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How to Think About Thinking - mklabgr - 08-29-2026
How to Think About Thinking
Author: Kristen French
Source:Nautilus
Published: August 28, 2026
Topic: Neuroscience, executive function, attention, decision-making
The article is a conversation with neuroscientist Adrian Owen, whose work focuses on executive function—the collection of mental processes that allow us to control attention, plan, use working memory, regulate emotions, and deliberately choose how to respond to situations. Owen describes executive function as a higher-level system that controls other cognitive processes. An automatic emotional reaction may occur without conscious control, but deciding what to do with that reaction requires executive function. He argues that cognition therefore cannot meaningfully be reduced to a single number such as IQ: people can be excellent planners but have weaker memory, or vice versa. His research involving tens of thousands of participants suggests that human cognitive ability is composed of multiple interacting capacities rather than one general measure of intelligence.
A central message is that people frequently operate on “autopilot.” Notifications, distractions, habits, and immediate impulses determine what receives our attention simply because responding automatically requires less mental effort. Owen argues that deliberately thinking about our thinking—metacognition—is itself a powerful exercise of executive control. Interestingly, conventional “brain-training” programs appear to offer limited benefits. In a study involving roughly 11,000 participants, people became better at the specific tasks they practiced, but those improvements did not generalize well to other cognitive tasks. Sleep, diet, social interaction, and other lifestyle factors contribute somewhat, but Owen says there appears to be no single technique capable of dramatically improving executive function.
Instead, Owen advocates deliberately controlling attention, planning, and decision-making. In his own life he disables notifications, minimizes interruptions, plans his days carefully, and creates long periods of uninterrupted concentration. Technology itself is not necessarily harmful—it can extend our memory and cognitive abilities—but constant interruptions may encourage passive rather than deliberate thinking. For children in particular, Owen believes adults should resist immediately solving every problem for them and instead encourage them to work things out themselves. The broader lesson is that the ability to stop, reflect, and consciously direct our attention may be one of the most important cognitive skills we can cultivate.
Key takeaways
- Executive function coordinates abilities such as attention, planning, working memory, emotional regulation, and understanding other people's mental states.
- IQ alone is an inadequate description of intelligence because cognitive abilities consist of several partly independent capacities.
- Commercial brain training tends to improve the practiced task, but the improvement often fails to transfer to unrelated tasks.
- Owen's most important recommendation is simple: get off cognitive autopilot and deliberately decide what deserves your attention.
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