2nd Level Thinking works in real life as well. We should not be thinking superficially and derive simplistic answers to some of the problems we face. Again in most cases, consensus would be right, and it's tempting to just follow the crowd. Sometimes, maybe average is good enough. But in other important issues, we might need to strive to be one level up. Take my favourite topic: our kids' education. All the parents in Singapore are stuck in this crazy competition of getting into branded schools, tuition marathons and fighting to be one up against the rest. But the since every parent is doing that, no child stands out. To make things worse, parents waste money on tuition, waste time at volunteer work and every child actually has less free time, are more stressed and become less proficient in other non-academic areas: such as learning to iron, cook or fix ...