Inside the thinking mind: using meta-cognition for clearer decisions
Inertia — 205
Attention is the Beginning of Devotion
— Mary Oliver
I found myself stuck at my laptop recently, cursor blinking at the half-finished project due this week. Frustrations had grown. I never felt clear from the beginning. And the strategy I put together behind this project felt hollow. The final result lay empty, and I knew something was wrong. So I sat there, knowing this particular purgatory was happening again—knowing something was off, but pushing forward because the deadline was more important to me than meeting expectations with the result.
The feedback was as expected, and my thought process was questioned. A quick call turned into an hour-long breakdown, and I got up immediately afterwards to sever myself from my laptop and ask: “What am I thinking right now?” Not to think about the campaign but how I approached it. There were assumptions I’d locked in without questioning, which was dangerous because assumptions can carry your motivation through the work, and if these assumptions are half-hearted, your motivation may be as well.
I had to think about what I may be too afraid to reconsider. It was an uncomfortable but necessary couple of hours from then. Meta-cognition was now at play. And once I’d realised it and reshaped my project, starting with the assumptions, strategy and outline, I ended the week with glowing feedback and praise. Perfect.
Meta-cognition is simply thinking about thinking—the mind watching itself work. Getting a bird’s eye view of your thoughts to see their patterns and know which roots to nurture and which to pull out. It’s where you question foundations and redirect the flow of your thoughts if needed. It’s the difference between being swept along by a current of your thoughts and standing on the river bank deciding where to build the channels.
We carry thousands to tens of thousands of thoughts per day. Most of it is autonomous, and most of us have no system to examine the quality of those thoughts. We think, but rarely about how we think.
Think about a neuroscientist who has to process complex brain scans, a chef accurately adjusting flavours, an investor fighting their emotional response during market volatility—they’re all practising meta-cognition. They’re not just doing it; they’re watching themselves and adjusting in real time.
It works as a cycle:
Preparation: Before diving into something, ask what mental models you’re bringing to the task. What do you already know? What strategies have worked before? What assumptions might blind you?
Execution: While you work, periodically pull back to fact-check your thinking. Are you still on track? Has new information emerged that should change your approach? Are emotions clouding your judgement? Great for projects where you must balance what you want with what the end user (a friend, customer, or stakeholder, for example) wants.
Reflection: After you do the work, examine not just what you built but how your thinking evolved from it. What surprised you? Which mental models were most helpful or too misleading?
The cycle helps you pause long enough to question how you’re thinking. When I half-baked a recent project, I was essentially asked at what point I stepped back and questioned my main assumptions and thought process. Silence was my only reply for a while.
The trap captures even the brightest minds: confusing process compliance with quality thinking. We can execute a plan according to the letter of the law, but it’s equally important to stop and examine whether it was the right plan to begin with. Because just because a plan worked doesn’t always mean it was a good plan.
Meta-cognition can help you in most situations. Take it as a simple pause to ask, “Am I thinking about this in the most effective way?” which might reveal a fundamental misalignment with reality. You can develop this skill to help you cultivate a strong, intensely present yet slightly detached kind of awareness. Like watching yourself in a play while simultaneously being in it. Similar to what great performers do to spot any flaws and correct themselves quickly.
Start small:
When stuck on a problem, ask what framework you use to approach it.
Before an important decision, write down your thought process, not just the answer.
After a failure, examine the thinking patterns that led there, not just the outcome.
Create “meta moments” in your day—brief pauses to examine your mental state.
In meta-cognition, attention turned inward is the beginning of wisdom.
During my stalled project, my awareness helped everything shift from an unclear, half-hearted attempt to a clear and motivated strategy and piece of work that taught me how to set the tone for future projects. Not because I worked harder. I certainly didn’t. But because I thought differently about how I was thinking.
We often look outward for solutions or things to blame when the most powerful tool is on the inside—this remarkable ability to observe our own minds at work and catch ourselves in the act of thinking. To question not only what we know, but how we know it.
The world can drown you in information while starving you of wisdom. The same way the world has a clear abundance of water but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to drink.
Meta-cognition is a quiet skill that separates those who merely know from those who understand much more. The mind watching itself is possibly the oldest technology, but it is still one of the most underutilised.