CIW Speaker Christian Madsbjerg, founder of ReD Associates, is a business philosopher. With philosophically-informed problem solving methodologies, the author of The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems helped companies from LEGO to Adidas find their moments of clarity. In his 2014 CIW talk, Madsbjerg offers tips for everyday clear and incisive thinking.

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1. It doesn’t matter what people say.

“You’re not interested in what people say. You’re not interested in what people write in papers. You’re interested in what underlies that.”

2. Don’t obsess over quick thinking.

“Every sentence should be on trial for its existence. It clarifies the mind, and it slows you down and that’s the most productive kind of time you can have.”

3. To understand how people work, don’t pay attention to them.

“We look at worlds. and we try to understand what it’s like to be in that world. The main point here is that we look at worlds, not at people…. Most of the things we do—the way we dress, the language we use, the way we drive a car— [are] defined by the world we live in.”

4. Remember that technological innovation wasn’t invented in Silicon Valley.

“I was telling my grandmother about my iPhone, and she said, ‘Well, that’s great, but during my time, we invented the car, electricity, investment banking, modern agriculture. And you have, what, the iPhone 6?’”

5. Knock down your own ideas as often as possible.

“When you have an idea about something, the first thing you do is try and kill it. You try to empty a gun into the head of your own idea. The first inclination of a philosopher is to be as rough on your own idea as possible.”

6. Don’t grow out of pretentious, philosophical coffee shop conversations.

“There was a time after class where you sat down at a coffee shop of a bar and you knocked around ideas with your friends for three, four hours. And if anybody recorded those conversations with my friends, I would hope that they would never get released because they’re pretentious. I would hope that we could get kind of culture in where that is ok; where it is ok to spend time on things that are less linear and more thoughtful.”