The Top 1% Think on Paper. Here's How To Do It.

0:00 If you want to think more clearly than 99% of people, you need to think on paper. I've generated over $500 million in sales for brands like Shopify and Canva, and I have learned that the top 1% follow a process that allows them to think so clearly. So, these are the six principles you need to think better than 99% of people. First, let's talk about why you're drowning in content but not getting smarter. So, information is cheap. It's everywhere. facts, stats, quotes, frameworks. You can find all of it online in seconds. But information doesn't change you. It doesn't make you smarter. It just clogs your brain with noise until you can't think straight anymore. Your brain doesn't magically upgrade data into understanding. If you want to learn something deeply, you need to understand the cycle of learning.

0:51 Information, knowledge, understanding, intelligence, wisdom. Information is raw data. Knowledge is when you connect facts and give them context. Understanding is when you take a concept apart and rebuild it. Intelligence is your capacity to reason and problem solve. And wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know and actually applying it in real life. But here's the thing. Wisdom isn't like reserved for old people. It's achievable right now through application. This is why writing matters so much. When you interact with a piece of paper, you're moving from information to intelligence by externalizing your thoughts. And this is why the next six principles will help you think better. Principle number one, your brain can only hold four thoughts at once. Back in the ' 50s, there was a study that said we can hold seven things in our working memory. But then another researcher came along and said, "Hold up, it's actually four." So when you're trying to solve a problem or make a decision, your brain is juggling max four things at once. It can't do more than that. Your thoughts feel brilliant and clear in your head because your brain is only doing the cognitive equivalent of like highlighting the one sentence it can see. Writing allows you to externalize those four items onto the page, freeing up your working memory to process and reason more. And this reveals the thought that lies beyond this limit, often causing the brilliant idea to collapse. But the collapse is not a problem. It's actually the thinking. And you should use this to your advantage. So next time you're stuck on a problem, grab a piece of paper and a pen and externalize all four things your brain is juggling. Then just read it back. You'll immediately see the holes in your logic that felt invisible when it was just in your head. Principle two is one I use all the time. Drawing doubles what you remember. There's a 2016 study called the drawing effect where they had participants either write down a word or draw a simple picture of it.

3:00 Now, here is the twist. The people who drew the picture recalled nearly double the information compared to the people who just wrote the word. I use this all the time with people. I have them draw out this thing I call the sunshine growth model. It's three concentric circles with four rays coming off of it. We spend like 15 minutes drawing it together, labeling each part, ranking where they're strong and where they're weak. And consistently, people tell me they loved that exercise more than anything else because they could see their business and know exactly what to fix.

3:35 The reason this works so well is that drawing engages three types of processing at once. Semantic, visual, and motor. Semantic processing means you're thinking about the meaning of what you're drawing. Visual processing means you're creating a mental picture and motor processing means you're physically moving your hand to create the image. When all three fire at once, your brain creates a richer memory trace. So next time you learn a framework or concept, just grab a piece of paper, draw it out.

4:07 Even if it's just circles, boxes, arrows, the act of drawing forces your brain to process it three different ways at once, which is why you'll remember it twice as well. Next up, number three, handwriting forces friction. In 2014, scientists did a study called the pen is mightier than the keyboard, and it showed that people who type their notes produce way more words. Meanwhile, the people who handwrite physically can't keep up. But that inability is actually what makes this so powerful. So my handwriting is absolute garbage. But I write stuff down anyway because I know I can't just transcribe. I have to process. If writing feels hard, it means your brain has basically stopped skating on the surface and has started tunneling into meaning. That difficulty is the point. Your brain encodes information differently when you're forced to work for it. Typing is just too easy. So your brain doesn't bother encoding it deeply.

5:04 But handwriting creates this desirable difficulty. It's hard enough that your brain has to actually work, which means the information sticks. So start carrying a notebook and handwrite your notes when learning something new. Don't just transcribe word for word. Force yourself to compress what you're hearing into your own words, which engages all three types of processing at once. Principle number four is next. You need to do it the right way by synthesizing your thoughts. There was this analysis in the 2000s of 50 different writing tolearn studies and it completely changed how everyone thinks about writing. Now the big takeaway was that writing doesn't help because you're taking notes. It helps because it forces a transformation of knowledge. Someone who rewrites the concept in their own words learns way more than someone who just like writes down verbatim information. And this connects to something called Kohl's learning cycle.

6:00 So learning requires four steps. Concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. So concrete experience is like actually touching the hot stove. You're living it. Reflective observation is stepping back and thinking, okay, what just happened? Abstract conceptualization is when you connect the dots and go, oh, hot things burn. And active experimentation is testing it. like what if I touch it again but faster.

6:31 Writing fulfills three of those steps. Reflective observation, conceptualization, and experimentation, which makes it an act of application, not just documentation. This is why most people forget almost everything from the self-help books that they read. They consume them, feel inspired in the moment, but they don't write about what they learned or apply it to their lives. So, their brains just like dump it. After every learning session, write a onepage summary of what you learned and how you'll apply it. Don't just list the facts. Explain what you're going to do differently now. Then pick one concept and apply it today. Number five is something that completely flipped my creative process. Action generates ideas and clarity. There's this field called distributed cognition and it studies how thinking doesn't happen in the brain alone. It happens in a system that includes your brain, the environment, the tools you're using, and the representations that you create. Now, this matters because understanding this is one of the easiest ways to kill writer's block. So, when I'm drafting copy, for example, I don't just sit down and think of the perfect hook. I write 10 tragically terrible hooks first and then the 11th one might be good. The reason this works is explained by the researcher Carl Vik who studied crisis teams, firefighting crews, air traffic controllers, people like that. He found that people do not analyze and then act.

8:01 They act first and then they understand their analysis retroactively. Writing is an action. That means writing generates clarity, not the other way around. You don't have to arrive at clarity before you write. You write your way toward clarity. As I'm writing and looking at what I've written, my brain reacts to it, that reaction spawns another idea, and it's this feedback loop between my mind and the page. So, stop waiting for the perfect idea. Start writing the bad ideas first, and then let the good ones emerge. When you're stuck on a decision, write out all the options as if they're already decided, then see which feels most plausible. And the last principle, private writing exposes truth.

8:48 Researcher James Pennaker conducted experiments where he had people write for 15 minutes a day for 4 days about traumatic or highly emotional experiences. He found that people who did this had fewer doctor visits, improved immune function, better academic performance, clearer thinking, and improved working memory. The reason is that writing privately allows your brain to construct a coherent narrative out of chaotic data. If you're not taking time to process it, you're just stuck in that chaos.

9:20 This is also useful because most of the time we don't question our own thoughts. They just feel real. If I think something, it must be true, right? But writing creates this cognitive distance where you can see your thought as an object on the page, not just a feeling in your head. Now, I do this all the time when I'm writing copy or working through messaging. I'll write something down, read it back, and think, "Wait, that's not actually true." Here's the thing. If you never externalize your thoughts, you never really evaluate them. You just keep operating on autopilot, assuming that you're right.

9:54 Writing is how you develop metacognition, the ability to think about your thinking. When you see your thought on the page, you can ask, "Is this accurate? Is this true?" Writing forces you to confront gaps in your knowledge, holes in your logic, and blind spots you did not even know you had. But above all, when you only write in polished ways, only for publication, only for social media, your thinking stays shallow. You're performing instead of processing. But when you write privately, you give yourself permission to just be messy, to contradict yourself, to explore ideas that actually might be wrong. And that's where your best thinking can happen. To make the most out of this, start a daily writing practice where nobody will ever see what you write. Write for 10 minutes every morning about chaotic thoughts, emotional reactions, or confusing situations. Then read it back and look for places where you're making assumptions, or contradicting yourself.

10:49 If you like this video, please like and subscribe. And if you want to learn how to speak like the 1%, watch this video