The idea is simple: You can learn how to think far better by adopting specific strategies. The book also could serve as a solid supplementary text in courses on critical thinking. Burger Edward B. Read Online Download. Great book, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. Said by Edward W. By using the straightforward and thought-provoking techniques in The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking , you will regularly find imaginative solutions to difficult challenges, and you will discover new ways of looking at your world and yourself—revealing previously hidden opportunities.
The book offers real-life stories, explicit action items, and concrete methods that allow you to attain a deeper understanding of any issue, exploit the power of failure as a step toward success, develop a habit of creating probing questions, see the world of ideas as an ever-flowing stream of thought, and embrace the uplifting reality that we are all capable of change.
No matter who you are, the practical mind-sets introduced in the book will empower you to realize any goal in a more creative, intelligent, and effective manner. Filled with engaging examples that unlock truths about thinking in every walk of life, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking is written for all who want to reach their fullest potential—including students, parents, teachers, businesspeople, professionals, athletes, artists, leaders, and lifelong learners.
Whenever you are stuck, need a new idea, or want to learn and grow, The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking will inspire and guide you on your way. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.
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It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature. Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz independently discovered calculus in the last half of the seventeenth century. But a study of the history reveals that mathematicians had thought of all the essential elements of calculus before either Newton or Leibniz came along.
All creative people, even ones who are considered geniuses, start as nongeniuses and take baby steps from there. During the past three hundred years, calculus has been applied to mechanics, to the motion of the planets, to electricity and magnetism, to fluid flow, to biology, to economics, as well as to countless other areas.
Leibniz published the first article on calculus in , an essay that was a mere 6 pages long. Students might be amazed that their teachers know all 1, pages of that enormous tome filled with cryptic symbols. They know the meaning of the basic ideas, and they know how one idea leads to another. Students who duplicate that perspective grasp the ideas of any subject better than those students who view each new week as an entirely new intellectual mountain to climb. As you are learning a topic, ask yourself what previous knowledge and what strategy of extending previous ideas make the new idea clear, intuitive, and a natural extension.
Every subject is an ongoing journey of discovery and development. It is not just a laundry list of disconnected topic, topic, topic, but a flow of ideas that build upon each other. When we see and understand that these ideas are connected, they become more interesting, more memorable, and more meaningful.
A way to provoke effective thinking … 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 has a history and evolves. Acknowledging that reality will allow you to generate new insights as well as create fruitful directions in which to move forward. 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. 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. Being wrong allows you to better realize what is truly there, and offers insights as to how the ideas might actually fit together.
A few years ago, I BURGER sat in on an art history class with a couple of undergraduate students whose primary field of interest was mathematics. These discussions were a profound way to make the whole class more meaningful and more memorable. Even when our guesses were completely off, they still helped us to view the previous material more fully by thinking how the earlier material might have looked in the middle of a stream of progress rather than in isolation. Learning from mistaken guesses let us see differences between what we expected and what actually arose, and thus changed our view of the issues.
The whole subject became an interconnected web of ideas. As an aside, with just these conversations on the way to class as well as active listening during lectures—but without reading the text, taking notes, or even attending the weekly conference sections—we actually passed the exams! A 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. We have seen that the most successful people regularly undertake this important reflective exercise. One small step. 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.
If we look back on the history of inventions or the evolution of ideas, it may appear that there were moments of lightning-strike inspiration that led in totally new directions. Taking these little steps can have tremendous implications for everything from writing essays and performing lab experiments to launching the next Internet craze.
The progression of artistic periods over the centuries presents a dramatic picture of the evolution of aesthetic norms as reactions to the current artistic status quo. The impressionist movement was several steps away from the representational art that preceded it. It broke with the conventional wisdom that a painting should look like what we would describe as a photograph.
Instead, impressionist painters—having mastered the established stylistic techniques of the day—aimed to take a step forward by creating the essence of a scene without offering a crystal-clear picture of it, thus inviting the viewer to actively engage with and interpret the works.
While today we look upon these paintings as masterpieces, when they were first shown in the salons of France, the public was appalled and actually offended.
What was then an insulting slur now denotes one of the most important artistic periods. 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. It was difficult to accept impressionism when art was assumed to be a method of representing how the world actually looks.
Each of us has the challenge of seeing the impressionism of our time as a valid, interesting, and important window into the world of tomorrow.
Creating new ideas from old ones When you learn a new concept or master a skill, think about what extensions, variations, and applications are possible. In fact, a bed of laurels will never offer a satisfying rest, and a new idea or solution should always be viewed as a beginning.
Effective students and creative innovators regularly strive to uncover the unintended consequences of a lesson learned or a new idea. Bing An illuminating illustration. But that solution was only a tiny tip of a monumental iceberg. Pushing the idea of the lightbulb led to otherwise unforeseen frontiers including movies, televisions, computers, copy machines, fiber optics, medical procedures, tanning beds, and even heat sources at buffets.
Before the invention of the lightbulb, people could not imagine the incredibly rich and varied developments that would stem from it, but in fact every idea, though it may seem to solve just one isolated problem, is only the tiny tip of its own monumental iceberg. I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. Later, telephone extensions allowed phones to be placed in different rooms; then touch-tone phones; then cordless phones; then large, brick-like cellular phones; then pocket-sized cell phones with cameras; then smartphones with Internet access and video.
And surely no one believes that the iPhone is the end of the line. Look at artistic developments or philosophical or societal or religious ideas. You might argue that in those realms new developments may not always be improvements; however, you must agree that evolving ideas have transformed all these areas. No religion today would imprison Galileo—as the Catholic Church did in —for asserting that Earth moves around the sun.
The artistic variety of today could not have been dreamed of centuries ago. Movies, literature, and cultural expression all develop by taking the best of one generation and going beyond in the next. A weed is a plant whose virtue has not yet been discovered. 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. Illustration: Going once, going twice, sold In 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.
Just as our own understanding can be deeper and richer than it currently is—no matter where it is in its evolution—an important perspective of successful thinking is that the best can be improved. In fact, starting with what is currently the best is often the ideal place to expect great improvements. We limit ourselves when we think that success is an end. Often the solution to a difficult problem comes from a struggled focus on the issue. Having been in the trenches working on that issue, you naturally feel like a climber reaching the summit after arduous toil.
You have arrived. You feel that you are just barely standing on a precarious perch, and your memories are filled with the details and the triumphs of the climb. But a newcomer, who has that summit as his or her initial position, has a different vantage point.
The newcomer did not experience the toil, did not live through the trials and failures and hard-won small steps. The young person or the person new to the field sees that issue in its solved condition as just the way the world is. Babies born today enter a world replete with computers, the Internet, smartphones, text messaging, jet planes, and hundreds of cable TV channels.
Children who hear about the olden days when phones were attached to walls by wires are learning about a foreign, quaint, antiquated world. Children or newcomers start where we are now and, without the burden or bias of history, proceed forward.
So one of the challenges for us all is to see—with fresh eyes—the current world for what it is now. Knowing the history is certainly helpful, but not if we tend to see current solutions as summits. We must get in the habit of seeing each advance as putting us on the lower slope of a much higher peak that has yet to be scaled. In he had an idea to speed up the manufacturing process—instead of building one car at a time, he created the assembly line.
The acceleration in production was unheard-of—from an output of automobiles in to an impressive 2, cars the following year. Instead of taking a day and a half to manufacture a Model T, as in the past, he was now able to spit them out at a rate of one car every ninety minutes.
The moral of the story is that good progress is often the herald of great progress. The same is true of learning new and increasingly difficult concepts or mastering skills at increasingly higher levels. You may have to struggle to finally master an idea or a skill. Having toiled to get that far, you may think that it would be impossible to go yet further, or you may just feel worn out.
But after you have reached one level, that is where you start. That is the platform from which you can proceed even further—whether that starting point is a high grade, a professional accomplishment, or a profound insight; go for it! Assume there is a mistake or omission or missed opportunity in your work—there always is!
Now find it yet another example of the insights we can gain by 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. People who make this evolutionary iteration a standard practice are far more successful in their education and in life than those who see an answer as an end.
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. Human beings do not instantly see far. Our field of intellectual vision is limited to a few steps from where we are now. We must acknowledge that however far we do see, our vision extends merely to a horizon beyond which a far bigger world will become visible.
How can we start the process of exploring where new ideas can lead us? You will be thinking in a different way—which, of course, is the entire point. To be sure, not every sequence of consequences that we imagine will actually come to pass or lead to fertile new ground, but exploring those consequences several steps forward can have great value.
Following that flow can highlight some fallacies in seemingly sound schemes. For example, suppose you wanted to improve air travel by making it safer. Following the possible consequences of improved airline safety may lead to a surprising conclusion. Improved airline safety could actually result in more total deaths, because if the increased safety leads to higher costs for flying, then more people might be forced to drive, which is a far more fatal way to travel.
To envision the future, look back and put yourself in the mind-set of the past. For example, think about how difficult it would have been thirty years ago to envision the Internet.
You may think this vision is pure fantasy, but consider how impossible smartphones without cords would have seemed in the s—it was the science fiction of its time.
Think one step back to imagine one step forward. 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. By extrapolating the flow of future ideas, we can identify invisible problems today.
A way to provoke effective thinking … 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? 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. Every semester at every school in the country, report cards define significant numbers of the students as 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. Only in the future will that cultural norm be viewed from a different angle and deemed unacceptable. Some of our strongly held beliefs are based on plausible notions that we either read or heard, but many of our most firmly held convictions are not based on concrete, verifiable fact or proof.
It is impossible to avoid bias—it infuses itself through our upbringing, our values, our society, and our community. The first real action item for all of us is to acknowledge unabashedly that we are all prejudiced.
This self-conscious understanding of underlying bias is an important step if we are to begin to move forward. In fact, a little arithmetic shows that that perspective is simply wrong. For example, New York City is the home of approximately skyscrapers.
A building lasts perhaps 40 years before it needs a major renovation or replacement. It requires perhaps 4 years with construction crews conspicuously present to renovate a skyscraper. 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. By analogy, your life has many major features—family, friends, education, professional situations, possessions, and more.
Each of these elements is in flux. In reality, the normal state is one in which some features of life and learning are problematic and need attention. Acknowledge that reality and try to identify opportunities for improvement and growth. Expect and embrace change, and use the reality and perspective of the flow of ideas to help you both to understand the world and to create new worlds to come.
The right dream. You may dream of creating that one new idea that will solve lots of problems and lead to fame and fortune. But the better dream is to see yourself standing on what seems to be the summit and climbing higher by taking one small step after another. That modest habit of effective thinking will help you accomplish things you never dreamed possible. The Quintessential Element 5. Engaging Change Transform Yourself I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
In some sense, the four preceding elements of effective thinking and learning paint the entire picture. Each of the preceding four techniques has the goal of changing you into someone who thinks and learns better. In ancient Greek philosophy, the quintessential element was the unchanging material from which the extraterrestrial realm was made.
Here the unchanging fifth element is, ironically, change itself. Change is really the goal of the whole story. Through our experience with hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, professionals, business leaders, and lifelong learners, we know that if you follow the lessons in this book, you will learn and understand at a deeper level; you will think of creative ideas; and you will be successful throughout life.
This chapter is about what is involved in transforming yourself into a more effective learner and thinker. In one sense there is nothing difficult about adopting effective strategies of learning and thinking. You simply need to let go of the constraining forces in your life and let yourself fail on the road to success. You simply need to question all the issues you have taken for granted all those years. You simply need to see every aspect of your world as an ever-evolving stream of insights and ideas.
You simply need to change. Of course, in reality, change seems hard—not simple. However, like the way to happiness, the path to change is not through greater willpower and harder work, but rather through thinking differently. 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.
This quintessential element speaks to the challenge of becoming a person who embraces the lessons. The fifth element is a meta-lesson. It recommends that you adopt the habit of constructive change. Our colleague, Bill Guy, told us a story about an administrator who wanted to change a school. One year this headmaster decided to try to improve the instruction by having experts on teaching talk to the faculty members every month.
I already know how to teach better than I do. The fifth element recommends that you actually do it. 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.
Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome And now for something completely different. Grab a piece of paper and a pencil.
Now repeat the exercise but this time with your eyes open. Your result will hopefully be much better. Writing with your eyes open is a different and easier task than writing with your eyes closed.
There is a subtle perspective about improvement and about better performance that can alter how you approach the task of changing yourself.
Namely, people who perform better can be viewed as actually doing a different task, rather than doing the same task better.
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