Metacognition is an awareness of one's own thought process. That definition is a bit heady. Some describe it as simply thinking about thinking. Steve Jobs used to practice metacognition by sitting on a meditation cushion and staring at a wall for hours, following his thoughts.

Not all of us have such an abundance of time and so another path in honing our metacognition is sitting still for two to three minutes and forcing ourselves to think in complete sentences.

If we closely follow our thoughts, we will notice they're a series of incomplete sentences. They might look something like this: What do I want for lu... I need to follow up with... Shelly still hasn't text me... I love this song... Is she mad at m... I wonder if the salmon is still go... I need more paper towe...

By challenging ourselves to not only have a thought but finish the thought, we will become better, shaper and clearer thinkers. This is metacognition. It's noticing how we think so that we can learn to think better.