Musing over the library shelves, I accidentally came across Edward De Bono book ” The 5-Day Course in Thinking” (1967).
This book is amusing indeed. Instead of listing the What-to-do to achieve thinking techniques, it provides a series of game as well as a copy of the famous L-game.
The games are chosen to bring out an awareness of readers very own style of thinking, the strong points as well the weakness.
The only question the reader should ponder would be ” Why am I having difficulty over this?”
As Edward de Bono stated, ” In this book, nothing is taught, except what is learned”, the book is presented in a way to stimulate the reader’s own ideas on thinking.
Thus, his intention of writing this book was for the readers to learn how to shift attention from the problem themselves to the way the mind tackles them. Once the problem is solved, one might wonders why the solution is so easy, yet it was difficult to be solved at the first place.
The tips? solving a problem, is not just a matter of following the rules of logic. Usually, the approach to the problem is more important than the efficiency of the solution itself. The choice of approach may be determined by habit, by and attitude of mind and by emotion.
Some people have difficulty in solving problems because they were unwilling to let go of the obvious and trapped in it.
With ‘vertical’ thinking, one tries to dig the same hole deeper and proceeds rigidly along the path with highest probability.
However, with ‘ lateral’ thinking, one proceeds imaginatively along a variety of low probability paths, in the hope of generating a new and better approach to the problem.
Image source : http://www.debonogroup.com/
BF441 D38 1967 (UTM Library)