THE 5 ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE THINKING by Edward B. Burger, Michael Starbird

• The root of success in everything, from academics to business to leadership to personal relationships and everything else, is thinking—whether it’s thinking disguised as intuition or as good values or as decision making or problem solving or creativity, it’s all thinking.
• Doing anything better requires effective thinking—that is, coming up with more imaginative ideas, facing complicated problems, finding new ways to solve them, becoming aware of hidden possibilities, and then taking action.
• Education does not stop with the end of your formal schooling.
• Creativity is not a matter of magical inspiration.
• Remember: Extraordinary people are just ordinary people who are thinking differently—and that could be you.
• 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.
• Those elements, which predated Socrates and influenced Renaissance culture and thought, are Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. So to help trigger your memory and enable you to apply these techniques, we associate each classical element with one of our strategies for effective thinking, learning, and creating: Earth ↔ Understand deeply Fire ↔ Make mistakes Air ↔ Raise questions Water ↔ Follow the flow of ideas
• The classical elements of nature included a fifth special element—the quintessential element—that was the changeless matter from which all the heavens were made. Ironically, here in our context of thinking and learning, the quintessential element is change. The Quintessential Element ↔ Change
• Change: The unchanging element is change—by mastering the first four elements, you can change the way you think and learn. You can always improve, grow, and extract more out of your education, yourself, and the way you live your life. Change is the universal constant that allows you to get the most out of living and learning.
• Many people spend their entire careers confidently (and erroneously) thinking they know more and deserve more than their yearly evaluations, salaries, and success seem to reflect.
• When you learn anything, go for depth and make it rock solid.
• You can understand anything better than you currently do. Setting a higher standard for yourself for what you mean by understanding can revolutionize how you perceive the world.
• Understand simple things deeply
• The most fundamental ideas in any subject can be understood with ever-increasing depth.
• True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics.
• Deep work on simple, basic ideas helps to build true virtuosity—not just in music but in everything.
• 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.
• Many of the most complicated, subtle, and profound ideas arise from looking unmercifully clearly at simple, everyday experiences.
• The simple and familiar hold the secrets of the complex and unknown.
• The depth with which you master the basics influences how well you understand everything you learn after that.
• One secret to mastering calculus is to truly master basic algebra.
• In any class, when preparing for your next exam, make sure you can earn a 100% on all the previous exams—if you can’t, then you’re not ready for the test looming in your future.
• To learn any subject well and to create ideas beyond those that have existed before, return to the basics repeatedly.
• As you learn more, the fundamentals become at once simpler but also subtler, deeper, more nuanced, and more meaningful.
• Can you write a coherent, accurate, and comprehensive description of the foundations of the subject, or does your knowledge have gaps?
• When you discover weaknesses in your own understanding of the basics, take action. Methodically learn the fundamentals.
• Every return to the basics will deepen your understanding of the entire subject.
• Great scientists, creative thinkers, and problem solvers do not solve hard problems head-on.
• If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can’t solve: find it.
• When the going gets tough, creative problem solvers create an easier, simpler problem that they can solve.
• Apply this mind-set to your work: when faced with a difficult issue or challenge, do something else. Focus entirely on solving a subproblem that you know you can successfully resolve.
• When faced with an issue that is complicated and multifaceted, attempt to isolate the essential ingredients. The essence is not the whole issue.
• 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.
• Often you may be surprised that after you pare down a complex issue to its essentials, the essentials are much clearer and easier to face.
• After you clear the clutter, what remains will clarify understanding and open the door to creating new ideas.
• By systematically cutting away peripheral parts (being careful not to turn the bull into a cow), we force ourselves to appreciate what’s important.
• Consider a subject you wish to understand, and clear the clutter until you have isolated one essential ingredient.
• Each complicated issue has several possible core ideas.
• Getting advice about every scenario is impractical. Instead, identify one or two essential goals and use them to guide your actions.
• Having essential goals in mind makes daily decisions clearer.
• Once you have isolated the essential, you have armed yourself with a solid center upon which to build and embellish.
• Find what’s at the center and work out from there.
• Whenever you “see” an issue or “understand” a concept, be conscious of the lens through which you’re viewing the subject. You should assume you’re introducing bias.
• Studying art can help us see the real world more clearly.
• To better understand your world, consciously acknowledge what you actually see—no matter how mundane or obvious—rather than guess at what you think you are supposed to see.
• Saying what you actually see forces you to become conscious of what is there and also what is missing.
• 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.
• Identifying and admitting your own uncertainties is an enormous step toward solid understanding.
• If you are writing an essay, read literally what you have written—not what you intended to communicate.
• 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.
• The combination of reasonableness and authority is a recipe for entrenched bias.
• As often happens in the recounting of history, the reality of incremental progress is replaced by a myth about an instant change in perspective.
• Individuals tend to accept ideas if people they know or respect state or believe those ideas.
• If you believe something only because another person—even a professor—told you it was so, then you should not view your understanding as rock solid.
• Search for evidence and don’t be satisfied until you know the why.
• Becoming aware of the basis of your opinions or beliefs is an important step toward a better understanding of yourself and your world.
• Opening our minds to counterintuitive ideas can be the key to discovering novel solutions and building deeper understanding,
• Even following ideas that you know are wrong can be illuminating.
• One of the most profound ways to see the world more clearly is to look deliberately for the gaps—the negative space, as it is called in the art world; that is, the space surrounding the objects or issues of interest.
• We become conscious of issues when we explicitly identify and articulate them.
• The truth is that most of us never understand anything deeply.
• Understanding simple things deeply means mastering the fundamental principles, ideas, and methods that then create a solid foundation on which you can build.
• Clear away the distractions, see what’s actually there, and make the invisible visible.
• “Fail” is not an obscene word.
• The typical attitude that mistakes should be avoided is patently wrong and has several detrimental consequences.
• Any creative accomplishment evolves out of lessons learned from a long succession of missteps.
• Failure is a critical element of effective learning, teaching, and creative problem solving.
• Once you’re open to the positive potential of failure, failing productively involves two basic steps: creating the mistake and then exploiting the mistake.
• The defects as well as the strengths of our first effort aren’t available for us to examine until they exist.
• Great speeches become great only after they have had the opportunity first to be, well, not so great.
• Thomas Edison was famous for his incremental approach to intentional invention: try something; see what’s wrong; learn from the defect; try again.
• Success is about persisting through the process of repeatedly failing and learning from failure.
• A good way to generate useful mistakes is simply to tackle the issue at hand by quickly constructing the best solution you can with little or no effort.
• Understanding what doesn’t work and why is valuable knowledge.
• Mistakes present a great opportunity to learn and improve, but action is required.
• Seeing a mistake as possibly a correct answer to a different question puts our thinking on its head.
• So when you see or make a mistake, you have at least two actions to take:
• (1) let the mistake lead you to a better attempt, and/or
• (2) ask whether the mistake is a correct answer to a different question.
• Bad days often include uncomfortably clear lessons about how to grow, learn, or reassess.
• One profound way to make new discoveries is to intentionally fail along the way.
• An effective strategy for gaining insight is to exaggerate conditions either through a physical or a thought experiment.
• When you complete an assignment impacts what you can gain from that exercise. A student gets more out of completing homework earlier than out of doing so later, even if the time spent in each case is the same.
• Failure is a sign of a creative mind, of original thought and strength.
• A person who is willing to fail is someone who is willing to step outside the box.
• Failing is progress; it’s not losing ground. Often a mistake or the revelation of error is the most important step toward success.
• Problems that require truly creative solutions are problems that you simply do not yet know how to solve.
• The habit of framing questions helps you see what’s missing and thus see what needs creating.
• Confident leaders in every profession are not afraid to ask the stupid questions.
• A transformative but challenging personal policy is to never pretend to know more than you do.
• Don’t build on ambiguity and ignorance. When you don’t know something, admit it as quickly as possible and immediately take action—ask a question.
• Paradoxically, when you ask basic questions, you will more than likely be perceived by others to be smarter. And more importantly, you’ll end up knowing far more over your lifetime.
• One profound habit of thinking individuals is to first acknowledge their biases and then intentionally overcome them.
• Challenge everything and everyone—including your teachers. Don’t be intimidated.
• Try to bridge ideas from one discipline or area to another.
• Remember: If you can’t create the questions, you’re not ready for the test.
• There is no better way to learn anything than to actually teach it.
• If you want to get more out of what you hear or see, force yourself to ask questions—
• People who ask lots of probing questions outperform those who don’t engage with the ideas.
• Getting in the habit of asking questions will transform you into an active (rather than passive) listener.
• Sadly, many people spend their entire lives focusing on the wrong questions.
• Effective questions turn your mind in directions that lead to new insights and solutions.
• You must define success for yourself. Only then will you be able to ask the right questions about how you can be successful.
• Effective questions lead to action and are not vague
• The right questions clarify your understanding and focus your attention on features that matter
• Seeking the right question forces you to realize that there are at least two kinds of ignorance: cases in which you know the right question but not the answer, and cases in which you don’t even know which question to ask.
• Try to create questions that expose hidden assumptions, clarify issues, and lead to action.
• Ideally, the goal of education should be to develop critical thinking and communication skills and other such mind-strengthening abilities.
• The right questions can be incredibly powerful tools for understanding and learning. Great questions can lead to insights that will make a difference.
• New ideas today are built on the ideas of yesterday and illuminate the way to the brilliant ideas of tomorrow.
• Successful and effective learners and innovators harness the power of the flow of ideas, which suggests the element Water.
• Solutions to little problems generate solutions to great problems.
• Every great idea is a human idea that evolved from hundreds if not thousands of individuals struggling to make sense of and understand the issue at hand.
• To understand current ideas through flow, first find easier elements that lead to what you want to understand, and then build bridges from those easier elements to the ideas you wish to master. To generate new ideas through flow, first modify an existing idea within its own context and then apply that same idea in different settings.
• To truly understand a concept, discover how it naturally evolves from simpler thoughts.
• All creative people, even ones who are considered geniuses, start as nongeniuses and take baby steps from there.
• Every subject is an ongoing journey of discovery and development.
• Remember: If you can’t get 100% on your last test (actual or metaphorical), then you’re not ready for your next exam.
• Whenever you face an issue—whether an area of study or a decision about a future path—consider what came before.
• One of the most heartening realities of human thought is that all the new ideas we have are, in fact, only tiny variations of what has been thought before.
• The difference between those who have great insights and those who don’t is that the first group actually take those baby steps.
• In thinking about the future, we must be conscious of the reality that the novelties that appear strange to us today will be familiar, natural, and perhaps even beautiful to the next generation, and possibly even to us in the future.
• One of the challenges of life is to be open-minded about new ideas and new possibilities.
• When you learn a new concept or master a skill, think about what extensions, variations, and applications are possible.
• The key is not to wonder whether the idea has extensions; it does. Your challenge is to find them.
• Children or newcomers start where we are now and, without the burden or bias of history, proceed forward.
• Human beings do not instantly see far. Our field of intellectual vision is limited to a few steps from where we are now.
• Nothing is easier than seeing the ridiculous biases of the past or the ridiculous biases that other people hold. But nothing is harder than seeing the ridiculous biases that we accept ourselves.
• But any example of a practice that is accepted today but will be viewed as immoral in the future must be a custom that we now view as perfectly fine.
• It is more realistic and healthier to view our world as one in which construction is always under way—everything is a work-in-progress.
• The fifth element is a meta-lesson. It recommends that you adopt the habit of constructive change. Don’t be afraid to change any part of yourself—you’ll still be there, only better.
• Often people describe the distinction between the skilled practitioner and the less skilled practitioner by saying that the skilled person is better at the task. But a more useful and accurate perspective is that the skilled practitioner is doing a fundamentally different task—one that you could master as well.
• To become more skillful and successful, you might think in terms of altering what you do, rather than thinking in terms of how well you do it. Instead of thinking, “Do it better,” think, “Do it differently.”
• If you want to learn a subject, instead of memorizing rules and facts, concentrate on truly understanding the fundamentals deeply.
• For effective thinking, differences in native ability are dwarfed by habits and methods.
• Coming up with new ideas requires the habit of employing thinking techniques that generate new ideas. Being imaginative is a learnable skill, not an inborn characteristic like having blue eyes.
• All mastery is actually a continuum.
• Einstein was brilliant. But he was also willing to change in the face of compelling evidence.
• Often the most profound advances you can make in your life come through experiences that challenge the life you have.
• Doubts are strengths when you use them effectively.
• The unchangeable mind is a closed mind.
• 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.
• Methodically, slowly, and thoroughly learn the fundamentals.
• Every return to the basics will deepen your understanding of the entire subject.
• Each complicated issue has several possible core ideas.
• Deliberately avoid glossing over any gaps or vagueness.
• Mistakes, loss, and failure are all flashing lights clearly pointing the way to deeper understanding and creative solutions.
• Bad days happen to good people. What separates the good from the great is how we react to that bad day.
• Bad days often include uncomfortably clear lessons about how to grow, learn, or reassess.
• There is no better way to learn anything than to actually teach it, because to teach something you have to confront many fundamental questions:
• Try to create questions that expose hidden assumptions, clarify issues, and lead to action.
• The only person who needs to move forward little by little is you.
• 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.
• Just do it.
• Adopt the habit of improvement, whether using our four elements or by any other methods that you find. If the ability to change is part of who you are, then you are liberated from worry about weaknesses or defects, because you can adapt and improve whenever you like.
• 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.