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The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird (Book) Cover Art|400

📝 Notes

Elements of Effective Thinking, Learning, and Creating

🪨 Understand Deeply

  1. Split complex problems into the simple ideas first
  2. Clear the clutter and expose what is really important.
  3. Be brutally honest about what you know and don’t know.
  4. See what’s missing, identify the gaps, and fill them in
  5. Let go of bias, prejudice, and preconceived notions.

🔥 Make Mistakes

  1. Fail to succeed.
  2. Intentionally get it wrong to inevitably get it even more right.
  3. Mistakes are great teachers—they highlight unforeseen opportunities and holes in your understanding. They also show you which way to turn next, and they ignite your imagination.

🌬 Raise Questions

  1. Constantly create questions to clarify and extend your understanding.
  2. What’s the real question? Working on the wrong questions can waste a lifetime.
  3. Ideas are in the air—the right questions will bring them out and help you see connections that otherwise would have been invisible.

🌊 Follow the flow of ideas:

  1. Look back to see where ideas came from
  2. Look ahead to discover where those ideas may lead.
  3. A new idea is a beginning, not an end.
  4. Ideas are rare—milk them.
  5. Following the consequences of small ideas can result in big payoffs.

Revisit the Fundamentals

In everything you do, refine your skills and knowledge about fundamental concepts and simple cases. Once is never enough. As you revisit fundamentals, you will find new insights. It may appear that returning to basics is a step backward and requires additional time and effort; however, by building on firm foundations you will soon see your true abilities soar higher and faster.

Question your sources

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What everybody believes is not always what’s actually true. Commonly held opinions are frequently just plain false. Often we are persuaded by authority and repetition rather than by evidence and reality. This tendency to accept what surrounds us makes it difficult to separate what we really know from what we just believe we know.

Deeper is Better

Understanding simple things deeply means mastering the fundamental principles, ideas, and methods that then create a solid foundation on which you can build. Seeking the essential creates the core or skeleton that supports your understanding. Seeing what’s actually there without prejudice lets you develop a less biased understanding of your world. And seeing what’s missing helps you to identify the limits of your knowledge, to reveal new possibilities, and to create new solutions to complex problems.

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Welcome Mistakes

Method 1

Try your best to get it right and, if and when you fail, isolate the specific failed features of that attempt.

Method 2

Deliberately try something that you know is wrong to identify and clarify specifically where the defects lie.

Path to Solution

Analyze each specific mistake to understand the reason it’s wrong, thus gaining new insights that may point you in the right direction.

Finally, examine the mistakes to see whether the failed attempt might be a correct solution to a different problem.

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Title: The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

koreader-sync.data.chapter47 koreader-sync.data.highlight koreader-sync.data.datetime
Elements of Effective Thinking, Learning, and Creating Understand deeply:
Don’t face complex issues head-on; first understand simple ideas deeply. Clear the clutter and expose what is really important. Be brutally honest about what you know and don’t know. Then see what’s missing, identify the gaps, and fill them in. Let go of bias, prejudice, and preconceived notions. There are degrees to understanding (it’s not just a yes-or-no proposition) and you can always heighten yours. Rock-solid understanding is the foundation for success.
Make mistakes:
Fail to succeed. Intentionally get it wrong to inevitably get it even more right. Mistakes are great teachers—they highlight unforeseen opportunities and holes in your understanding. They also show you which way to turn next, and they ignite your imagination.
Raise questions:
Constantly create questions to clarify and extend your understanding. What’s the real question? Working on the wrong questions can waste a lifetime. Ideas are in the air—the right questions will bring them out and help you see connections that otherwise would have been invisible.
Follow the flow of ideas:
Look back to see where ideas came from and then look ahead to discover where those ideas may lead. A new idea is a beginning, not an end. Ideas are rare—milk them. Following the consequences of small ideas can result in big payoffs.		 2023-02-22 19:24:08
Elements of Effective Thinking, Learning, and Creating Earth ↔ Understand deeply
Fire ↔ Make mistakes
Air ↔ Raise questions
Water ↔ Follow the flow of ideas		 2023-02-22 19:26:11
Understand simple things deeply In everything you do, refine your skills and knowledge about fundamental concepts and simple cases. Once is never enough. As you revisit fundamentals, you will find new insights. It may appear that returning to basics is a step backward and requires additional time and effort; however, by building on firm foundations you will soon see your true abilities soar higher and faster. 2023-02-22 19:31:21
Understand simple things deeply Consider a subject you think you know or a subject you are trying to master. Open up a blank document on your computer. Without referring to any outside sources, write a detailed outline of the fundamentals of the subject. Can you write a coherent, accurate, and comprehensive description of the foundations of the subject, or does your knowledge have gaps? Do you struggle to think of core examples? Do you fail to see the overall big picture that puts the pieces together? Now compare your effort to external sources (texts, Internet, experts, your boss). When you discover weaknesses in your own understanding of the basics, take action. Methodically learn the fundamentals. 2023-02-22 23:00:31
Understand simple things deeply When the going gets tough, creative problem solvers create an easier, simpler problem that they can solve. They resolve that easier issue thoroughly and then study that simple scenario with laser focus. Those insights often point the way to a resolution of the original difficult problem. 2023-02-22 23:02:41
See what’s there Being honest and accurate about what you actually know and don’t know forces you to identify and fill gaps in your understanding. It is at the interface between what you actually know and what you don’t yet know that true learning and growth occur. 2023-02-22 23:11:54
See what’s there Become aware of the sources of your opinions. If your sources are shaky, then you might want to be more open-minded to the possibility that your opinion or knowledge might be incorrect. Regularly find cases in which you need to rethink your views.
Opening our minds to counterintuitive ideas can be the key to discovering novel solutions and building deeper understanding, but how can we take advantage of those opportunities? Certainly we are not intentionally closed-minded. So how can we break free of our unintended closed-mindedness and see the world with less bias?		 2023-02-22 23:15:24
Understand simple things deeply Understand simple things deeply 2023-02-27 19:28:04
Understand simple things deeply True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics. 2023-02-27 19:28:21
Clear the clutter—seek the essential Uncover the essence. When faced with an issue that is complicated and multifaceted, attempt to isolate the essential ingredients. The essence is not the whole issue. There is a further step of understanding how the other features of the situation fit together; however, clearly identifying and isolating essential principles can guide you through the morass. The strategy of clearing the clutter and seeking the essential involves two steps:
Step One: Identify and ignore all distracting features to isolate the essential core.
Step Two: Analyze that central issue and apply those insights to the larger whole.		 2023-02-27 19:29:15
See what’s there What everybody believes is not always what’s actually true. Commonly held opinions are frequently just plain false. Often we are persuaded by authority and repetition rather than by evidence and reality. This tendency to accept what surrounds us makes it difficult to separate what we really know from what we just believe we know. To illustrate this distinction, let’s consider the downfall of gravity. 2023-02-27 19:30:08
Final thoughts: Deeper is better Understanding simple things deeply means mastering the fundamental principles, ideas, and methods that then create a solid foundation on which you can build. Seeking the essential creates the core or skeleton that supports your understanding. Seeing what’s actually there without prejudice lets you develop a less biased understanding of your world. And seeing what’s missing helps you to identify the limits of your knowledge, to reveal new possibilities, and to create new solutions to complex problems. 2023-02-27 19:31:59
2. Igniting Insights through Mistakes Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
—Winston Churchill		 2023-02-27 19:32:36
2. Igniting Insights through Mistakes In this chapter we encourage you to embrace several facets of failure that can lead to success. One method is to try your best to get it right and, if and when you fail, isolate the specific failed features of that attempt. Alternatively, deliberately try something that you know is wrong to identify and clarify specifically where the defects lie. Analyze each specific mistake to understand the reason it’s wrong, thus gaining new insights that may point you in the right direction. Finally, examine the mistakes to see whether the failed attempt might be a correct solution to a different problem. 2023-02-27 19:33:21
Welcome accidental missteps—let your errors be your guide The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.
—Linus Pauling		 2023-02-27 19:34:21
Welcome accidental missteps—let your errors be your guide Don’t stare at a blank screen
Take an issue or problem you are facing. For example, you may want to get organized or write a business plan or improve a course grade or write an essay or get more out of life. Open up a blank document on your computer. Now just quickly type any ideas—good, bad, inaccurate, or vague—that you have about the issue. Don’t hesitate to record ideas or phrases that you know are not quite right—no one (except you) is going to read what you write. Your ideas will be very bad in many ways. They will be disorganized and jumbled. They will be inaccurate or simply wrong. They’ll be impractical. They will be boring. They won’t come close to resolving the issue. They won’t be creative. Congratulations—excellent start!
You may not feel that writing down bad ideas is a worthwhile start, but one thing is certain: writing down bad ideas is something anyone can do. Anyone at any time can write a truly awful letter, report, essay, or story. Anyone can write down specific approaches to a problem that don’t work. That is not a challenge. But it’s also not the end of the story.
Now read what you wrote and focus on two features: what’s right and what’s wrong. When you just write down ideas without worrying about correctness, structure, or elegance, your thoughts about the subject often flow out freely and clearly. The ideas that you are trying to express are in you, so when you write without fretting about the mistakes, the surprising reality is that you will often say what you really want to say. You will include partial truths as well as some unexpected gems. Now you have something to do. You can tease out the good elements. You might find particularly nice phrases or pieces of strong ideas. You might uncover a word that is suggestive of some unstated interesting notion. You might find that you have clarified for yourself the core of the idea that you want to express. Looking for good features in your bad first attempt is a great first step toward some creative, high-quality work.
Next, see if you can recognize and exploit what’s wrong. When something is bad, it’s often easy to see what’s wrong and identify mistakes. Now you have something to do: correct the errors you see. You are no longer staring at a blank computer screen hoping for perfection to magically materialize. You have created ideas and put them out where you can see them. You have traded in the impossible task of creating something that’s perfect for the much easier task of mining gems and correcting errors. You are now doing something different—you are not creating a work on a blank canvas but instead you are responding to a work already there. Your responses, in turn, will lead to new good ideas that you could not have created before you made the requisite mistakes. In making this action item practical, you must be sure to give yourself enough time for the required iterations. Thus you must commit to starting your effort (that is, creating a crummy draft or first attempt) far enough in advance to allow the necessary gestation and iteration that leads to a polished work of which you will be proud. So start early.		 2023-02-27 19:34:58
Welcome accidental missteps—let your errors be your guide “I got an 80% on this homework; that’s good enough and I’m moving on.” Bad idea. By not exploiting this great opportunity to learn from their mistakes, they’re essentially throwing away—on average—20% of their grade on their next exam before they’ve even taken it, and they’re building future work on a cracked foundation. Why not learn from your current missteps today and give yourself a 20% bonus in your future? 2023-02-27 19:35:26
Finding the right question to the wrong answer Finding the right question to the wrong answer
Sometimes when your attempt fails to resolve one issue, you might discover that you have actually found an imaginative answer to a totally different question. That is, your bad solution to one problem might lead to a different project altogether—a project suggested by the accidental virtues of your mostly bad attempt.		 2023-02-27 19:35:49
Failing by intent An effective strategy for gaining insight is to exaggerate conditions either through a physical or a thought experiment. 2023-02-28 22:08:21
Final thoughts: A modified mind-set Mistakes and failure are not signs of weakness; instead they are opportunities for future success. Failure is a sign of a creative mind, of original thought and strength. 2023-02-28 22:10:38
Final thoughts: A modified mind-set Let’s be honest: failure can be frightening and uncomfortable—a true trial by fire. Thus it is with the element Fire that we associate the strategy of failing on the way to succeeding. Problems that require truly creative solutions are problems that you simply do not yet know how to solve. This book is all about being successful—even if and often because you fail first. 2023-02-28 22:12:02
3. Creating Questions out of Thin Air the very act of creating questions, for yourself, is a profound step toward understanding—even if the questions are neither asked nor answered. 2023-02-28 22:12:32
3. Creating Questions out of Thin Air creating questions is as important as answering them, if not more so, because framing good questions focuses your attention on the right issues. 2023-02-28 22:13:03
How answers can lead to questions Take another look. Get in the habit of asking how the issue looks from various viewpoints. Frame questions in different ways. Alternative perspectives lead to new sights and new insights. 2023-02-28 22:14:28
How answers can lead to questions an exam is looming in your future, prepare by writing the test itself. Well beforehand, compose a list of good exam questions, put it away for a few days, and then later dig it out and take that mock test. Contemplating questions that you think should appear on the test will force you to ask, “What are the central ideas here and do I truly understand them?” And metaphorically write your own exam in other circumstances in which you are sharing information or skills, such as in preparing for an interview or a presentation. This “create-a-test” exercise is an excellent one to employ before you face an audience for a Q&A session. Do you know the material so well that you know what the good questions are? If you don’t, then you do not understand the material well enough, and you need to go deeper. The questions will help you uncover weak points as well as place what you are saying into a larger context. Remember: If you can’t create the questions, you’re not ready for the test. 2023-02-28 22:15:30
Creating questions enlivens your curiosity Every day put yourself in the position of an evaluator and create your own test for everything you hear, see, or read. Ask yourself, “What would someone ask me in order to determine whether I really understand these ideas?” 2023-02-28 22:17:55
Creating questions enlivens your curiosity Listening is not enough. If you are constantly engaged in asking yourself questions about what you are hearing, you will find that even boring lecturers become a bit more interesting, because much of the interest will be coming from what you are generating rather than what the lecturer is offering. When someone else speaks, you need to be thought provoking! 2023-02-28 22:18:32
Creating questions enlivens your curiosity Be an official questioner. Every day in each of my classes I (BURGER) randomly select two students who are given the title of “official questioners.” These students are assigned the responsibility to pose at least one question during that class. 2023-02-28 22:19:33
What’s the real question? “How can I do my best on the exam?” is not the best question to ask in school. Better questions include these: “How can I become more engaged in the course material?” “Could I give a lecture explaining the material?” “Could I write a detailed outline for this course?” These questions lead to actions that you can take—becoming an active listener, joining a study group, or, even better, tutoring others.
The right questions clarify your understanding and focus your attention on features that matter		 2023-02-28 22:21:09
What’s the real question? Effective questions lead to action and are not vague 2023-02-28 22:21:16
What’s the real question? Effective questions expose the real issue 2023-02-28 22:21:26
What’s the real question? Try to create questions that expose hidden assumptions, clarify issues, and lead to action.
“How can I better manage my time?”
“How can I land that dream job within the next four years?”
“How can I attract this potential client?”
“How can I quit a bad habit?”
“How can I get my students to perform better?”		 2023-02-28 22:21:50
What’s the real question? Ask meta-questions
Whether in the classroom, the boardroom, or the living room, asking questions about an assignment or project before beginning work in earnest will always lead to a stronger final product. Ask, “What’s the goal of this task?” and “What benefit flows from the task?” Keep that benefit in mind as you move forward. A by-product of this exercise is that it often saves time, because it focuses your attention on the core issues and allows you to quickly clear up the initial confusion that always is present at the start of any project or task.
Illustration: Bear essentials
A classic joke illustrates the importance of focusing on the right question: Two men are walking in the woods. A ferocious grizzly bear charges at them and they start to run. While running, they shout:
Man 1: We’ll never outrun the bear.
Man 2: I don’t have to. My only question is “Can I outrun you?”
Man 2 has identified the right question.		 2023-02-28 22:23:37
What’s the real question? There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
—Peter Drucker		 2023-02-28 22:23:49
Final thoughts: The art of creating questions and active listening The right questions can be incredibly powerful tools for understanding and learning. Great questions can lead to insights that will make a difference. You can create great questions using concrete and straightforward techniques—questions that guide you and arouse your curiosity. Questions give us a breath of inspiration and insight; thus we associate the art of questioning with the element Air.
Constantly thinking of questions is a mind-set with tremendous impact. You become more alive and curious, because you are actively engaged while you are listening and living. You become more open to ideas, because you are constantly discovering places where your assumptions are exposed. You take more effective action, because you clarify what needs to be done. Be your own Socrates.		 2023-02-28 22:24:48
4. Seeing the Flow of Ideas Iterate ideas
You don’t need an army of thousands of individuals to struggle a thousand years to address a challenge. The only person who needs to move forward little by little is you. Engineer your own evolution. Take a homework assignment, essay, or project that you’re facing and quickly just do it; that is, tackle the questions, draft the essay, or move forward on the project at a fast-forward speed that will surely generate a work that is, at best, subpar. Now consider that poor effort as your starting point: react to that work and start to improve and iterate. The flow of iteration will lead to a refined final product. Notice how this flowing mind-set perfectly coincides with the elements of failure we introduced earlier.		 2023-02-28 22:26:04
Understanding current ideas through the flow of ideas study of the history reveals that mathematicians had thought of all the essential elements of calculus before either Newton or Leibniz came along. Newton himself acknowledged this flowing reality when he wrote, “If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. 2023-02-28 22:27:22
Understanding current ideas through the flow of ideas Guessing what’s next anchors what’s there. To better master a subject, after you have been introduced to a new concept, look beyond the new concept and just guess what you think will come next—in a text or in a lecture or in any presentation. Even if your conjecture is not right, it’s still important. 2023-02-28 22:28:43
Understanding current ideas through the flow of ideas look back makes earlier material easier. Once you understand a more advanced topic, look back to see what brought you to where you are. That process will improve your understanding both of the earlier work and of the more advanced work. The earlier material will become easier, clearer, and more meaningful because you will see its significance through the later work that came from it. The more advanced work will also be easier since you will now see how it grew from the seeds that existed in the earlier work 2023-02-28 22:29:11
Creating new ideas from old ones Illustration: Going once, going twice, sold
In 1995 Pierre Omidyar was considering the effectiveness of auctions and how well they have worked for centuries. He wondered how he could extend that method of sales to include millions of bidders. He turned to the Internet and voilà! eBay was born.		 2023-02-28 22:31:03
5. Engaging Change The first four elements of effective thinking do the heavy lifting. They invite you to understand fundamental ideas, to look for essential elements, and to extend what you already know. They suggest pointed questions for you to pose to yourself and others that cause you to think of new ideas, and they point out the value of failure and errors on the road to success.
Those four elements are like the (correct) instructions in a diet book: if you eat this and that and don’t eat these things, and you exercise in this way, then you will lose weight. But often the real problem is following the instructions. This quintessential element speaks to the challenge of becoming a person who embraces the lessons.		 2023-02-28 22:35:28
5. Engaging Change In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
—Warren Buffett		 2023-02-28 22:37:34
5. Engaging Change Expert change
If you’re learning something, solving a problem, or developing 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. In other words, describe the different task that an expert would be doing compared to what you are currently doing in undertaking your task. Instead of thinking that you are going to be doing something that is harder—requiring more concentration and more effort—think in terms of what kind of knowledge or skill or strategy would make the task an easier one.		 2023-02-28 22:38:21
5. Engaging Change the journey forward comes from attaining deeper understanding, making mistakes and learning from them, asking questions, and seeing the evolution of ideas. All mastery is actually a continuum. 2023-02-28 22:39:12
5. Engaging Change Don’t mute voices that challenge your beliefs. Listen for whispers of doubt and turn those doubts into helpful and positive tests of assumptions, ideas, and theories. Doubts are strengths when you use them effectively. 2023-02-28 22:39:32
5. Engaging Change Similarly, if you adopt the elements of thinking suggested in this book and make those habits part of who you are, you will develop mental strength and capacity, and you will become a more effective and creative thinker. Moreover, applying these elements to yourself leads you to clarify the core of your own self-definition—including your values, morals, ethics, and beliefs. Descartes’s cogito ergo sum observes that thinking confirms your very existence. Embracing the elements of effective thinking will inevitably lead you to your quintessential self. 2023-02-28 22:41:48
5. Engaging Change Strive for rock-solid understanding (Earth).
Fail and learn from those missteps (Fire).
Constantly create and ask challenging questions (Air).
Consciously consider the flow of ideas (Water).
And, of course, remember that learning is a lifelong journey; thus each of us remains a work-in-progress—always evolving, ever changing—and that’s Quintessential living.		 2023-02-28 22:42:00