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Not all thinking is created equal. There are five distinct levels—and most people get stuck at Level 3 without realizing it.

In this episode, I break down the Cognitive Ladder: from recall to comprehension to application to transfer to evaluation. I share the story of a student who could memorize the Constitution but couldn't apply it to modern life, a teacher who transferred literary analysis skills to crisis intervention, and the Level 5 judgment call I had to make when deciding whether to fire a beloved teacher.

What you'll learn:

• The five levels of thinking (and how to diagnose where you are)
• Why smart people struggle when the context changes
• Traps at each level and how to avoid them
• How I transferred thinking skills across four different careers
• The difference between knowing how to do something and being able to adapt it
• How to move up the ladder one rung at a time
• step-by-step methods to move up a level
• aligning tasks with levels to lead and teach better
• building tolerance for ambiguity and owning decisions

If you want to go deeper on this, if you want to diagnose your thinking level and frameworks for moving up the ladder, I write about this every week in my Substack. If you want the insider of Substack, that's a $10 a month, and the link is in the show.

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