The Habits of Mind

1. Persisting: Stick to it. See a task through to completion, and remain focused.

2. Managing Impulsivity: Take your time. Think before you act. Remain calm, thoughtful, and deliberate.

3. Listening with understanding and empathy: Seek to understand others. Devote mental energy to another person’s thoughts and ideas. Hold your own thoughts in abeyance so you can better perceive another person’s point of view and emotions.

4. Thinking flexibly: Look at a situation another way. Find a way to change perspectives, generate alternatives, and consider options.

5. Metacognition: Know your knowing. Be aware of your own thoughts, strategies, feelings and actions—and how they affect others.

6. Striving for accuracy: Check it again. Nurture a desire for exactness, fidelity, and craftmanship.

7. Questioning & posing problems: How do you know? Develop a questioning attitude, consider what data are needed, and choose strategies to produce those data. Find problems to solve.

8. Applying past knowledge to new situations: Use what you learn. Access prior knowledge, transferring that knowledge beyond the situation in which it was learned.

9. Thinking and communication with clarity and precision: Be clear. Strive for accurate communication in both written and oral form. Avoid overgeneralizations, distortions, and deletions.

10. Gathering data through all senses: Use your natural pathways. Gather data through all the sensory paths: gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual.

11. Creating, imagining, innovating: Try a different way. Generate novel ideas, and seek fluency and originality.

12. Responding with wonderment and awe: Let yourself be intrigued by the world’s phenomena and beauty. Find what is awesome and mysterious in the world.

13. Taking responsible risks: Venture out. Live on the edge of your competence.

14. Finding humor: Laugh a little. Look for the whimsical, incongruous, and unexpected in life. Laugh at yourself when you can.

15. Thinking interdependently: Work together. Truly work with and learn from others in reciprocal situations.

16. Remaining open to continuous learning: Learn from experiences. Be proud—and humble enough—to admit you don’t know. Resist complacency.