It is aware of itself.”
Last week I introduced myself and my fascination with thinking. But what exactly fascinates me and aren’t we all already using our minds?
Thinking is something to be aware of
We think every day, almost every second of it. Maybe you’re one of those people who talk to themselves in their minds (yes, only about 25–30 % of people actually use inner speech; Hurlburt et al., 2013). Or perhaps you think in visual images, emotions, sensory impressions or abstract, non-verbal patterns. Either way, we all experience the world through the lens of our own mind.
Because we think almost constantly, it’s easy to assume that we’re experts at it. But can you run a half marathon just because you walk to work every day? Of course not and the same applies to thinking consciously and critically.
Our mind guides us through the world and filters what seems most relevant for survival and meaning. To do this efficiently, our thinking evolved to detect threats, recognise patterns and prevent us from being overwhelmed by the flood of incoming information. Every second, our senses collect roughly 10 billion bits of raw data, while our conscious mind can process only about 10 bits per second (Zheng & Meister, 2024).
That’s like receiving the data of a full HD movie every second but consciously processing less than a single word.
Even if these numbers are approximations, they show something essential: we consciously perceive only a tiny fraction of what surrounds us. To deal with this, the mind has developed fascinating shortcuts, rules of thumb that help us decide quickly, often without realising it.
These shortcuts are called heuristics and they are both incredibly useful and surprisingly deceptive.
Heuristics – why they are both helpful and misleading
Our mind is not designed to calculate every possibility before making a choice. Instead, it relies on mental shortcuts, what psychologists call heuristics, to navigate the world efficiently.
Heuristics are quick, intuitive rules that help us make sense of complexity. We estimate how likely something is by how easily we can recall an example (availability heuristic) or we judge a situation by how much it resembles something familiar (representativeness heuristic). They allow us to act fast, often with remarkable accuracy, which is crucial in everyday life.
Imagine you’re crossing a street. You don’t consciously compute the speed and distance of every car; you just know when it’s safe to walk. That’s heuristics in action.
They make thinking possible in a world that would otherwise overwhelm us with data.
But there’s a trade-off. The same shortcuts that make us efficient can also distort our judgement. They can lead us to ignore evidence, overestimate our intuition or draw conclusions that simply feel right. That’s where biases come in, systematic errors in thinking that stem from the very mechanisms that usually help us.
Research in cognitive psychology shows how these shortcuts shape everything from financial markets to moral decisions and revealed something deeply human:
We don’t think in straight lines of logic, but in shortcuts, patterns and stories. And that’s not a flaw, it’s a feature of how the mind works.
The challenge is to become aware of when our shortcuts serve us and when they mislead us.
Becoming aware of how we think
The first step towards clearer thinking isn’t to eliminate shortcuts, but to notice them.
Every time you feel instantly sure about something, pause for a second.
Ask yourself: What makes me so certain?
That small moment of awareness already shifts the process from automatic to reflective.
And that’s where better thinking begins.
Thinking from Scratch
by Luc Albrecht
Exploring how we think, decide and create clarity
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Hurlburt, R. T., Heavey, C. L., & Kelsey, J. M. (2013). Toward a phenomenology of inner speaking. Consciousness and Cognition, 22(4), 1477–1494. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.10.003
Zheng, J., & Meister, M. (2024). The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? (No. arXiv:2408.10234). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2408.10234