The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

Earth

Master the basics. Consider a skill you want to improve or a subject area that you wish to understand better. Spend five minutes writing down specific components of the skill or subject area that are basic to that theme. Pick one of the items on your list, and spend thirty minutes actively improving your mastery of it. See how working deeply on the basics makes it possible for you to hone your skill or deepen your knowledge at the higher levels you are trying to attain. Apply this exercise at all scales to other things you think you know or would like to know. (See p. 18)

Illustration: A student’s response in trying to understand basic economics

Step 1: A brainstorming list of components: Maximize profits; free markets; supply and demand; equilibrium of supply and demand. (Note that the student’s list is neither organized nor complete, which is great.) Step 2: Improve understanding of “equilibrium of supply and demand”: First, I need to understand what the graphs of the supply and demand curves mean. The horizontal axis is the quantity and the vertical axis is the price; so I see why the demand graph curves down to the right and the supply graph curves up to the right. I think that equilibrium is the point of intersection of those two graphs. But if the quantity level is to the left of that intersection, then the price for demand is higher than the price for supply. I don’t know what that means. (Note that this student successfully identified a lack of understanding of a basic idea, namely, what the supply and demand graphs represent. He now knows what he should work on first. A firm understanding of that basic idea will allow him to progress furtherand faster in the future.)

Ask: What do you know? Do you or don’t you truly know the basics? 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? When you discover weaknesses in your own understanding of the basics, take action. Methodically, slowly, and thoroughly learn the fundamentals. Repeat this exercise regularly as you learn more advanced aspects of the subject. Every return to the basics will deepen your understanding of the entire subject. (See p. 21.)

Illustration: Voting

How well do you know the candidates running for office—their records, their positions? Write a list of issues that are important to you. Then list what you believe to be the positions of the candidates on each issue—their stated opinions, their voting records, and their other actions associated with the issue. Most voters will have inaccurate or only meager knowledge, particularly for candidates they don’t support. Then look up the actual records and see the differences. Fleshing out your knowledge will lead to more informed decisions—on Election Day and beyond.

Sweat the small stuff. Consider some complex issue in your studies or life. Instead of tackling it in its entirety, find one small element of it and solve that part completely. Understand the subissue and its solution backwards and forwards. Understand all its connections and implications. Consider this small piece from many points of view and in great detail. Choose a subproblem small enough that you can give it this level of attention. Only later should you consider how your efforts could help solve the larger issue. (See p. 25.)

Illustration: A student’s response to this exercise applied to time management

Time management is too big an issue for me, so I’ll just focus on getting my homework done. That’s still too big a task, so let me just focus on starting my homework. I could commit ten minutes right after each lecture to review class notes and think about the homework assignment. Then five minutes before the next lecture I could review the notes from the previous lecture—great, but not always realistic. So to make it practical, when I return to my room for the night, I’ll commit at least ten minutes to reviewing the class notes of the day and beginning the assigned homework. In fact, my problem is not just procrastination but focus. Ah ha! So for those ten minutes, I’ll turn off my computer and cell phone and spend that short uninterrupted time knowing there will be no distractions. Without text messages and emails, those ten minutes will be qualitatively different from and better than thirty minutes of interrupted time. That weird serenity will bring me to a meditation-like, focused state of mind. And looking at the homework on the day it was assigned—when it’s still fresh in my mind—is better than investing the same amount of time the day before the homework is due—when I’d have to spend time just remembering what was going on. Once I’ve made this little ten-minute practice a daily habit, I’ll revisit the larger challenge of time management. (See how this exercise did its job—it brought out some important principles to consider when facing the daunting challenge of time management: the value of uninterrupted, focused time and the value of carving out small regular intervals of time when they will be most effective.)

Uncover one essential. 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. You are not seeking “the” essential idea; you are seeking just one—consider a subject and pare it down to one essential theme. In fact, you might perform this exercise on yourself. What do you view as essential elements of you? Isolating those elements can give a great deal of focus to life decisions. (See p. 30)

Illustration: Parenting

Bringing up children requires making many decisions on a daily basis. Getting advice about every scenario is impractical. Instead, identify one or two essential goals and use them to guide your actions. For example, one goal may be to raise children to become independent thinkers who take personal responsibility for life decisions. That goal would influence your decision if your children repeatedly fail to complete homework assignments. Do you embrace the easier, short-term solution of finishing their homework; or do you take the more difficult approach of encouraging your children to learn for themselves? Having essential goals in mind makes daily decisions clearer. Whether or not you are a parent, this same perspective can help everyone—teachers, students, professionals, businesspeople, and even politicians—make daily decisions that aim toward long-term goals rather than toward short-term goals that may be diversions.

Say it like you see it. Homework assignments, tests, and job-related assessments ask you what you know. Unfortunately, partial credit or social pressure often encourages you to pretend to know a bit more than you actually do. So in the privacy of your own room look at assignments or possible test questions and write down the weaknesses as well as the strengths of what you know and don’t know. Deliberately avoid glossing over any gaps or vagueness. Instead boldly assert what is tepid or missing in your understanding. Then take action. Identifying and admitting your own uncertainties is an enormous step toward solid understanding. (See p. 35.)

Illustration: Communication

If you are writing an essay, read literally what you have written—not what you intended to communicate. Pretend you don’t know the argument you are making and read your actual words. What’s confusing and what’s missing? If you think you know an idea but can’t express it clearly, then this process has identified a gap or vagueness in your understanding. After you admit and address those weaknesses, your exposition will be clearer and more directed to the actual audience. When delivering an address or making a presentation, apply this same process of deliberately listening to the actual words you are speaking rather than what you imagine you are saying.

Try on alternatives and size up the fit. Temporarily embrace some opinion that is counter to what you hold. Try not to be judgmental. Don’t resist the alternative views. You are not committing to any change. This exercise has the goal of understanding alternatives more realistically. As a result, you might change an opinion, but more likely you will simply have a better understanding of why the alternative views make sense to others. (See p. 40.)

Illustration: Sit next to the other side

Attend a meeting or dinner sponsored by a group that has a point of view different from your own. If you’re a student and a Republican, attend a Young Democrats Club event. If you’re an atheist, attend a Christian Fellowship meeting. You might feel a bit uncomfortable at first, but avoid letting yourself instantly think of refutations. Instead, listen and tryto empathize and see a new point of view—and perhaps make a new connection.

See the invisible. Select your own object, issue, or topic of study and attach an adjective or descriptive phrase (such as “the First” before “World War”) that points out some reality of the situation, ideally some feature that is limiting or taken for granted. Then consider whether your phrase suggests new possibilities or opportunities. This exercise helps you to create interesting and provocative insights. (See p. 43.)

Illustration: An education

Caroline was contemplating issues in the field of education and decided to apply the “include the adjective” exercise. She quickly described the current educational system as “nonindividualized education.” That designation immediately made her wonder about the extent to which education could—perhaps in the future—be tailored to individual differences in learning styles, in what each individual knows, in goals for education, and so forth. These thoughts were all inspired by just her description of how we teach today.

Fire

Fail nine times. The next time you face a daunting challenge, think to yourself, “In order for me to resolve this issue, I will have to fail nine times, but on the tenth attempt, I will be successful.” This attitude frees you and allows you to think creatively without fear of failure, because you understand that failure is a forward step toward success. Take a risk and when you fail, no longer think, “Oh, no, what a frustrating waste of time and effort,” but instead correctly think, “Great: on down, nine to go—I’m making forward progress!” And indeed you are. After your first failure, think, “Terrific, I’m10% done!” Mistakes, loss, and failure are all flashing lights clearly pointing the way to deeper understanding and creative solutions. (See p. 49.)

Illustration: The authors’ response

We see ourselves as teachers of effective thinking. As such, we are so committed to failure that we assess and reward it. In our classes, 5% of our students’ course grades is based on their quality of failure. You want an A in our classes? You had better fail and fail productively, that is, learn through those failed efforts. Every mistake is a teacher and holds a lesson. When you are working on problems that have not yet been solved, there are no guarantees about how soon you will find answers. The unknown solutions may be miles and years away, or you might be surprised to find them tomorrow right around the corner.

Don’t stare at a blank screen. Take an issue or problem of interest to you. Just quickly jot down any ideas—good, bad, inaccurate, or vague—that you have about the issue. 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! Now read what you wrote and focus on two features: what’s right and what’s wrong. Now you have something to do: tease out the good elements; find particularly nice phrases or pieces of strong ideas; uncover a word that is suggestive of some unstated interesting notion; find that you have clarified for yourself the core of the idea that you want to express. The second task is to recognize and exploit what’s wrong and correct the errors you see. 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. In making this action item practical, you must be sure to give yourself enough time for the required iterations. (See p. 59.)

Have a bad day. 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. So the next time you’re having a bad day, make the conscious effort to find and extract positive lessons from those not-so-positive experiences. (See p. 65.)

Illustration: Have a “Mary Day”

Was Mary’s day in her math class a good day or a bad one? At first blush it seemed not to be going well—the class was discussing “infinity,” which is scary enough, but then she was called out to share her thinking. That thinking was not perfect. However, by embracing her weaknesses as a way to reflect and learn, she grew. By the end of the class, Mary had created something new and learned an important lesson about how to create ideas in the future—she had a bad day and, by taking advantage of it, made it a great one.

Exaggerate to generate errors. Consider an issue or problem and now exaggerate some feature of it to a ridiculous extreme. If you are arguing one side of an issue, support the side you truly believe; then make the argument so exaggerated that you realize that it’s way over the top. Now study your exaggerated description and discover some underlying defect. Does that defect also exist in a nonexaggerated perspective? As if you were conducting a stress test, you might apply this exercise to something that works well and learn how it breaks down. The strategy of exaggeration to extremes can be applied to any issue, from writing to marketing to product development to politics. For example, large companies hire hackers to attempt to break into their computer systems to expose security weaknesses. (See p. 68.)

Illustration 1: In business

Jones & Sons Lawn Care business is failing owing to the success of its main competitor, Green Thumb Cutters. The ridiculous extreme fantasy is to have the competition disappear. How can that silly fantasy help Jones & Sons? One way to make that Green Thumb go away is to acquire it and thus remove it as a competitor. Alternatively, one could make a competitor disappear by creating products or services that complement the other business—that is, rather than compete with the prosperous company, consider ways of sharing in its success. For example, Jones & Sons could lease and maintain lawn mowers for Green Thumb.

Illustration 2: In school

Suppose a student’s tendency is to cram and begin working on homework assignments at the last minute. An extreme stance would be to imagine starting an assignment at the first minute, that is, at the moment it is assigned. While this proposal may not be practical, it does lead us to an important insight: 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.

Air

Teach to learn. There is no better way to learn anything than to actually teach it, because to teach something you have to confront many fundamental questions: What is the motivation to learn thistopic? What are the basic examples? On what aspects of this material should I focus? What are the underlying themes? What ties the ideas together? What is the global structure? What are the important details? These questions force you to discover the heart of the matter and see exactly what you truly understand and what you still need to work on. So consider an idea or topic you are trying to better understand, and ask yourself what you would say if you had to start right now to give a complete explanation, including motivation, examples, overview, and details, of that subject. Better still, prepare a minilecture and then deliver it to someone—family, friends, or even your teacher. (See p. 79.)

Illustration: Question Mark

Mark is an extremely successful high school mathematics teacher. When we asked him when he really learned calculus, he said, “When I first taught it. There is no better way to learn anything than to actually teach it. When I teach something, I have to confront many fundamental questions: What is the motivation to learn this topic? What are the basic examples? On what aspects of this material should I focus? What are the underlying themes? What ties the ideas together? What is the global structure? What are the important details? These questions force me to discover the heart of the matter, and see exactly what I truly understand and what I still need to work on.”

Improve the question. From a student’s point of view, the question “How can I get better grades?” is not the most effective route to higher grades. Questions such as “How can I learn to think better and understand more deeply?” “How can I learn to communicate better?” “How can I increase my curiosity?” are far more constructive. For each question that presents itself in life, craft more focused questions that might lead to a productive conclusion. Try to create questions that expose hidden assumptions, clarify issues, and lead to action. Apply this exercise whenever you are confronted with a question in your own life—that is, constantly question your own questions. (See p. 89.)

“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?”

Illustration: Traffic

While stuck (and frustrated) in bumper-to-bumper traffic that is moving at a painfully slow crawl, you wonder (perhaps in more colorful language), “How can this traffic problem be fixed?!?” The answers are easy but not practical: increase the flow by widening the roads or constructing additional highways. But the reality is that unless you’re the president or governor, you cannot make either solution happen. Thus your frustration level rises along with your blood pressure. Your question was not a great one. Instead ask, “Given that I will spend an extra forty minutes in traffic, how can I use that time effectively?” Now you’re asking a question that is productive. You might consider books on tape to entertain or educate you, or language tapes to improve your Greek, or visits with distant family and friends via Bluetooth.

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. (See p. 91.)

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.

Water

Iterate ideas. You don’t need an army of thousands of individuals to struggle to address a challenge. The only person who needs to move forward little by little is you. 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. (See p. 96.)

Illustration: Rewriting in Ernest

Ernest Hemingway was interviewed for an article entitled “The Art of Fiction,” which appeared in the Paris Review in 1956. The interview revealed Hemingway as a person who practiced the technique of incremental progress.

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms, the last

page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had

stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

Think back. Whenever you face an issue—whether an area of study or a decision about a future path —consider what came before. Wonder how the issue at hand landed in front of you. Ask where and what it was yesterday, a month ago, a year ago, and so forth. Everything, everyone evolves. Acknowledging that reality as well as considering the subject’s history will allow you to generatenew insights as well as create fruitful directions in which to move forward. (See p. 101.)

Illustration: Penning the prequel

Juan finished reading a novel and was reflecting on it. That story took place during the Cold War. He decided to consider what had happened before the Cold War heated up. That is, before the story unfolded in the pages of the book, where were those characters? What were their histories? How did those individuals evolve into the characters that come to life on the page? His answers helped him to explain certain dynamics and allowed him to better understand the actions and story lines. Of course, the bookend question “What comes next?” (that is, “What transpired beyond the end of the book itself?”) is the next natural issue to contemplate.

Extend ideas. Take a good idea from any arena—work, society, or personal life. It need not be an idea you yourself originated. Now engage with that idea and extend it. The key is not to wonder whether the idea has extensions; it does. Your challenge is to find them. (See p. 108.)

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.

Once you have it, see if you can improve it. Take a solution to an issue or an essay you’ve written and create a different, better one. Assume there is a mistake or omission or missed opportunity in your work—there always is! Now find it (yet another example of the power of failing). This activity is much more challenging than it might at first appear. We are biased and limited by what we already know—especially since we know it works. However, moving beyond that bias can lead to new answers that, in turn, can lead to new insights and more effective solutions. (See p. 111.)

Illustration: A better Shanice

Shanice decided to apply this exercise to herself. She considered her best personal assets and wondered how to make them far better still. She plays the cello and her sight-reading is amazing, so she considered improving that skill. She knits beautiful scarves using complicated lace patterns, so she considered improving that talent. She finally decided to focus on her passion for rugby and worked to improve her already strong passing abilities. Working on strengths can have unexpected payoffs, including, paradoxically, remedying weaknesses. In this case, improving her passing involved communicating more effectively with her teammates, which thus led Shanice to improve her previously weak communication skills both on and off the field. Working on strengths is a feature of successful thinking and learning that takes everyone—including Shanice—to new heights.

Ask: What were they thinking? What beliefs, cultural habits, opinions, or actions that are completely accepted today will be viewed as ridiculous by our grandchildren? What are some possible candidates? Centuries ago, perfectly respectable people viewed slavery as a natural and moral practice. What practices that we accept as fine today will be condemned as offensive in the future? (See p. 115.)

Illustration: The permanent “F”

Today it is unacceptable to tell racial or ethnic jokes. These jokes are considered demeaning and reflective of prejudice. We are now sensitive to groups that might be insulted or debased in some way. This view is obvious to most cultured individuals. Now let’s consider our current educational system. Every semester at every school in the country, report cards define significant numbers of the students as inferior. They are individually singled out and told, “You are not smart enough; you are not industrious enough; you are inadequate; you are inferior.” As a cultural norm, we are careful not to hurt people’s feelings with slurs on their ethnic backgrounds or religious practices, yet we consider it perfectly acceptable to tell people explicitly, through their failing grades, that they are inferior. There are alternatives. Perhaps, in the future, failing grades would not be recorded at all—only the knowledge and skills that a student actually mastered would make it onto his or her transcript. Does it make sense to record on the student’s permanent record the fact that he or she did not succeed in Bio 101 in a particular semester? Perhaps in the future we will not punish students for not “getting it” the first time.

The Quintessential Element

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. (See p. 126.)

Illustration: The pianist

Imagine practicing a piano piece. An expert memorizes the music and thus can look at the keyboard while performing those long jumps. That may be an easier task than reading the music while attempting to strike the correct keys. At a more subtle level, the accomplished musician understands the chord structure and hears each voice of the music, so the expert is doing a different task from that of the person who is merely remembering what keys to press.

The quintessential you.

The first four elements enable you to think better than you do; learn better than you do; and be more creative than you are. The fifth element recommends that you actually do it.

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.