John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Smart Decision Making

Idea 100: Your path to practical wisdom

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

Samuel Smiles, author of Self-Help

If you wish to be effective as a practical thinker – a contributor to the world’s business – you need to set aside time for reflective thinking. You need to give yourself time to think.

Be as clear as possible about what you do know and what you don’t know. Opinion is not the same as knowledge. Intellectual humility is your greatest insurance policy against making a fool of yourself.

It is wise to think ahead in order to foresee change. It is always better for your ...