How to Avoid Short Circuiting Your Thinking

We are capable of great feats of thinking but we can also short circuit (mess up) how we perceive, remember, learn and make decisions on a regular basis.  We all have these thinking foibles and scientist described them in various ways from decision traps to cognitive bias and heuristics of reason.  For a quick overview of some of the biggest ones, check out five common mistakes your brain makes every day.

The post covers memory, expectations, loss aversion, stereotyping and predicting odds in simple terms and provides examples. What it does not provide (and most sources don’t) is ways to overcome or avoid them.  For example, we are told that we trust our memories more than we should. We assume we remember events and experiences accurately when if fact there is good evidence that shows we distort and recreate them regularly. But what can you do?  If I am not to trust my memory, what practical steps can I take to avoid the biases and mistakes of a faulty memory?

I am interested to hear from readers that have developed techniques to deal with unreliable memories, overbearing expectations or any of the other common mistakes our brain makes everyday. Such techniques should be a great way to improve our cognitive performance on a regular basis. Just what we want to discuss on the Next Brain Blog.