The Thinking Lab
Three Levels of Mind Mastery
The Thinking Lab offers an interconnected set of courses on all three levels of Mind Mastery.
Level 1: Understanding Your Mental Needs
Before you can use your mind effectively, you need to understand it. In the Level 1 classes, you learn the theoretical foundations for everything in the Thinking Lab, plus the core skills that you will use in everyday situations, and build upon in the advanced classes.
In Level 1 classes you will learn:
- How to overcome predictable mental obstacles that arise in solving complex problems
- How to understand and deal with confusing emotional issues
- The relationship between emotions and values
- How anti-values you may have acquired over the years stop you from achieving your goals
- Techniques for making these new skills second nature
Level 1 classes are the foundation for all of the other self-study materials in the Thinking Lab.
Click on the links below to explore Level 1: Understanding Your Mental Needs.
- Tap Your Own Brilliance
- Gaining Objectivity About Emotions
- Making Thinking Tactics Second Nature
- Creating a Rationally Positive Attitude
Level 2: Guiding Action with Thought
The benefit of learning to use your mind is that you can use your thoughts to guide your action. In the Level 2 classes, you learn how to guide action in three critical life areas: Productivity, Goal-Setting, and Communication.
Productivity
In the Productivity classes, you will learn:
- How to create and sustain motivation by aligning your conscious priorities with your subconscious value-hierarchy
- How to build your own infrastructure to support making daily decisions about priorities, quickly and effectively
- How to manage the mix of long-term projects, hot issues, and routine work so you manage all three
- How to integrate your goals into a happy life by understanding daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and longer priorities.
Click on the links below to explore Level 2: Productivity.
- How to be Passionate About Your Priorities
- Evolving a Scheduling Infrastructure
- Focused but Nimble
- The Prioritization Challenge
Goal Setting
In the Goal-Setting classes, you will learn:
- The three kinds of goals and how you overcome obstacles on each time scale
- How to re-conceive long-term goals so that you achieve both real short-term results and progress toward the long-term vision.
- How to develop a central purpose that gives meaning to all of your work and ensures your actions add up to a significant achievement
- Tactics for validating objectives and making challenging goals doable.
Click on the links below to explore Level 2: Goal Setting.
Communication
In the communication classes, you will learn how to clarify your message before you communicate. You will learn:
- How to eliminate defensiveness on both sides of a conversation
- How to understand the other person’s perspective
- Strategies for dealing with disagreement
- How to organize your thoughts for writing
- Tests for whether you understand your ideas clearly enough to communicate them
Click on the links below to explore Level 2: Communication.
- Introduction to Rationally Connected Conversations
- The Foundation for Rational Conversations on Emotionally-Charged Topics
- Non-Fiction Writing
Level 3: Gaining Mental Precision
The effectiveness of your thinking ultimately comes down to its clarity and precision. In Level 3 classes, you go deep into mastering conceptual clarity.
In the classes on Gaining Mental Precision, you will learn:
- How to take an abstract idea that “floats” and connect it to emotionally real examples
- How to analyze any written piece to see the structure of the argument and whether it validates the point
- How to express a thought clearly
- How to take an idea that you “kinda understand” and use your own knowledge and experience to make that idea crisp and clear
Click on the links below to explore Level 3: Gaining Mental Precision.
