Ashok Suthar

Individual Rethinking

1. Think like a scientist – think you opinions like hypothesis and test with data.
2. Define your identity in terms of values and not opinions – value curiosity, learning, mental flexibility and searching for knowledge.
3. Seek out information that goes against your views – follow people who make you thinks – even if you usually disagree with them.
4. Beware of getting stranded at the summit of Mount Stupid – easiest way for this to try ELI5.
5. Harness the benefits of doubt – knowing what you don’t know if often first step towards developing expertise.
6. Embrace the joy of being wrong – don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself
7. Learn something new from each person you met
8. Build a challenge network, not just a support network
9. Don’t shy away from constructive conflicts

Interpersonal Rethinking

1. Practice the art of persuasive listening – increase your question to statement ratio in conversations
2. Question how rather why – help them realize limits of their understanding on particular topic
3. Ask “What evidence would change your mind?”
4. Ask how people originally formed opinion – consider how would you believe different things if you born at differnt time/place
5. Acknowledge common ground – in arguments and debates
6. Remember that less is often more – in explaining your point
7. Reinforce freedom of choice – respect their autonomy instead of forcing choices
8. Have a conversation about the conversation

Collective Thinking

1. Complexify contentious topic – there are always more than two sides to every story, look at it from many lenses of a prism
2. Don’t shy away from caveats and contingencies
3. Expand your emotional range
4. Have a weekly myth-busting discussion at dinner
5. Invite kids to do multiple drafts and seek feedback from others
6. Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up
7. Abandon best practices – no ideal routine should take place of rethinking
8. Establish psychological safety – starts with leaders role modelling humility
9. Keep a rethinking scorecard
10. Throw out ten year old plan – plan just one year ahead (On a foggy road trip, you can only see as long as your headlights can show)
11. Rethink your actions, not just your surrounding
12. Shcedule a life checkup
13. Make time to think again – instead of filling it full of doing.