51–60 of 85 posts
Here are two mental frameworks that have served me well throughout my career: I am process oriented and find that my “abstract thinking” improved significantly when I applied a somewhat consistent mental framework / process to questions, situations, challenges or projects (which are often just a series of questions) #1: the three to five “whys” Super simple, ask why or how three to five (or as many as necessary) time…
A lot of the way experts think is actually very domain-specific. So if you want to be good at thinking about a specific domain, might be worth reading one of Gary Klein's books about naturalistic decision making. https://www.amazon.com/Power-Intuition-Feelings-Better-Decis... is the most practical of the ones I've read. More generically: learn how to write. Most hard problems won't fit in your head. Most of the ways…
Euclid's Elements teaches geometric concepts that you're probably familiar with, but with interesting proofs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_Elements It's free, it's time tested, and probably just the right amount of rigor to get your proof abilities up. I think the ability to prove theorems and the ability to construct abstractions go hand-in-hand.
Write, read challenging works of literature, learn an instrument and play music, listen to art music, learn to paint or draw, or take an acting class. Or any other art, such as woodworking or pottery.
The question was posed on a site dedicated to discussion of programming and related subjects. It therefore should be assumed that the author was requesting advice for developing abstract reasoning skills such as are employed in mathematics or software engineering. Your suggestions require explanation as to why they would help this sort of abstract reasoning. As a matter of fact, many people who are proficient in the…
Oftentimes abstract thinking isn't about learning to create programmatic mental models of things, but about learning to see a problem from various perspectives. Doing so gives one's understanding more depth. These recommendations, the arts as a whole, are extremely valuable at teaching different perspectives for understanding things.
My answer to your question is math. Learn to read and write proofs. Any intro to proofs will do: those employed in discrete math, the ones in analysis, the diagram chasing ones, whatever...Working with math proofs will definitely straighten out your thinking and whip your mind into shape. Some suggestions to get you started: Book of Proof by Richard Hammack: https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/ Discrete…
A more graduate-level book but one I found pleasing: A Logical Approach to Discrete Mathematics: https://www.amazon.com/Logical-Approach-Discrete-Monographs-... And a more pragmatic approach to the same material (with a lot of cross-over in terms of proof-style, etc): Programming in the 1990s: http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387973821 But one I particularly enjoyed early on was written for liberal-arts level stud…
To add to the fire: http://mathmeth.com/
This is not quite related, but I learned something yesterday. My wife tells me that she wants to be smarter so while we were walking I was trying to teach her mental chess so we can play chess while we walk. And she didn't want to because she was mentally exhausted (perhaps from all my talking, which is totally okay). Some of the smartest people I know don't actively seek out to improve their thinking skills. Its sim…
The usual play is to get people from the audience say random words while you assign those words to something you do everyday (the most common tool is the way to work/school) in order.
With training (as you are doing), you can remember long lists of seemingly unrelated things (and the order they are in).
As I said, a bit offtopic, but I found it funny for that old trick to come up here :)
This is not quite related, but I learned something yesterday. My wife tells me that she wants to be smarter so while we were walking I was trying to teach her mental chess so we can play chess while we walk. And she didn't want to because she was mentally exhausted (perhaps from all my talking, which is totally okay). Some of the smartest people I know don't actively seek out to improve their thinking skills. Its sim…
You memorize the order of an entire deck of cards every day?
LSD according to Steve Jobs.
This is not quite related, but I learned something yesterday. My wife tells me that she wants to be smarter so while we were walking I was trying to teach her mental chess so we can play chess while we walk. And she didn't want to because she was mentally exhausted (perhaps from all my talking, which is totally okay). Some of the smartest people I know don't actively seek out to improve their thinking skills. Its sim…
Tried googling it to no luck. Any idea?