Cognitive load in Jack Reacher

Most people think that their intelligence capacity is limited. On the contrary, by taking steps to ensure our cognitive load is within our limits, by making sure we have the existing schema for it, and by instituting a little working memory challenge, we can become automatic and so efficient at something that it almost seems supernatural. When in fact, it is a combination of training and making sure that the learning process is streamlined. It is always so interesting for me when people talk about being smart. I don’t believe I’m particularly intelligent. But I have great schema. My brain seems to be quite fluid with adapting existing schema or creating new ones. That’s all. This means that I can learn very fast. And just a little exposure to information and I can infer more and predict outcomes. The perception of intelligence I guess. And the flip side is that I have met people who are incredibly intelligent, able to comprehend very challenging subjects, yet their frameworks are misaligned and once you build that architecture past a certain point, it begins to show some incredible cracks in the foundations. Listen to the podcast, let me know what you think… It takes people who aren’t necessarily very smart and it makes them seem smart by beating some basic tactical awareness into them. Until it becomes instinctive.”― Lee Child, One Shot In psychology and cognitive science, a schema describes a pattern of thought or behaviour that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information. References: * Charlie Munger * Farnam Street This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit becomingresilient.substack.com