Five Elements Of Thinking
Following summary is from The Five Elements Of Effective Thinking. Some parts are copied verbatim.
Ground - Understand Simple Things Deeply
Actions:
- Revisit the fundamentals to gain deeper understandings of the subject.
- Accurately and honestly describe what I see/know and what I don’t forces me to identify and fill gaps in my understanding and may lead to new ideas.
- Find the easier sub problem and solve it
If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can’t solve: find it. George Polya
- Find evidences for statements.
- Remember my understandings are influenced by “authority”, “repetition” and “my own bias/prejudice”.
Habits:
Master The Basics
- Consider an area to improve
- Spend 5 mins listing out its specific components
- Spend 30 mins improving one of them
Confirm You Understand The Basics
- Consider an area to improve you think you know or a subject you are trying to master. Open up a blank document on your computer.
- Write a corehent, accurate and comprehensive outline along with examples of its fundamentals. This process should be effortless.
- Compare your work with external source.
Find and Solve The Smaller Problem
- Consider a problem.
- Find one sub problem and solve it.
- Understand its connections and implications; consider it from many point of views.
Find The Gaps
- Consider an area.
- Write down the weaknesses and strengths of what I know.
- Attach adjectives or descriptive phrases to more accurately describe what I “see”.
- Deliberately avoid glossing over any vagueness.
- Assert what is tepid or missing in my understanding.
- Fill in the gaps.
- Consider whether the adjs and phrases suggest new possibilities
Example: Before we had colorized photos, people just call it photos. If someone unnecessarily added “black-and-white”, it would lead to an idea of “colorized” photos.
Reduce Bias
- Consider several views of a problem.
- Alternately support each of them in 15-min intervals and list out its implications.
Fire - Igniting Insights Through Mistakes
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill
Actions:
- When I fail, isolate specific failed features of that attempt.
- Deliberately do it wrong to identify and clarify specifically where defects lie.
- Ask myself if this wrong solution is correct for another question.
- Generate useful mistakes by simply tackling the issue by quickly constructing a solution with little or no effort.
- Exaggerate situations to reveal creative solutions or show what a possible defect of a supossedly perfect answer.
Habits:
How To Start Doing Something Mundane
- Just write whatever right/wrong/vague ideas down.
- Highlight the rights: uncover what deeply resounds with me, suggestive words or unstated interesting notions.
- Exploit the wrongs: find the root cause and fix it.
Bad Days Give Good Exp
- When I have a bad day, set time to review it.
Exaggerate To Find Faults and Creative Solutions
To find faults
- Consider a solution.
- Exaggerate it.
- Find faults.
- Confirm whether they exist in the original nonexaggerated perspective.
To find creative solutions
- Consider a problem.
- Exaggerate it.
- Find the solution to it.
- See how a (possibly over-the-top) solution to an exaggerated problem can guide solution to the non-exaggerated problem.
Air - Questioning
Action:
- Ask what is missing/assumed/vague or might be extended.
Habits:
Teach To Learn
- Consider an area.
- Create list of fundamental questions and answers that will guide to a complete explanation including motivation, examples, overview and details.
- Prepare a min lecture.
- Deliver the lecture to others.
- Ask the audience questions to measure how well I understand and articulate my message.
Water - Flow
Actions:
- See a matter in a flow, not in isolation:
- Understand current ideas by understanding more basic elements that lead to current issue and the connection.
- Generate new ideas through flow by first modifying an existing idea within its own context and then apply that same idea in different settings. Then construct extensions, refinements and variations.
- Imagine what comes next to better understand the current idea.
- Look back at earlier, easier material to see what brought me here reinforce understanding of previous knowledge and current issue.
- When learning a new concept, think about its extensions, variations, and applications.
- Starting with what is currently the best is often the ideal place to expect great improvements.
Habits:
Thinking Back
- Consider the current area/problem
- Ask how the issue at hand landed in front of me.
- Ask where and what it was yesterday, a month ago, a year ago and so forth.
Take Up Out-Dated Perspective To Generate Creative Question In The Now Or Future
- Consider a current trend/belief.
- Find one with common nature in the past which is now abolished.
- Ask why that belief was abandoned.
- Ask if the same may happen to the current trend.
Example: it used to be fine to joke about ethnics; now that won’t be tolerant. However, we are still perfectly fine with classifying students on grades. Perhaps this too will be gone in the future.
Quintessential Element - Change
Action:
- Consider the possibility that to better do something, it’s necessary to do a subtle but different task.
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Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome ~ The Five Elements Of Thinking
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Life is a work-in-progress. (So don’t be depressed when I’m a mess and embrace change.) ~ Me
Habits:
Improve A Skill:
- Consider a skill.
- Imagine in detail what a more skilled practitioner does or what added knowledge, understanding, and previous experience the expert would bring to the task.
- Or think in terms of what kind of knowledge or skill or strategy would make my task an easier one.
- Compare those with what you’re doing and see the difference.
Personal Thought Of The Book
- A rather nice model to reason about the process of thinking.
- Many overlappings and vague suggestions.
- There are several good practical recommendations to become more creative.
- Again, like many other self-help books, emphasize that we look at the world through a heavily biased len.
- The writing style is pretty much like Stephen of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - quoting authors’ experiences with practitioners or authors’ own personal experience. I don’t mind this kind of writing. I don’t find it interesting however.