Skip to content

Practice metacognitionΒΆ

Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It's the act of examining your thought process and perceptions. Metacognition is a skill, so it can be practised and improved upon. The improvements tend to be quality of the metacognition and it being triggered when useful.

Developing a habit for metacognition can improve your ability to think critically and problem solve in general. By practicing metacognition you'll recognise patterns in your thinking, see shortcuts and improvements you can make, and notice problems in how or what you are thinking.

Understanding requires ideas to have context, and observing your thoughts will bring that context over time. Because of this, metacognition can help you learn how to learn effectively.

By recognising gaps, inconsistencies and other problems in our thinking, metacognition can also help to mitigate cognitive biases.

Metacognition can be entirely internal, but it can be hard to form a habit in this way. Private journaling can help to reify the process in a way which can be scheduled and possibly deliberately practiced. Writing is a form of thinking.

Some learning techniques encourage metacognition to. The Feynman technique involves interrogating your understanding of a subject and forces you to deal with the gaps. This has the added advantage of helping to direct your search to fill those gaps.

Finally, some forms of meditation can be a form of metacognition. Mindfulness encourages you to examine your current thoughts and emotions as a passive observer. This can be super powerful, but journaling is normally more approachable and easier to get started with.