The five elements of effective thinking. A specific and concrete way to be creative.

This is a resume from the book, written like a recipe to practice each of the principles in a simple way. The authors relate each principle with a basic element proposed by ancient greeks: earth, fire, air, water. And they include the quintessential element. Something that does not change. The change itself.

Por Helgi Halldórsson from Reykjavík, Iceland (It is thinking about our thinking) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], undefined

The first principle is Earth: Understand deeply simple things. “ Extraordinary people are ordinary people thinking different”.

• Exercise 1: Do you know truly the essentials?
• Open up a blank document
• Make an outline
• What is missing?
• Compare with the internet.
• How can you fill gaps?
• Exercise 2: Find the essential.
• Step one: Identify and ignore all distracting things.
• Step two: Analyze the central issue and apply this insights to the larger whole.
• Example: 9 bull drawings from Picasso.
• Another example: “Raise children to become independent thinkers which take responsibility for their life’s decisions ” is the essence of parenting.
• Exercise 3: Say it like you see it. If you are writing an essay read literally what’s written.
• Exercise 4: What everybody believes is not always actually true. Galileo and the gravity experiment with two balls of different material.
• Exercise 5: Defend the opposite. If you are a republican go to a democrat event.
• Example: the Niels Bohr approach to discover quantum mechanics. One day quantum mechanics exist, the next day  it doesn’t.
• Exercise 6: See what is missing. How can you see what is truly invisible?
• Exercise 7: Add adjectives to the object. Example: “non individualized education” was the origin of the MOOCs.

The second principle is related with fire: make mistakes. “Let the errors be your guide”.

• Exercise 1: Fail 9 times, in the 10th you’ll be right.
• Exercise 2: What is correct?
• Exercise 3. Have two default reactions to mistakes.
• Step one: let the mistake lead you to a better attempt.
• Step two: ask if  the mistake is a correct answer to a different question.
• Exercise 4: Have a bad day and learn from the that.
• Exercise 5: Going to an extreme.
• Example: be minimalist. If you had all the money and the time what will you do to improve your math class? Go to Paris and measure the Eiffel tower angles. Answer: go out of the classroom to teach real world mathematics principles.
• Exercise 6: Face intellectual challenges. Try something difficult.

The third principle is related with air.  It is raise questions.

• Exercise 1: Teach to learn. When you teach you have to ask what is the student’s motivation? What are the basic examples? On what aspects should I focus? What are the underlying themes? What are the important details?
• Exercise 2: Perform problems on the same environment.
• Exercise 3: In class. Talk to your neighbor and ask two questions.
• Exercise 4: Be the official questioner of the class.
• Exercise 5: Find the correct question.
• Example 1: The incorrect question is: How can I make material easier for my students? Instead: What should the goals of education be? Develop critical thinking and communication skills.
• Example 2. Constantly asking questions its a mindset with tremendous impact.
• Example 3:” How can I be successful?” is not the correct question. Instead What is success for me?
• Example 4: “How can I Improve my grades?” is incorrect. Instead How can I think better to understand more deeply.
• Example 5. “How can I solve the traffic?” is not a good question, instead “How can I use this time effectively?” is.

The fourth principle is related with water. It is “Follow the flow of ideas”. Every advance can be a launchpad for a better investment.

• Exercise 1: Iterate ideas. Example: 39 drafts from Hemingway.
• Exercise 2: Every subject is an ongoing journey of discovery and development.
• Exercise 3: Ask, what is next?
• Exercise 4: A look back. The earlier material will come easier, clearer and meaningful because you will see its significance through later work that came from it.
• Exercise 5: One small step: our ideas are only tiny variations of what has been thought before.
• Exercise 6: I begin with and idea and then become something else. Picasso.
• Exercise 7: Once you have it think how can I improve it?

The fifth principle is the quintessential principle. The ancient greeks thought about this element as something that doesn’t change, but the change itself.

• The reason happiness is so hard it is because it is so easy.
• Exercise 1: Adapt the habit of improvement.

This is a resume of the book and the exercises recommended for authors to think effectively. Lets follow this advice to be a better person.  

PS: This is my first post in English.