Brain Hack: Improve Thinking Skills For Better Life With ST Rappaport
Our brains are the original supercomputers and yet, we’re only tapping the surface on what it can do. Optimize your brain’s power in today’s episode as ST Rappaport joins Tom Dardick to share how we can hack our brains for better life outcomes. ST is a brain engineer and has been able to chart her path to increased productivity. Here, she explores the intricacies of thinking and the ways we can improve, sharing anecdotes on how enhancing thinking skills transformed her own efficiency and productivity. ST also discusses the 28 thinking skills, the connection between emotions and cognition, and the application of these skills in daily life. What is more, she introduces a Cognitive Function Assessment, providing you with a roadmap to identify and improve your thinking strengths and weaknesses. Hack your brain towards a better life starting with this conversation.
---
Listen to the podcast here
Listen to the podcast here
Brain Hack: Improve Thinking Skills For Better Life With ST Rappaport
On this episode, it's my pleasure to welcome ST Rappaport to the show. ST is an expert in how we think and she has a lot to share about the ways that we think and specifically the ways we can improve how we think. If we have problems with grasping concepts, processing concepts, or expressing information. Once we've thought these three phases of thinking, they break down into skills. We talk a little bit about those and the nature of how we think. I found her very knowledgeable and engaging to read. I hope you get as much out of listening to ST Rappaport as I did.
There are a couple of things that I caught from your offerings both on your website. I also did your assessment that's available free of charge on your website. I found that interesting based on the 28 ways that we think. I hadn't seen that model before. I found it to be enlightening in the sense that I didn't know there was a difference between this and this. I think what you're pointing to there is that our thinking is more compartmentalized than maybe we might realize on first look. For that reason, we might do some things well and other things not well. Any one person may have a different profile. It's not like we all think the same or have the same resources let's say, or methodologies. I'd like to get your view on thinking, how we break that down and what you found the most powerful way to look at the process of how we think.
Most of the time most people think, “I'm thinking now,” and it's like this one big thing like you said. It's like, “We're just thinking,” but it's can be split into three phases of thinking or 28 thinking skills. These 28 thinking skills are split into three phases of thinking. We have the first phase of thinking where we take in information. You're listening to a podcast, you're listening to someone talk, you're reading an email, you're watching an outside bird fly, you're taking in information. There are eight thinking skills specifically related to taking in information such as one of them is specifically called clear perception.
Clear perception is when the information is coming in, is it coming in in a clear and organized way in your brain or is it coming in in a big mush? If it's coming in in a big mush, you're having messy information coming in. You're most definitely having messy information now. That's the input phase where we have the information coming in. We have the second phase where it's called elaboration. This is where we're doing the actual processing.
A lot of what we tend to call thinking falls within this space. Hypothetical thinking like figuring out what the problem is and defining the problem. Those are the twelve thinking skills in the second phase. The third phase has another eight. This is where we tell the world we know what we know so being able to give a thoughtful response, like be able to explain it in a clear and cohesive manner, that's an output base.
The reason why we like to split it like this is because, in this way, you have a much better understanding of being able to pinpoint what the actual problem is. I don't like tests because they don't tell you if the child didn't understand the question. They understood the question, but they didn't think of an answer or they know an answer and they can't tell you the answer. They can't express it in a way that the test requires it to be expressed. That doesn't tell you much about the child.
Tests you introduce another noise into the information flow, depending on how it's phrased, the methodology, what kind of question or the setting and all those sorts of things can affect our retrieval and processing these three phases?
That almost definitely has an effect on these things. It doesn't give us an answer as to what the problem is. What is the challenge here? Is it because we don't understand the question? Is it because we can't figure out the answer or is it because we don't know what the answer is? What you said setting and the way the words phrase, all those things are going to affect how we take in the information and how we process it. If you have strong thinking skills, it shouldn't matter.
Those environmental or contextual cues if we're where we're vulnerable or where we don't have, you said strong thinking, where we have vulnerabilities or ways that aren't usual or how does it show up?
It's not like some people have some thinking skills and some people don't have. We all have all of them. We're like on a spectrum. It's like, “How strong are we with each one of them?” When you can understand which one of your thinking skills is on the lower end, then you can improve them because they're skills and you can just improve them, and then it becomes a whole lot easier. Let's give an example of what I said earlier of clear perception.
We all have thinking skills. We're just like on a spectrum of how strong we are with each one of them.
Clear perception is taking in the information in a clear and organized way. If a five-year-old sit in a room that has nothing on the wall, there are no distractions, there's one desk and one card with one question that says, “What's your name?” Let's say simple as that a 5-year-old could answer. Most people around the world, unless they're extremely have massive learning disabilities, will be able to understand that question no matter their age. No matter what. There's nothing there. There's not a lot of information. It's coming in a clear and organized way.
What happens when I put this kid now in a classroom of 25 students with a big test and a bunch of questions that are there, and maybe they are age-appropriate questions, but there's a lot of noise in the classroom, there's shuffling, things from outside, lights might be bothering them, there's posters on the sign. This child still be able to read that same question of, “What's your name?” There are still a bunch of other questions there be able to take that in a clear and organized way.
I'm using a child by the way as an example, but it could translate this to an adult because there's no age limit on this. This child, if they have a weak thinking skill of clear perception, will have a challenging time answering this question. It's the same exact question, but all of a sudden now this child got the question wrong because of the setting that it was in. It's not about the setting. It's about the fact that it was this thinking skill. If this thinking skill was strong, then no matter what setting you put this child in, they would still be able to go and figure it out.
One of the things that I was thinking about as I became familiar as myself with your work a little bit was how those kinds of difficulties you highlighted affect our ability to think critically or the skill of critical thinking. The reason I ask that question to give some context is it's my feeling that we could all stand to work better, to work more, get and to improve our critical thinking skills. We tend to fall into fallacy. We tend to be lazy with it. It's a discipline that I think everyone could probably benefit from. It's universally applicable as well as when people have specific issues like you were pointing to how it might affect them. My question is about critical thinking and its application in general.
Here's the interesting thing. Most of the time we don’t use 28 thinking skills by itself, we use it multiple of them together. in order to do critical thinking, you're not using one of these thinking skills, you're using many of these thinking skills. This is the reason why it's challenging for many people because I might be struggling with one of those thinking skills related to critical thinking. You might be struggling with a different thinking skill related to critical thinking and someone else might be struggling with a different thinking skill related to critical thinking.
As soon as there's a thinking skill that's not as strong or that's weaker, any task related to that thinking skill is going to be weak. Critical thinking uses a lot of thinking skills and a lot of people struggle with it, but because it's a skill, anyone can learn them. As soon as you improve those thinking skills related to it, it does become a whole lot easier.
It seems to me like there's an emotional attachment to this ability to think where if we feel like we're being made to look stupid or we should know something or we're coming up short in some way, we feel fairly deeply embarrassed like we're doing something wrong, we're less than and we have to hide it. Therefore, we develop habits or traits that say, “I'm not good at that. I don't do that,” and we wall ourselves off of perhaps opportunities to learn and get better. Do you observe that? If so, what do you think the dynamics are there? What could we do about them?
It's very interesting that you bring that up because emotions and cognition are two sides of the same coin. Anything that's related to emotions, this embarrassment, any emotions, trauma, anything that happens is very highly related to how your brain is going to think and process information. When someone goes through some trauma. Their brain doesn't work as well afterward for some time. They might experience brain fog or they're not saying things clearly because we know that they've experienced trauma.
To answer your question on the shame and what's happening here is that we are feeling all this emotion and it is literally dropping our thinking skills. A thinking skill that is usually strong can all of a sudden now be weak when there's all these not-such-good feeling emotions all of a sudden come up. However, it also works the other way. when you are very motivated about something, when you're very excited about something, when you want to be able to figure something out, Even weaker thinking skills become stronger in that situation and they act out stronger in that situation.
Where there's a will, there's a way in that sense. When you want something, you can figure out that path. If they got the why, you're going to figure out the how. You reminded me the line in the book and movie Dune. That's Frank Herbert. It’s the second part of the big movie that came out a couple of years ago. It's going to come out in 2024. The line is, “Fear is the mind-killer.” It's a benje, which is witch. They develop mental abilities that are beyond the norm they have all these pearls of wisdom and that's one of them.
Try to learn how to control fear and control your emotions so that you can be clear. It’s interesting. The world is you might like it because they outlaw all thinking machines because in the past, there was this machines versus humanity war. Humanity eventually wins, but all thinking machines are banished. We need the ability to compute things. They have people that are become what they call mentors that train for years to be able to use their human brains like a computer. It's cool. I know that's a big side thing, but it's interesting to imagine these kinds of things. I think some of this is based on actual truth where things do work this way.
I think everything has some truth to it. There's a reason why it was been created that way. A lot of it depends on conducts on how it is becoming that way.
One other thing that I was wondering about and I wanted to ask you was a lot of people are completely thinking through the process of speaking or writing. I'm a writer. I love to write. Part of the reason why a lot of times I will write if it's me doing a show, I'll write a script out. Why? Because it gives me time to edit, to think, “I think this is true,” then I can do more research and refine. I feel like I can get a higher quality thought completed and delivered than if I'm talking it through is like the process of making it in a way. That's why it's great to have thought partners because they can help us think when we're talking with people, especially if they're good thought partners, and then write the same way. What's your thought on those as tools to improve our thinking in general or the health of our thinking?
I love the concept of hooking out loud or journaling things through because you're doing part of that thinking. I don't see it as like it's an over. To me, I see it as part of phase number three of thinking, but you are talking to a thought partner. You are expressing in that thought the output phase of what you have. We jump around with these three phases. If you are saying something to your thought partner, all of a sudden your brain might jump back to phase number two and like process something else or remember a different thing and make a new connection.
Maybe your partner tells you another piece of information. You're now taking in the information from phase number one and you reiterate what you were saying or clarify it a little bit more. It is a good way to get it out there. By doing this or writing, then you're moving through the phases and you're getting yourself to phase three instead of getting stuck. It helps get things more clear in your brain.
I'm sitting here wondering how you get to be interested in the process of thinking and educated as you are and focused as you are to help people improve in these areas. Let's hear a little bit of your path to your interest here.
I've learned a little bit about this back when I was in fifth grade. The interesting part, I started when I was doing my training, I was taking this training as more of a fun thing, not wanting to work in it but to learn more about it. I found it super interesting. It's a couple of years process. You like to train and then you work with people and you take more training and you work more with people. During these couple of years, I took a Tony Robbins course called Rapid Planning Method.
It's planning based on your motivation instead of your to-do list. I thought that was pretty cool except that no matter how many times I listened to the recordings or no matter how many times I've done the exercises, I couldn't implement it because a lot of what Tony said was speaking about like, “Think six months from now or 1 year from now. Don't think about your to-do list for today.” I struggled with that.
At the time, I considered myself super productive. I wouldn't procrastinate and I would get things done right away. I was trying to become more productive by listening to this, and I couldn't implement it. I was like, “This is a great program, but it's not for me.” A few months later I took another training in this method of the 28 thinking skills. This training was specifically on categorizations.
Categorization is a thinking skill that is an interesting one. It's about taking a group and splitting it into groups. Let's say you have a group of marbles and split it into size, color or whatever category you want to put it. It's also about taking these little groups and putting them together in a big group. If I have a bunch of marbles, all different sizes, can I put them in a big group of marbles? I could do. What happens when I have a bunch of groups of random abstract items on your to-do list, can you all of a sudden now put it in groups to work in your most productive way? Until this training, I couldn't do it.
After that training, I literally rewired my brain and improved this thinking skill of categorizations, and starting right then and there I saved over ten hours every single week by simply shifting the order and how I did things. Plus, I didn't even have to go back to re-listen to Tony's course. All of a sudden now, I was able to do it because my brain had the foundations and now understood what I needed to do to be able to think six months a year ahead. It was at that point that I got excited about it and I was like, “Not just kids need this, but high-achieving adults need this.” I got into it and was extra passionate about it.
If you saved 15% to 25% of your week by having that added clarity, can you give me an example of something that you changed the order of that paid off in such a dramatic way?
I'm going to give you two examples. One is a super basic one and get ready to laugh at me because this is how bad I was. One is going to be a more advanced one and you'll be able to see the drastic change. At the time, I considered myself super productive because I never procrastinated. If I remembered an errand that I needed to do, I would go out right now to do the errand because I had procrastinated. I go ahead and do it. Two hours later, I'd remember I'd have another errand and I would go out again, and two hours later I'd go out again. Simple shifts automatically made me save tons of time. Now I have errands. Day one day a week I go out and I do all errands.
It's not even once a day, once a week I go out and do all the errands. Once a day I answer emails. Once everything is grouped like that, I have two days a week where I do my meetings, Mondays and Thursdays. I have meetings after meetings. I'm in this outward energy. I'm in this place of meeting people and it saves me tons of time. It gives me the rest of the week either to do whatever else I want or to do that focused work without distractions and being able to get into that zone and work on those things. That was the shift that happened at that time it started off by saying, “I think it saved me more than 10 hours, but I feel like people won't believe me if I say more than that”
It's simple.
That was my basic example. Because this thinking skill is now super strong and I don't have to think about it anymore and it happens naturally, my brain is always on the lookout for ways to be able to do this form without me even having to think about it. Let me share with you an advanced way of how I do this now. I like everything group all my tasks, including grouping my podcast. I record my podcast episode, I have a solo show. That doesn't make it a little bit easier. I record my show.
Thinking Skills: Because this thinking skill is now super strong, I don't have to think about it anymore. It just happens naturally. My brain is always on the lookout for ways to be able to do this without even having to think about it.
For 5 or 6 months, I have 2 or weeks where I write, and record all the episodes and then I don't have to think about it for 5 or 6 months. That is a wow because when life happens and it has shown me over and over again like expected things, every time, and episodes still go out on schedule without missing a beat because of that. It doesn't end there. When I write my episodes, I am not just using these few days to write episodes. I'm being very specific and I'm batching every step of the way.
I have my template right for my podcast episode, and they are all opened out in front of me on my screen for the next 5 or 6 months. Each section of the episode gets written at the same time. All the CTAs for every single one of the episodes, I'm writing all of those. I have a challenge in every single episode. All those challenges get written and all the real-life examples get written together. What happens is, first of all, your brain is in that mode. It doesn't have to restart every time you're going into new tasks, but you could figure it out.
I don't have to remember what did I do last week for my call to action and do I want to do it again. I have to now open it. I literally have them all in front of me and I know, “1, 2, 3, 4, this is what I'm doing.” It saves me a ton of time. If you're listening to this, think about what tasks you do often that you can combine together so that way it will save you time. Now don't do the task, do the parts of the task at the same time together.
Think about what tasks you do often that you can combine together so that way, you’ll save your time.
Get the marbles broken down further than you might otherwise do you get that much more efficiency because to me it's like transition time, setup time, you're thinking about the same thing. All these sorts of things start and you're going towards thinking because you're in that mode. It's when you have to shift back and forth out of back and forth that we slow down, we got to get reoriented. We get distracted and, “Where was I again?” These sorts of things. Is that the thing that it helps us minimize?
Yes, that's most definitely part of it. Every time you start a car, it uses the most amount of energy. Anytime you start a new task or even a part of the task. Having to think about what is the CTA versus what is the challenge uses a slightly different part of the brain and different sets of neurons have to get fired up and which uses most amount of energy and takes the most amount of time. If you can do most of it at one time, then it will save you a lot of actual time, but also mental energy.
That's a very strong takeaway. Thank you so much for that. If somebody's reading and they say, “I should be more disciplined on working on my thinking skills and maybe I'd be interested in what are these 28 things, how could I strengthen them?” I know that's something that you do help people with. What's your advice? How can they move forward?
Start off by taking the cognitive function assessment, the 28 Thinking Skills Assessment at LifePixUniversity.com/Brain. It's a quick assessment. You need to take ten minutes or so for you to see where each one of the thinking skills is. You'll see what it looks like when it's strong. What they look like when they're weak. There's not going to be a right or wrong. It's going to be a scale from 1 to 5, and then you could see like, “I'm good at labeling.” That's a number five, but orientation and space like I'm a two, I could improve in that. When you have them all side by side like that, you can see which ones you're good at, which ones you're weaker at, which ones you can leverage to improve your weaker ones and things like that then you can figure out what the next steps forward.
They would do this and you'd get contact and then somebody could hear back from you.
First of all, I have a ton of free content everywhere on whatever your favorite social platform to get content. LifePix University I always talk about all the 28 thinking skills. If there's a specific one, you can look there, but once you take this assessment, you now have my email address. What happens is you can respond to that email with the specific thinking skill you want to improve, and I will send you specific ways for you to improve them. I'm not charging you for it. I'll just give them to you because I want you to improve your thinking skills and different exercises that you can do based on that thinking skill that they want to work on.
I know when I was going through this assessment myself, I'd go through and say, “I think I'm pretty good there.” Most of my answers were in the 4 or 5 range. I do struggle with that. I ended up moving 1 to 3. The process of going through it, it will raise your awareness of the places that you might pay more attention to because that context of those 28 areas, is a new way to think about how you think and just that assessment alone is what I found doing it. I think it's worth doing, whether you think you have any problems or not, it's going to probably shine a light on an area that you could work to improve in.
I always say, “You're not going to change anything without self-awareness.” That is exactly what that. Give yourself a few minutes to think about your thinking, how you think and what's helping you be able to be successful. It is making it a little bit more challenging. As soon as you have that awareness, when your brain is starting, it's like front of mind and your brain starts to notice these things and you're like, “I can be a little bit more precise here or something like that.”
All positive change begins with awareness. If you can't change that to which you're not aware. That's a great gift. That's a wonderful thing that you do. I'm very impressed.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for being on the program with us. We very much appreciate your insight. I got a lot out of it. I enjoyed learning about the three phases of how we think, the skills fall into three phases, the intake phase, the elaboration phase, and the output phase with 8 skills in the intake, 12 and the elaboration and 8 skills, in the output. All those skills together are things that we can break down and get a better read on areas where we might improve the quality of our thinking and maybe get a little smarter. I thought that was fantastic.
The nature of critical thinking is hard work. Critical thinking is not the easiest thing to do. That's why there's a dearth of it in the world, but it's also one of the more lucrative. It's one of the areas we can get the most return for our investment because the quality of our thinking translates to the quality of our decisions. The quality of our decisions translates to the quality of our actions. The quality of our actions translates to the quality of our habits and the things we do. The quality of those determines our fates. It's mission-critical. It's a very important topic. We talk a lot about critical thinking, and this is a new area that I hadn't seen in this particular way before. I was excited to learn and we'll go back again. Thanks again, ST.
Important Links
About ST Rappaport
ST Rappaport is a self-described brain engineer who, in the 5th grade, still couldn't read properly. After endless hours of tutoring that left nothing but high bills, it became time to take another approach. It was time to solve the core issue. The core issue involved understanding her brain and learning specifically how to improve her thinking skills, (the skills behind all skills.) She found that all areas of our lives improve. ST is walking proof. Her confidence skyrocketed, and she grew her business while she became significantly more efficient and effective. She founded LifePix University to help people rewire their brain to become more efficient and effective while experiencing more inner peace.
