It doesn’t have to be John Donne, although I can’t think why anyone wouldn’t want to read him. He was a seventeenth-century English writer of poetry and sermons (you can enjoy them whether or not you share his beliefs). Perhaps his most famous line is ‘no man is an island’, which is part of an eloquent sermon justifying this viewpoint. He’s an easy writer to read because many of his poems are short and you can dip in and out of them, or read one a day.

You want to know why you have to read Donne? Well, the thing about Donne is that not only are his writings beautiful, brilliantly crafted, moving and still relevant today, they are also thought-provoking. To appreciate them fully, you have to engage your brain. He uses paradox, irony, complex ideas, reasoned argument, to express even the most passionate feelings.

If you’re going to be a top-class critical and analytical thinker, you need some decent, meaty material to practise on. You need to train your mind by wrapping your head around some complex thinking until it becomes natural for you to think the same way when required. And it’s much more fun to read beautiful words expressing surprisingly up-to-date ideas, with an occasional side of humour, than it is to immerse yourself in text books or research documents or maths problems.

If you like your humour a bit more upfront, you could try watching the comedian Stewart Lee, whose stock-in-trade is deconstructing his own act as he’s performing it. Again, multi-layered and thought-provoking, which is what we’re after.

Of course there are lots of other writers and performers who will serve the same purpose for you. These two are particular favourites of mine, and you might like to try them at least, if only so you can see exactly what I’m on about. Then feel free to go and find other people who give you the same kind of mental workout.

Better still, once you’ve enjoyed the exercise on your own, find friends who will discuss the ideas with you. Indeed who will discuss any ideas with you. We spend a lot of our social conversations catching up on news about people, or discussing events or shared interests. Nothing wrong with that. But try to find people with whom you can spend at least some time debating ideas – philosophy, politics, psychology, whatever grabs you.³⁰ Not just arguing head to head and both refusing to budge though, because that’s not going to help you think better.

The aim is to make your mind more nimble, more flexible, more able to leap from point to point. Plus you need to be able to think about what you’re thinking while you’re thinking it. It’s this active detachment, this ability to analyse and critique your own thoughts, that will elevate you to the level of a really skilled Rules thinker.