How to upgrade your brain's feedback loop
Metacognition — the ability to think about your thinking — can help you learn faster and make better decisions.
By Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I remember working on my book and catching myself mid-paragraph. I’d just finished a sentence that felt particularly satisfying to write and paused to ask: Why does this feel so good?
The answer wasn’t flattering. What I’d written sounded smart, but it wasn’t clear. I realized I’d been unconsciously filtering ideas through “does this make me look clever?” instead of “will this help the reader?”
Once I noticed I was optimizing for the wrong outcome, I could change it. I started asking different questions: Is this clear? Will this example actually land? What am I assuming the reader already knows?
That shift — becoming aware of how I was evaluating my own work — changed how I approached the rest of the book.
This kind of self-observation is what researchers call metacognition, and it’s useful far beyond writing. While most people learn by trying things and seeing what happens, metacognition lets you get better at the learning process itself. Instead of just collecting experiences, you improve how you interpret them.
How your brain normally learns
Your brain is constantly making predictions. It expects certain outcomes; you act on those expectations, see what happens, and then update your mental model. Touch something hot, feel pain, remember that hot things hurt. Message someone, get no response, assume they’re not interested. This cycle runs automatically, usually without conscious thought.
This system is fast and efficient, but it has problems.
The biggest issue is that your automatic learning system often focuses on the wrong signals. It’s easily skewed by recent events, your mood, and invisible biases.
Worse, it can’t examine itself. It can’t tell whether it’s actually learning the correct lessons from experience. It’s like trying to see your own face without a mirror.
The overlooked skill that helps you learn faster
When you pause to ask, “How confident am I about this?” or “What’s the basis for my reasoning?” you’re doing something qualitatively different from automatic thinking: You’re observing your own mind at work.
Metacognition means “thinking about thinking.” Instead of just learning from what happens, you pay attention to how you’re learning.
Research suggests that people who regularly check their confidence become better at distinguishing between what they know and what they only think they know, and as a result develop a sharper sense of their own understanding.
For instance, a chess master doesn’t just analyze positions — they analyze their analysis. They notice when they’re being drawn to flashy moves or letting emotion cloud their judgment. A surgeon notices when fatigue or overconfidence might affect their decisions.
This self-monitoring helps experts catch problems in real time, rather than waiting for results to show what went wrong, meaning they can adjust their approach while still in the middle of a task.
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How to build a smarter feedback loop
Metacognition isn’t just about awareness; it’s about improving how you think. The good news is that you can train it. Practices you can try include:
Explain things to yourself. When learning something new, don’t just read or listen. Ask yourself why it makes sense and how it connects to what you already know.
Study your mistakes. If something goes wrong, resist moving on too quickly. Instead, dig into what happened: What was I thinking? Where did my reasoning break down? What was I assuming? What would I do differently?
Think out loud. When solving a problem or making a decision, narrate your thought process. Speak (or write) what you’re thinking as you think it. This makes your invisible reasoning visible so you can examine it.
Check your confidence. Notice how sure you feel when making a decision. Consider whether your confidence comes from solid evidence or gut feeling, and what information you might be missing.
Notice your thoughts. Just like in mindfulness meditation, simply observe your mental processes without judgment. You don’t need to meditate for hours; even a few minutes of paying attention to your thinking can be helpful.
Above all, stay curious about how your mind works. Notice when problems feel easy or hard, when your motivation goes up or down, and when you make the same kinds of mistakes.
And the next time you’re learning something, solving a problem, or making a decision, ask: How am I approaching this? What am I assuming? How confident should I actually be? These metacognitive questions, if asked regularly, can change not just what you think but how you think.
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I often think about my thinking, and although my husband often told me that I think too much and analyze too much, he started to think about his thinking, too, often out loud to me.
Such a good example (!) and description of meta cognition, Anne-Laure. This might be a hot take, but I actually find ChatGPT helps me meta cogitate..! To position prompts that don’t just regurgitate my thinking (on an article outline, meeting summary, trip itinerary, or other), I have to think about how I’m thinking about the thing, and recognize what I might be missing. And then I get a perspective back (however machine-powered or reverting to the mean it may be) that expands my view of my own thinking somehow. Curious if you think this is my human hallucination 🤪 or a valid use case.