This is a succinct worksheet version of the "Think It Faster" Exercise.
You can use this worksheet either for purposeful practice, after completing some kind of challenging/confusing intellectual exercise (such as Thinking Physics or Baba is You). Or, if in your real life work you find something took a noticeably long time to figure out, or you were surprised about something you might have been able to notice.
The goal is to identify:
…that move you to correct solutions to problems as quickly as possible.
I recommend setting the standard of "what would have been necessary for me to have figured this out with like 15 minutes of effort?". (This won't always usually be possible, but I find this frame helpful for noticing how high the skill ceiling here is. [...]
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Outline:
(01:04) Overview
(01:08) Part 1
(01:52) Part 2
(02:51) Part I: Thinking it Faster
(02:56) Steps you actually took
(03:05) Magical superintelligence steps
(03:24) Iterate on those lists
(04:27) Part II: Thinking It Faster The First Time
(04:52) Generalizing from this exercise
(05:25) Anticipating Future Life Lessons
(06:21) Getting Detailed, and TAPs
(07:45) Part III: The Five Minute Version
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:
February 8th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/skEhdgiK6T5HzMhis/think-it-faster-worksheet
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.