Find the main point in a sea of information.

Find the clarity in the noise and spot your own mistakes.

When you’re in a long meeting or reading a massive email thread, try to ignore the extra noise and focus on the most important facts. Ask yourself, “What’s the actual problem we’re trying to solve?” By filtering the information this way, you avoid feeling overwhelmed and can give your team clear, helpful suggestions instead of just repeating everything you heard.

Focusing and self-correcting builds your logic and critical thinking skills. As you move up, your success depends on making big decisions based on a lot of confusing data.

Filtering information also means to double-check your own ideas before you share them. Before you turn in a report or a plan, try to find the weak spots yourself. Ask, “What’s the most likely reason someone might disagree with this”? By thinking of and answering these questions ahead of time, you make your work much stronger. You’re going beyond handing in an assignment to sharing a well-reasoned perspective.

Put these approaches into practice.

Let’s look at practical ways to identify the core problem amidst complexity and rigorously stress-test your own logic.