Metacognition is an important concept. It involves using your cognition, including thoughts, memory, attention, and perception, in a strategic way to learn new information and complete tasks.
You plan how to learn a complex topic. Remember how you previously troubleshooted a roadblock and apply what you learned when working toward a new goal. And evaluate how you can do better next time.
This also includes recognizing thought patterns that can lead to procrastination and using a strategy to reframe them.
While metacognition is commonly described as “thinking about thinking,” and people are often told that being aware of their thoughts is practicing metacognition, metacognition doesn’t include understanding how you how your mind works or how to work with your thoughts in daily life.
The Metacognitive P, M, & E Cycle
One commonly used framework for teaching metacognition is the Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluating (P, M, & E) cycle. You plan your goal, monitor your progress toward achieving it, and then evaluate how well you did in relation to your plan so you can do better next time.
The cycle includes concepts like choosing strategies for learning and problem-solving, outlining a plan toward your goal, and reflecting on how well you did after completing it. While these are all important, they don’t teach you how to understand and manage your thoughts while problem-solving or in everyday life.
So someone practicing metacognition might realize that perfectionism is causing them to procrastinate. But they won’t learn from the P,M,&E cycle how to identify thoughts that lead to procrastination, the root driver of those thoughts or how to reframe them.
And they might not realize the permission-focused thoughts keeping them from their goal or that there is a method to help them override permission-based thoughts.
Thought Literacy
To understand how your mind works, it’s important to learn basic concepts related to your thoughts, including the cognitive model, thought awareness, and thought management. It’s also important to have frameworks and supportive techniques to help you build awareness and learn to manage your thoughts.
So while metacognition is an important concept, and I am happy people are learning about their thoughts, we need to be diligent in how we describe it, since it is not enough to teach you how to interact with your thoughts on an everyday basis.
Thoughts?