1. What level of cognitive ability do we currently have?

The cognitive ability consists of four most important points: essence, system, long-term perspective, and methods.

Essence

The logic here is as follows: there are countless specific phenomena, intricate and difficult to grasp. But within them lie common principles. By refining, summarizing, and generalizing these principles, we can elevate our cognition from the level of specific phenomena to the level of abstract laws, and eventually reach the essence through continuous improvement. The essence (the final abstract law) is far fewer compared to the specifics, allowing us to potentially improve our mastery of it and achieve the goal of controlling the many with the few.

For instance, I once saw this comment: “Our math teacher began introducing the four basic ideas of high school mathematics from the second year of high school: classification, transformation, combination of number and figure, and functions and equations. For each problem discussed, the teacher would analyze the idea behind it, then explain the key points of the problem from a higher level, and finally talk about common errors. These skills of summarizing and connecting ideas are what I learned from my math teacher.”

Why did we need to summarize the complicated mathematical solutions into four basic ideas: classification discussion, transformation, combination of number and form, and function and equation?

The reason is quite simple: if you are always at the level of the “eye” (specific phenomena), then there will be as many “eyes” as there are problems — it will be a chaotic mess before your eyes and you will not be able to master problem-solving. However, if you rise to the level of the “line” (abstract rules), you can organize the tens of thousands of “eyes” with just four “lines”. At this point, your mastery ability is relatively enhanced.

To illustrate, we can imagine the problem-solving process as like finding a specific house in a strange town, where there are tens of thousands of houses. Our task is to find the final house based on the clues (problem statement).

Once you are able to classify and categorize most problems with the four mathematical ideas, it’s as if you’ve placed the tens of thousands of houses onto four streets. The ideas of classification discussion, transformation, combination of numbers and figures, and functions and equations, are like the east main street, west main street, south main street, and north main street respectively.

The further refinement under the four mathematical ideas is like the different alleys on the main streets. Gradually, you’ll be able to pinpoint the location of the house: “east main street — happy alley — happy community — XXX building — XXX unit — XXX room.”

This approach of summarizing and generalizing tens of thousands of different types of problems into these four kinds of mathematical ideas provides you with a clear judgment path. After a period of training, the judgment process will be very quick, and you may be able to directly determine the solution to the problem at a glance. This is the so-called intuition of a math expert.

For someone whose cognitive level hasn’t reached this height, it’s as if they are navigating through the town’s tens of thousands of houses with a vague clue, relying mostly on luck, which is significantly less efficient. It’s like other people are using a map, while you know nothing about the area.

From here, we can see that cognitive ability, to a large extent, is the level at which you view problems, which in turn depends on your ability to extract and generalize abstract principles from complicated phenomena. The so-called philosophy of “the Dao engenders One; One engenders Two; Two engenders Three; Three engenders all things,” actually reverses the process of cognition, from the many to the three, to the two, to the one, to the Dao.

System

The logic here is as follows: to a certain degree, the more advanced and effective things usually have more complex structures (just like modern political and financial systems which are extremely intricate systems). Therefore, understanding more complex structures becomes a route for us to greatly enhance our abilities. To meet the demand for comprehending intricate things, we must have cognitive capability for complex systems.

The combination of two simple things, if paired properly, tends to create an efficiency that multiplies rather than simply adds. For instance, my major in university was law. When I was about to graduate, a highly successful senior told me this: a person who is good at law may have a combat power of 10. If this person is also good at English, his combat power can immediately be raised to 50. Later, I found out that for a student graduating from a prestigious law school in China who wants to join a large firm in China or abroad, English ability is a very important criterion.

Take playing games as another example. If you have watched competitive game matches, especially formal matches of now popular games like League of Legends or Dota, you will find that when people evaluate whether a team is strong, they often say: this team is strong in all positions and has no apparent weak points. What this means is that a team of five people can only be called a strong team if everyone’s level reaches a certain point, and additionally, they have absolute strengths. If there is a noticeably weak position or a time with strong disadvantages, then they can easily be targeted and defeated.

A high cognitive level signifies an ability to understand complexity and systems. It doesn’t simply look at one point in isolation, but rather considers issues within certain systems. Viewing things in a broad context, such as past, present, and future; surface, middle and deep layers; trends, rhythms and details; enemies, neutrals, and friends; long, medium and short terms; politics, economy, law, etc.

Seeing many things, and seeing them comprehensively, then making comprehensive judgements, because the power of a complex system is far stronger than the power of single points without a system.

Isolated, partial and absolute ways of cognition are inefficient and erroneous.

Many people lament the unfairness of society after graduation, saying that others had worse academic performance but the job opportunities and development are much better than theirs, which is simply unfair. However, they forgot that once you step into the society, everyone is demonstrating their abilities. Your past good grades is just one aspect. Others might have a good family background, good connections, high insights, abundant resources, be efficient in handling affairs, have emotional intelligence, and good luck… The rule of game has changed. This is already a systematic competition. You are still insisting on the strength and weakness of a certain point, obviously narrowing your field of vision. If this affects your mentality and overall progress, in fact, it’s detrimental to your growth.

Long-term perspective

The logic here is: the development curve of things is not linear, but a periodic alternation of platform phase (quantitative change) and leap phase (qualitative change) — I believe many people must have seen similar explanations online before. You can only embrace the leap phase if you endure the platform phase. So, no matter what you do, maintaining a long-term perspective and patience is very important. You must be mentally prepared that for a considerable period (the plateau phase) there will be investments but no obvious return. This carries risk, but if you don’t take the risk, you will miss the great rewards of the leap phase.

People often overestimate their short-term abilities, yet underestimate what they can achieve in the long term.

To put it in simple terms, it’s about learning to fish for big gains with a long line and save money regularly.

I will quote another of my responses here, which refers to a change in my understanding over the years: maintain patience.

It’s about considering current issues from a longer time range perspective, such as one year, three years, ten years, or even longer.

Not wrestling with the immediate success or failure of things, but pondering: what does this thing mean to me from the scale of ten years?

I found out that such patience brings a lot of benefits, some expected and some not anticipated.

Such as calmness, immediate successes or failures do not determine everything, so even if there’s a failure or the result doesn’t meet expectations, it won’t have too much of an impact.

And courage, since this is the case, naturally you would dare to try some things you didn’t dare to try before.

Also flexibility, if this path is blocked, just switch to another. If it doesn’t work, switch again — there’s no hurry.

And confidence, if not one year, maybe three years is enough. If not, then ten years. I’m not giving up.

Accompanying patience are two concepts.

One is the degree of completion, as in how much percent. For instance, we still fail at something through hard work, but we have gained experience and improved capabilities. Although the thing is a failure, the degree of completion towards doing this thing has increased. For instance, it has grown from thirty percent to sixty percent.

The second is the growth of life (and the iteration of versions) — that is, not treating a thing as a lifeless machine, but a life that can constantly grow. It can derive energy from success or failures to promote its own evolution. It generates a consciousness of version evolution (iteration) from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 to 4.0 and so on. Each version doesn’t have to be perfect, but each is more perfected than the last.

Patience, degree of completion, growth, and iteration collectively transform a growth pattern.

From experience so far, growth under this pattern compared to previous patterns (anxiety, urgency, one-off dealing, perfectionism) is quicker and more solid.

methods

When doing things, the more the methods and tools used conform to its regularity (internal and external rules), the higher the efficiency will be. “If a craftsman wants to do his work well, he must first sharpen his tools.” The methods and tools are directly related to efficiency, which is as important as whether you use an airplane or tank, or just a spear or dart when you go into battle.

Before 2009, my method of memorizing words was quite foolish, even for long words I would memorize them letter by letter. In 2009, during my postgraduate entrance examination, I encountered the concept of word roots, which was equivalent to a sudden upgrade from memorizing words letter by letter to memorizing them by their “radicals” or structural components. (The root of a word can be roughly understood as the radical of an English word).

Let’s understand it this way: if you’re learning the Chinese language and you want to learn the word ‘好’, if you don’t know radicals, you would have to remember how to write it stroke by stroke, instead of recognizing it as ‘女’ plus ‘子’. The difference in efficiency is huge.

This is the significance of method and tool, it can greatly enhance efficiency. Big problems have large solutions, and small problems have small methods. The significance of the method and tool lies in solving the problem in a targeted way. For instance, if you want to eat a walnut, it’s much easier and more efficient to use a nutcracker than trying to crack it with a brick or a door. The key is to find it.

To sum up — essence, system, long-term, method.

2. How to improve one’s cognitive level?

Maintain a Consciousness of Improvement

This is the first step. We should always maintain a consciousness of improving our cognitive level, from large aspects like life planning to small tasks like cooking and washing dishes. We should constantly ask ourselves: “Could there be a better way to do this better, more efficiently, and at a lower cost?” If you don’t have this consciousness, whether you’re unaware of it or lack the will to improve, your cognitive level will remain at its current state. Because I have been asking myself this question these years, I have managed to achieve some results in certain areas, despite my unexceptional aptitude. As the saying goes, don’t fear slowness, fear stagnation. As long as you hold onto the consciousness of improvement, you can seize fleeting opportunities and make progress.

Seek Sources of Stimulation

This is a crucial point. You need to find the object and direction of learning. In the past, due to the high cost and low efficiency of information dissemination, this was one of the biggest challenges. However, with the advent of the internet era, this has become much easier than before. Thanks to online bookstores and websites like Zhihu, the chances of accessing quality information sources have increased.

Gradually Digest and Absorb

In this step, I want to introduce a concept: downgrading. Sometimes when you come across information sources of a high cognitive level, they may be far beyond your cognitive level and you won’t be able to understand them. To put it simply, they’re too tough for you to chew. So you need to lower the difficulty level, soften it, to help with absorption.

Strive for Practice and Improvement

There’s a saying, acquiring knowledge by reading tends to be shallow, true knowledge requires practice. All things, only when you start practicing, can you talk about truly gaining a cognition of it. No matter how many things you’ve seen, and how much you feel your cognitive level has improved, you must apply it to actual practice. Practice will give you genuine feedback, making you realize whether your progress is real and valid, or it merely appears so, or you’ve had mistaken learning.

3. Supplement

1. Learn to summarize and conclude. This issue is very important, but it’s too extensive and profound, it would take a long discussion to cover, so I will hold off discussing it for now. I would suggest everyone read “On Practice” and “On Contradiction” for further understanding.

2. Pay attention to your experiences, recognize successful cases of cognitive level improvement, understand them fully, apply them widely, and use such points to lead to broader areas and transfer them horizontally. For instance, if one day you find yourself escalating a level in perceiving a certain issue, it often means you have grasped a universal method. You should cherish this experience, even if it comes from playing poker or video games.

3. Keep an open mind and always accumulate. To put it bluntly, we shouldn’t be defensive or always on the lookout for other people’s flaws. Nobody’s perfect, but we should pay more attention to other people’s strengths, as this can help us locate more sources of stimulation. Additionally, when we have seen or learned something, we must record it immediately, to facilitate future reference, and also to encourage the process of analysis, comprehension, and summarization.

4. Think independently. Lastly, I want to say, you have to judge any matters according to your specific situation, absorb the essence, and discard what is unsuitable. Only by doing this can you achieve true progress. This applies both to studying and examinations, and to life in general.