All Blog Posts Tagged 'thinking' (20)

Concepts, how to extract them?

I'd like to know if someone can help me on how to extract concepts.

Mr De Bono says they breed ideas, and they are one of the key components in (for example) having a beautiful mind.

On the other hand, concepts are not definitions, neither practical ideas.

What would be the concept of the Human Hair (head) for example. Could something like our hair have a concept?

do concepts have anything to do with function?

for example a so-called "concept-car" is that…

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Added by Enrique Sanguino on June 24, 2012 at 13:00 — 21 Comments

The virtues of the Bisinisencephalians

A great discovery in psychology:

More convergent studies in psychology demonstrate that the
Bisinisencephalians are really amazing, unique people, being
able to think rationally up to 50% (!!!) of the time as compared
with 1-10% for the rest of the population. See please the other
papers labelled Bisinis at my blog Ego Out

Added by Peter Gluck on June 15, 2011 at 6:00 — 6 Comments

How we evaluate the impact of Hats.

Friday March 18 saw a full house at The Airlie Leadership Development Centre for training in the Six Thinking Hats.

Toward day's end one of the participants asked if we were going to distribute feedback/evaluation forms. My response was "Absolutely not, never in a million years." Of course I then had to explain myself for fear of being seen to be too blase about the whole…

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Added by Frank Connolly on March 20, 2011 at 13:37 — 8 Comments

Lateral Thinking for Conservation

We know that one of the great difficulties in getting people to understand the absolute necessity for creativity and lateral thinking is that all good lateral solutions will appear logical in hindsight. So, if the solution is logical we don't need lateral thinking only logical thinking.…

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Added by Frank Connolly on February 2, 2011 at 11:00 — 4 Comments

Do youngsters know how things work?

I visited a local school open day yesterday and the ten year olds who showed me around seemed to know a lot of facts but I wondered whether they knew much about how things worked.

Edward de Bono often says that school kids should be taught how the corner shop works - but it seems very unlikely that this school would ever teach this. For example, at that school the five year olds learnt how to read from a computer connected to a website. But children taught to think would ask…

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Added by Phil Bachmann on August 6, 2010 at 23:00 — 5 Comments

How Aquaponics Can Benefit Those Displaced by Oil Spill

I came up with this idea using de Bono creative thinking techniques. Then I found out there is a whole genre of highly developed skills addressing it that already exists! Since I was talking about it in a group section for members only, I decided to repost it here so anyone can have a look.

It addressed the question of how to benefit those who (both animal and human) had been affected by the Gulf Oil Spill. My idea is that people be paid to set up in business as aquaponic growers in… Continue

Added by Franis on June 23, 2010 at 11:19 — 2 Comments

Prize Money Offered for Energy Ideas

Thought that people here should be aware of this competition, just in case someone has or is in the middle of developing a really good idea that would relate to this prize money topic. As in all competitions, be careful and read the fine print, which is at: …

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Added by Franis on April 6, 2010 at 12:30 — No Comments

The MySchool Saga

The Australian government released some statistics on how school were performing in teaching reading and writing. They called it the "My School Website".

This website (www.myschool.edu.au) allows you to look at those stats. Now there's another MySchool website with a very similar address www.myschool.com.au, which allows people to discuss those statistics.

But the second site is…

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Added by Phil Bachmann on March 13, 2010 at 10:34 — 1 Comment

Thinking skills to be taught at all Australian schools - not.

The Aussie Govt has decided to have the world's best education system, and had its minions release a draft document explaining what the new curriculum will look like.

It's available at http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au. Has anyone seen it? (You need to create an account to be allowed access.)

Yes "Thinking Skills" is there, but it's listed as a "General Skill" that teachers have been asked to apply to…

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Added by Phil Bachmann on March 3, 2010 at 8:12 — 8 Comments

po - A virtual thinking tower can replace schools.

When you read the latest book "Think!" by de Bono and compare it to one of his older books, you'll soon recognize that the problems have kept the same: his way of teaching thinking is a proven way to improve the mental capability of everyone, but only a few people (compared to all people having access to schools) learn his way of thinking. This may be due to the ignorance of schools or universities or due to the fact that de Bono does a lot to keep his way of thinking something "exclusive"…

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Added by Ron Rigatoni on February 22, 2010 at 18:37 — 14 Comments

Parallel Response

There is another big hole that is most often missing from most people’s “bag of tricks” concerning the training of new skills. It is the zero state of ‘being at ease’. This would be a resting state in between activating one trigger for a habitually conditioned routine that would be inserted between endless calls for action.

Being able to "think of nothing" is actually a skill. Problems come when our natural capacity for having a ‘resting state’ becomes polluted with too many… Continue

Added by Franis on January 5, 2010 at 12:00 — 2 Comments

Drawbacks of Thinking and Innovation

Many of the advantages of "thinking" have been misunderstood. The other day I heard someone say, "You're thinking too much."

Perhaps the content of what is concluded by having thought is so often confused with the process that was used to arrive at the result. Content is dazzling; it's a big appeal that a person can innovate or problem solve. People want to arrive at their goal and don't see to care much how they get there. It results in not being able to repeat the performance. This… Continue

Added by Franis on December 24, 2009 at 23:30 — 3 Comments

Tool use diary

I may be duplicating something that already exists, but I couldn't find it so I created yet another blog post.

What I want to do is start documenting how I use de Bono tools as part of daily thinking, providing small examples as they arise.

These micro-examples won't be big enough for a competition entry, but will be enjoyable for me and hopefully instructive for others.

Added by Phil Bachmann on August 1, 2009 at 5:38 — 4 Comments

Building New Perceptual Assumptions

Let me blog about the perception of proprioceptive orientation. It is a handy sense to explore as an example of how perceptual assumptions work, because it is a sense that most people usually ignore. Most spell checkers do not contain the word, and it is not defined as one of the "five senses."

I have come to know this subject well, because I teach people about the sense of bodily movement for a living by training Alexander Technique and juggling skills. Kinesthetic proprioception is… Continue

Added by Franis on July 14, 2009 at 3:02 — No Comments

PO: There is no difference between lateral thinking and critical thinking

The aim of critical thinking is to assess the validity of a reasoning. It does so by checking the reasoning on internal inconsistenties and wrong deductions. It also tries to detect hidden assumptions, which is the hardest part, because the thinking happens within the exsisting logical bubble. That seems like the Baron von Munschausen, who saved himself out of a marsh by pulling himself out by his hairs.

In my opinion it would be much easier to detect hidden assumptions from outside… Continue

Added by Gijs van Beeck Calkoen on July 7, 2009 at 13:31 — 5 Comments

The Action Men

One of the things I like most about Edward de Bono's work is his emphasis on "Thinking about Action" not just "Thinking for Pleasure". He coined the term operacy just for this purpose.

However, bridging the gap between the thinkers and the doers seems easier said than done.

I believe it is worth casting at least a cursory eye over over the perspectives of proven "doers" before we get too excited about our new ideas.

I enclose two examples:

The first… Continue

Added by Phil Bachmann on May 7, 2009 at 22:27 — 4 Comments

Thinking frameworks: ease of use and specificity of operations

(This site is not just about practising dr de Bono's frameworks)

The PMI, the yellow hat, and random input are methods of thinking, but what are the methods of using these methods?

With the PMI, we look for plus points (among other things) - what are the methods for doing so? The same applies to the yellow hat. With random input we choose a random word (input) and try to use it to get ideas. What are the methods for doing so (using a random word to get… Continue

Added by Andy on May 6, 2009 at 17:00 — 4 Comments

Designing a Thinking Tools Skill Game

Years ago in a lonely cabin high in the mountains my son and I passed the time with a self-made CoRT-card game. It was rather primitive: there were Thinking Situation Cards and Thinking Tools Cards. Both of us were given 10 Thinking Tools Cards, at random. Then you picked one Situation Card and applied an adequate Thinking Technique. The goal was to mention as many aspects you could, then it was the opponent's turn to explore additional aspects of the thinking situation. It was… Continue

Added by Gijs van Beeck Calkoen on April 30, 2009 at 9:48 — 5 Comments

Getting people to want to think.

I recently had a day off work and when I returned my desk was covered with notes from people asking me how to do this, or what needed to be done with that. As I sat there working my way through the pile I realised that most of the queries required no more than a moment or two of thinking to resolve or at least move forward. So my question is: how do you motivate people to think for themselves rather than leaving thinking to someone else?

Added by Daniel Parrish on April 29, 2009 at 12:19 — 2 Comments

Hello!

I have just discovered this site during a lunchtime internet session. I have been interested in EdB's thinking tools for sometime now. I have read the six thinking hats book as well as several others. I have set myself the goal of using the tools every day and I hope this site will help me in this endeavour.

Anyway, I am posting to say hello and I hope to learn a lot from everyone on the site. I look forward to thinking with you!

Added by Daniel Parrish on April 27, 2009 at 13:13 — 2 Comments