Thinking About Thinking

In my last essay, I talked about the importance of physical self-awareness. In this essay, I want to explore another aspect of self-awareness that’s important: metacognition.

Metacognition is the act of “thinking about thinking,” paying attention to your own thought processes. Because my clients are interested in becoming better problem-solvers, we tend to invest quite a lot of time in cataloging and refining how they approach problems. If you want to become a better problem solver, paying attention to and evaluating your own problem-solving process is incredibly helpful.

What is a Metacognitive Skill?

We can group all metacognitive skills into three categories: planning, executing, and evaluating. I like to think of this three-step process as how you might navigate if you were lost in the woods: planning is picking a direction to walk in, executing is walking in that direction, and evaluating is pausing and looking around to see if you’re heading in the right direction.

Planning: Picking a Direction to Walk In

Planning skills are those that help you define a problem, break it down into tractable chunks, set up a productive environment, and pick an appropriate framework or approach. Here are some planning skills: