ThinkingCourse
Thinking Course (Edward de Bono)
- Outstanding at points. Boring in others.
- The use of the mind can change the characteristics of the brain just like the use of muscles can change their characteristics. WhoWeAre
- Thinking is the skill through which intelligence acts on experience.
- The most dangerous and obstructive fallacy in education is the belief that intelligent people are good thinkers. UnpopularTruth
- The intelligence Trap: A highly intelligent person can take on a view and then use his intelligence to defend that view. Many intelligent minds are trapped in poor ideas because they can defend them so well.
Being constructive is much less rewarding than proving someone else wrong. Being critical and destructive is a much more appealing use of intelligence. While judgment thinking has its place and its value it lacks generative, creative and design aspects of thinking that are so vital. (Generator vs filter)
- If you practice poor thinking for years you will become and extremely skilled poor thinker.
Perception is by far the most important part of thinking. Almost all the errors of thinking are errors of perception. In real life, logical errors are quite rare. Unlike most books on thinking this book is not about logic but about perception.
- Some very fundamental thinking tools are put forward in the book. The tool are really "attention-direction" tools.
The first tool is concerned with a broad scan. PMI ("Plus-Minus-Interesting") an attention directing tool. In doing a PMI you deliberately direct your attention first toward the Plus points, then toward the Minus and finally toward the Interesting. Its important that emotions are applied after the exploration instead of being applied before and so preventing exploration. A thinker should be able to say "I do not like your idea but there are these interesting aspects to it …"
- The PMI should be used most especially when we have no doubt about the situation but have instantly decided that we like it or dont like it.
The deliberate search for alternatives is an extremely important part of the skill of thinking because this also counteracts the natural tendency of mind. APC is for Alternatives, Possibilities, and Choices Contentment with an "adequate" solution or approach is the biggest block there is to any search for a better alternative. Very often difficulty in making a decision stems from a failure to produce sufficient alternatives. A tool that deliberately signals the need to look for alternatives is a key thinking tool. We need it even more because the patterning nature of the mind seeks certainty – not alternatives.
- The main purpose of thinking is to abolish thinking. (Quote from Eskimo: "I have meat, I dont need to think")
The mechanisms for pattern changing are mistake, accident and humor.
- Logic is not a way of generating information. It is a way of extracting more information from what is available.
Useful communication must always be in the language of the receiver.
The size of a decision is always proportional to the inadequacy of the reason for making it. We are only called in to make decisions when an analysis of information is insufficient – that is to say when we have to speculate or guess or apply human values and emotions. So the human element in a decision is vital. In the end all decisions are emotional.
The business world has always shown more interest in thinking than almost any other sector of society. In other sectors (academia, politics, etc) it is enough to prove that you are right and that the others are wrong.
Educations tells us that it is enough to build up the information base and that action is then easy. It is not. The skills of action are every bit as important as the skills of knowledge. That this is not recognized in education is a tragedy. Operacy should rand alongside literacy and numeracy as a major aim of education.
BeTheGood - Intelligent ACTION is power ShouldTeachKids UnpopularTruth [BROKEN LINK: DefaultAggressive]
- Plans are almost always wrong because they have to be based on the present state and the extrapolation of present trends. This fallibility of plans is not a reason to ignore them but a warning that they should not be made inflexible. Planning for flexibility and uncertainty is important.
- Time disciple makes thinking more deliberate and more focused.
Good thinking is concerned with wisdom more than cleverness, more that of robust common sense rather than intellectual nit-picking.