Why is everyone suddenly talking about metacognition?

Olympic Gold Medalist Eileen Gu (Winter 2026 skiier) went viral after sharing her use of metacognition—”thinking about thinking”—during training. She believes it is possible to use the brain’s neuroplasticity to consciously rewire thought patterns, approaching mental training similarly to physical skiing to enhance performance.

After the viral video, Google Searches for the word “metacognition” in March 2026 were higher than ever before.

Eileen Gu says she breaks down her thought processes, journals, and can control what she thinks, how she thinks, and modifies it.

This idea of metacognition was interesting to me, and it’s been on my radar ever since.

Having studied metacognition for a few months, I aim to do two things in this post:

1. What is metacognition (in my view).
2. How I practice metacognition.

Note / warning: I’ve read that some people seem to have a tendency to over-introspect, or over-do metacognition. I would say this post is more for people like myself so simply want a framework for using metacognition as a tool during meditation.

What is Metacognition?

Metacognition is “thinking about thinking”.

All you do is notice a thought, ask yourself specific questions (below) about that thought, and then ponder why you gave the answers you came up with.

What does metacognition help with?

Metacognition helps with learning things, but I believe it is much more than that. All the blogs assume I will use metacognition to “learn something”, its actually annoying because this is narrow minded.

Metacognition is not just about learning but also creating, thinking, reframing outlook, controlling narratives, creating new narratives, generating ideas, strategic thinking, decision making, etc.

Metacognition can be done for almost anything, like cooking, making a table out of wood, moving a house worth of furniture and stuff across the country, your job, school, coding, writing, etc.

Metacognitive skills to develop

• There are no domain specific metacognitive skills. Those used to write an essay are the same used to solve a math problem.
• Attention / focus / concentration are all examples of metacognitive skills.
• Empathy is an outward-focused metacognitive skill.
• Control your thinking (what and how), and (potentially?) your mood. (I’m still figuring out if this is possible).
• Ability to have a clear head, think about nothing. Meditation enables Metacognition. The side effect of meditation is thinking about thinking. People talk about getting to the “end of thought”. This is metacognition. Introspection and self awareness are closely related / cause by this too.
• Achieve inner peace and relaxation.
• The power of now teaches how to focus on the inner body to achieve a state of inner peace and relaxation.
• Overall self improvement

Empathy and Metacognition:

By comparison, “empathy” is thinking about what others (might be) thinking, and how they might feel, and metacognition is inward empathy, knowing about your own thoughts and feelings (or self empathy).

How I Use Metacognition

Remind myself every so often to meta-cognify (daily or weekly).

Notice similarities between the thoughts you have.

2 ways to observe your own thoughts:

• Step 1 is Notice: What are my thoughts? Observe my thoughts. Notice them. What are my thoughts right now?
• Step 2 is Pattern Recognition: What are my thoughts over the last few hours? Notice patterns and make observations

23 Metacognitive Questions I Ask During Metacognition Sessions:

1. Who what when where why how of a given thought.
2. What things do I know?
3. What do i not know?
4. What kinds of things do you tend to think about?
5. What is my brain good at doing?
6. What strategy am I using when solving problems at school or work?
7. When learning new hobbies what comes easily to me, and feels more difficult? What about my learning ability makes each of these things easier to pickup versus challenging?
8. What is difficult?
9. What is easy?
10. What do I understand about a given topic?
11. How can I prove to myself that i know this?
12. How confident am I in my knowledge of A compared to B?
13. If I am confident, why and I confident in something? What might I be missing?
14. If I lack confidence, why is that? Is it justified? If not, What are some reasons I should feel more confident?
15. What was going through my head when I responded to _ question? Could I have responded better with a different mental frame?
16. What am I really doing by participating in (school, work, hobby, travel, etc)? Why have I decided to do this thing?
17. Think about what factors can influence my performance when learning something?
18. Notice thoughts and feelings you have while learning something
19. Being aware of your own awareness.
20. Be aware of what things are challenging for you, and which things are wasy or a breeze. (at work or anywhere in life). Then, ask yoursef why that might be the case?
21. How well do you allocate your time and energy?
22. Do you procrastinate or stay focused?
23. Awareness of sensory inputs…. And aware of the sensors that are you ears nose eyes mouth and touch, which give inputs for your brain to process. (This is a type of meditation).

Future looking into

Logic, see principles from berkeley econ professor, feels like metacogniton