Five Required Skills to Think Slower

If you want clearer thinking, better decisions, and fewer avoidable mistakes, the skills in the OABCD Toolbox is where you start: Observe, Ask, Brainstorm, Connect, and Distill.

Why These Skills Matter

Clear thinking isn’t accidental.

It depends on a set of core skills — noticing well, asking better questions, exploring options, seeing connections, and clarifying what matters. Most of us were never formally taught those skills. We developed habits instead.

The OABCD toolbox gives you a more intentional way to approach thinking — so your conclusions are stronger, your reasoning is clearer, and your decisions hold up over time.

Subscribe today for free resources to help you master the OABCD Toolbox.

O — Observe

Start by paying attention.

What’s actually happening?
What’s being said?
What patterns are visible?

Observation is about gathering clean inputs before jumping to interpretation. When your inputs improve, everything downstream improves.

A — Ask

Close the gap between what you think and what’s true.

Asking means:

• Clarifying assumptions
• Letting others explain their reasoning
• Choosing open questions over leading ones
• Listening to understand, not just to respond

You can’t think clearly about something you don’t fully understand.

B — Brainstorm

Expand before you decide.

Instead of locking into the first reasonable answer, explore alternatives:

• What else could this mean?
• What other paths are available?
• What are we not seeing?

Generating options first leads to stronger decisions later.

C — Connect

Make sense of what you’ve gathered.

Look for:

• Patterns
• Relationships
• Trade-offs
• Cause and effect

Connecting turns scattered ideas into something coherent. This is where understanding starts to take shape.

D — Distill

Clarify what actually matters.

Distilling means:

• Identifying the key insight
• Separating signal from noise
• Summarizing clearly
• Making your thinking usable

If you can’t explain it simply, you probably haven’t finished thinking it through.

How It Enhances Your Thinking

OABCD strengthens five parts of the thinking process:

• The quality of what you notice
• The depth of what you understand
• The range of options you consider
• The clarity of the patterns you see
• The precision of what you communicate

These five skills work together. They are the foundation — before advanced frameworks, before complex strategy. Strengthen them, and your thinking becomes more deliberate, more structured, and more reliable.

Everything else builds from there.