

Ask HN: How to train yourself to become a quick thinker? - kev6168

By &quot;quick&quot;, I mean within a very small amount of time, you are able to:<p>1. look at things from _many_ different perspectives quickly,<p>2. find&#x2F;construct relationships between remote things quickly,<p>3. recall relevant knowledge&#x2F;experience from memory quickly,<p>4. observe the environment and quickly grasp essentials about the situation,<p>How to train yourself to be better in this kind of &quot;quick thinking&quot;?<p>What are your recommendations of books&#x2F;videos&#x2F;courses? What are the necessary thinking habits&#x2F;approaches&#x2F;methodologies? What are the training methods&#x2F;processes?<p>Note that here, if forced to choose, we are seeking the ability of &quot;breadth and quantity&quot; of our thoughts, not &quot;depth and correctness&quot;. Of course we are not against the latter, but your recommendations should focus on &quot;quickness&quot;.
======
rayalez
I don't think it's possible to literally speed up the way brain processes the
information, neurons will probably fire and transmit the information at a
constant rate.

So if we want to "think faster" we are tallking about:

\- strengthening connections between the neurons

\- learning new patterns, so that instead of reprocessing the
information(reinventing ideas) brain would "cache" the familiar patterns as
memories.

I guess either way, the solution to both things comes down to developing
skill. Picking a type of problems and solving them a lot, until brain builds
up the circuits for them.

I think that when a person "observes the environment and quickly grasps
essentials about the situation" he is simply recognizing a familiar pattern,
so to be better/faster at that you simply need to learn more
patterns(experience). The same goes for the point 3 - the more often you
use/recall some information, the better you will be at it.

Regarding the points 1 and 2 - I highly recommend a book "Serious Creativity"
by Edward De Bono, learn and practice skills this book is explaining. This is
the best book on creativity I've ever encountered, it addresses exactly these
issues.

Besides that, a practical advice would be to remove things that slow you down.
Remove anxiety, distractions, learn to focus better. Learning meditation is
very useful for that.

~~~
kev6168
Practice a lot to get very familiar with many patterns, to a degree that those
patterns become second nature so it takes little time to recognize them. Also
thanks for the book recommendation.

------
poppup
Good question. In my view, thinking fast has to do with how well you can
process emotion. Do you get stuck in the headlights or do you dive out of the
way of the truck coming at you?

That is not a question of preparedness mentally. It is a question of emotional
preparedness. As in, how do you process fear?

As to the ability to process information, that is also related to emotion, as
in, what do you care to pay attention to and what do you readily discard?

Knowing how you feel and then being __capable __of processing emotions quickly
as they arise is probably the most important skill there is for us humans and
that is true whether you lived during the Rennaissance or in a cave or if you
work at google.

If you are interested in more about the subject of becoming more capable, let
me know. I am writing a book about it presently and would love to share it
with you and get your feedback. The results have been pretty great. People say
that focusing on capabilities makes them feel lighter and younger. I also feel
lighter, my thoughts flow at lightning speed, making me more prepared for
change. I can be found at poppitup on twitter. Just follow the cat.

~~~
kev6168
emotion and feeling! this is a wonderful angle to look at the ability of
"quickness in thinking". I always suspect there is more to the 'hard'
portion(knowledge/experience/skills) that contributes to one's quickness. The
'soft' part might be _more_ important. This is one question needed to be
studied. Another question is how to tap into and train the emotion/feeling
part to modify/increase/utilize it, or is it mostly innate?

About the "quickness" I am asking for, If a gun is pointed at me and I am
forced to come up with an analogy, I would say I am asking for the "quickness"
in James Bond's behaviors and handling of situations, not the thoughtfulness
and depth of Sherlock Holmes (although he was not slow for sure), if you know
what I mean. Sorry for the bad analogy.

very interested in your book, will definitely follow it.

~~~
walterbell
> About the "quickness" I am asking for, If a gun is pointed at me

Read _Principles of Personal Defense_ and/or _To Ride, Shoot Straight, and
Speak the Truth_ by Jeff Cooper

------
achow
Take up Yoga.

My personal experience is I benefited on the points that you have mentioned
and then some more. Would sound corny but the best way to describe the
experience is like what was shown in the movie 'Limitless' \- it was of course
not to that extent, but after doing Yoga for few weeks I felt as if some fog
was lifted from my brain (which prior to that I didn't even realize was
there), I was able to connect things much more efficiently, do pattern
matching and all at subconscious level. Also, I realized I could remember long
numbers (ex. ph no.) much more easily - I was never partial to mathematics
right from childhood. If I have to rationalize it then I would think its not
only because of exercises, inverted postures (which allows more blood flow to
your upper regions of the body) etc. but also due to breathing exercises -
which not only helps your lungs but brain as well.

There are scientific work around Yoga and improvement on cognitive abilities,
one that I could find easily: The Acute Effects of Yoga on Executive Function
[http://kch.illinois.edu/research/labs/neurocognitive-
kinesio...](http://kch.illinois.edu/research/labs/neurocognitive-
kinesiology/files/Articles/Gothe_2013_TheEffectsOfA.pdf)

~~~
kev6168
Very interesting. I have been thinking in taking Yoga class for years. Might
be the time to start it now.

------
cskakun
I think it's all practice, and a little natural talent. Then again I can't say
I'm the fastest thinker. That is, I don't know. I've never compared myself.

What you're talking about here takes practice and a super powered brain. But
at the same time, maybe you need to be more specific. I ask myself these
questions sometimes as well. Try learning a diverse skill set, rounding
yourself out. At the same time, know and accept the brain's limitations. For
example, you wouldn't start a car in 5th gear. But those are the kinds of
things we do with our psychology all the time. Like multitasking, stressing
ourselves out, fatiguing our brains, eating shitty food, breathing poorly.

But why is quickness so important?

Drugs, in the right doses, can sometimes help you do this.

Maybe understanding "why" would help as well.

~~~
kev6168
about the why, I think the ability to think quickly (in wide breadth and large
quantity, even with some shallowness due to time constraint) becomes more and
more important in modern times, compared to, say, the Renaissance days,
because the vast amount of information available, the increasingly complicated
and complex situations we face in work place and daily life, and the fast pace
of everything moving at, the subsequent demand for people to handle all these.

------
Mikhail_Edoshin
A few thoughts and observations:

\- Thinking in strict sense is slow by nature. The only way to make it faster
is to avoid it, that is to simply know the stuff. The more you know, the
faster you think, that is do what looks like thinking.

\- Emotions may disrupt any expert; you'll forget what is 3 by 5. There's a
comment here already that mentions it, and I second it, because I was that
guy. One of best decisions in my life was going to a shrink :)

\- There's a structured approach to problem solving; formulate the problem
(current state), the goal (the desired state), list alternatives, weigh them,
choose. This may sound obvious, but a lot of otherwise smart people do not do
this and simply pick the first idea that pops to their minds. Changing to
structured problem solving helps immensely; it's actually used as a therapy.

\- Some high-level heuristics may help: six thinking hats, TRIZ (although this
one doesn't think it's a heuristic), morphological analysis, and so on. Their
primary purpose is exactly that: quickly generate many different ideas and
views and make sure to cover as many important bases as possible. Each has a
special flavor; TRIZ, for example, aims for elegant minimalist solutions.

\- Every blessing has a curse. I once read "Vengeance: The True Story of an
Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team" (it was made into the "Munich" movie) and
there was an episode when a Soviet special agent got killed primarily because
he was a trained special agent who is always ready and aware of what's going
on. Quick thinking looks very useful, but there will be situations when it
isn't.

~~~
kev6168
Structured approaches and systematic methods to generate many different views,
these are probably the best ways to achieve fast thinking and getting good
enough results in work/daily life endeavors.

Having a system in place and becoming one's second nature (through training)
will help one to remain guided and calm in heated/hectic situations(James
Bond?), basically turn one's mind into some kind of machine which runs fast
and emotion free. Machine might not produce _the_ best solution, but it can
produce a lot quickly (hopefully some are good and creative). Frankly I
believe in today's society one needs more of the quickness to be successful(in
a worldly sense).

------
jonjonBoy
Sleep is number one. Without it, you will think much much slower. When you are
deprived, parts of your brain shut off and 'rest'.

Once that's taken care off, stimulant is another way. Coffee in general is a
widely accepted way to accelerate thinking.

As some people mentioned, general anxiety or fear/emotion could impact
thinking both positively and negatively. A healthy dose of cortisol could
improve performance but too much of it especially if you get into panic/terror
mode would impede fast thinking.

Fasting once you past through the low glucose phase could actually help
assuming you are not one of those who are plagued with persistent brain fog
due to lack of fuel during a fast.

Toxic load matters. If your body chemicals are out of whack or intoxicated it
might cause brain inflammation which would impact your thinking.

But more importantly the baseline is genetics - how your brain is wired really
matters. The amount of grey matters & glia along with the unique way your body
myelinate connections impact how fast you could think.

Nootropics - could help to a certain extend but they ALL have side effects,
some permanent so I don't recommend them.

------
arisAlexis
You need to think of significance of factors here. I would say they are the
following in this order:

General Intelligence, Stress Level, Familiarity with the task at hand, Good
night's sleep, Coffee/tea/other stimulants, Nutrition, Exercise

I think the single most important in this list is stress levels which can
really lower your iq by dozens of points at a particular moment. Everything
except the first is modifiable.

------
freedevbootcamp
I think everyone has the capacity to be a quick thinker.

The two main components to being a quick thinker are not what you think.

The first one is a competitive spirit. If you have ever played any sports and
you have felt the desire to win, this will get you half way to thinking
quickly. Train yourself to be able to look at the problem and give up many
different possibilities rather than just the smoking gun fix. Sometimes in a
enterprise environment fixing the smoking gun is the most inconvenient. Being
under pressure and using the competitive spirit can be one of the most
satisfying jobs.

The second one is know your environment. You have to know your environment
from top to bottom and everything in between. You have to be able to visualize
the problem from inside and out in order to narrow the problem down to its
core. The first thing you do at a new job is to find the documentation for
everything and study it.

This vision of the environment could come from many different crafts whether
it is a Network Engineer, Software Developer, DBA, or Systems Engineer. But
you have to be in a position of knowledge about the entire infrastructure.

In order to recall knowledge/experiences from memory quickly you have to be an
expert pattern matcher. Sometimes its a new problem that has never been
discovered or documented but very rarely. Search google for the main topic and
if you find a gazillion answers you know its a common problem. If you cant
find anything you know someone has changed something or broke something and is
more than likely a misconfiguration. How do you gain the knowledge in the
first place? Reading. Reading books and blogs and stack overflow and
everything you can get your hands on. You wont retain all the knowledge but
you will remember that you found a fix for it at one time or another and can
search for it again quickly.

~~~
kev6168
I totally agree on the "competitive spirit" point. If one has a strong desire
to take control and to win, the needed energy and sense of emergency will come
quickly.

To expand on this point, I think in addition to the competitive spirit, a
carefree mindset also helps to keep cool, make you to step back a little bit,
to think quickly in unconventional ways.

I am not so sure about your second point. I understand more knowledge and more
experience will help us, but is more studying of documentations/technical
know-hows the best way to spend our time in the aim of improving our fasting
thinking ability? I have experienced too many occasions in which much less
knowledgeable/skilled people came on top in businesses/arguments/political
competitions.

~~~
freedevbootcamp
I should have said this is from my 20 years of experience in an IT department.
And as a response to my second point, it was in reference to technical
problems that you see in an enterprise environment. I though you were
directing your questions to technical knowledge not
business/arguments/political competitions, my bad.

------
panamafrank
Have you heard of 'mindfulness' or vipassana meditation? at it's core it's
about developing your ability in "pre-symbolic" thinking ie before narrating
the situation inside your head.

There's tons of books on the subject but read both parts of this:

[http://www.medialens.org/index.php/current-alert-
sp-29853922...](http://www.medialens.org/index.php/current-alert-
sp-298539227/cogitations-archive/57-mind-training-part-1.html)

------
walterbell
There's an active community at
[http://artofmemory.com](http://artofmemory.com)

~~~
achow
That is more remembering things and not for 'quick thinking' per se - OP's
goal. There is a very interesting book on the concept of 'Memory Palace' (on
which 'artofmemory.com' is based on): Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and
Science of Remembering Everything [http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-
Science-Rememberi...](http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-
Remembering-Everything/dp/0143120530)

~~~
walterbell
These techniques can also be applied to "concepts", not just objects and
words. Reduced latency of human access, e.g. placing related concepts "nearby"
in human memory, has similar benefits as database indexes which colocate
related data. Some data visualizations help with associative thinking. "Quick"
thinking may involve navigation around a high-dimensional conceptual space,
which could be simplified as projections onto 2D images which can be stored in
a memory palace. Flatland is a classic essay on the 2D/3D boundary.

Another way of approaching the question would be to look at people who can
have "quick conversations", e.g. longtime team members. There's a shared body
of experience and shared vocabulary for complex concepts, addressable by
shorthand.

Memory and emotion go hand-in-hand with perception.

------
MichaelCrawford
take up rock climbing.

~~~
kev6168
care to elaborate on it a little more? thanks.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
Rock climbing is mostly safe, mostly methodical and meditative but there are
times you have to think quickly or you will fall.

It doesn't have to be deadly; you could learn it while on belay at a climbing
gym.

An electrical fault once set a payphone on fire in a dormitory where I was
living. That was our only phone so it wasn't like we could call for help.
Everyone stood around watching in terror as the flames grew.

I grabbed a paper grocery sack out of a trash can, covered my hand with it
then slapped my palm over the fire.

Everyone said I was a hero. They didn't expect that of me because I have
always been - particularly back then - rather shy and quiet. But to me it was
the obvious thing to do.

