Customer Reviews

De Bono's Thinking Course

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DeBono counters the misconceptions that creativity and thinking are innate, by providing tools and exercises for thinking. These tools encourage deliberate thinking, and a self-image of "I am a thinker". The techniques provide mechanisms for focusing, looking at alternatives, and deliberate thinking. deBono introduces his term "lateral thinking" and "po" for emphasizing pattern changing and provocation. deBono does not take himself to ponderously, and often sees humor as tool of escaping set patterns (and I was surprised by his "Nor can God have a sense of humor since there can be no surprise .."). In the area of decision science, there are more techniques available (e.g., risk avoidance, regret avoidance, Bayesian). I also am sure some of his more recent books (this one written in 1982) offer additional tools, but this book provides a good foundation.

De Bono's "Thinking Course" is a tour of force of tips and ideas on how to develop a new way of thinking that will enable you to be more efficacious and effective in the use of your mind.

De Bono's approach will enable you:

-Identify common intellectual traps (all of them very self-destructive and limiting, but hardly known by most people, even by the most smart and erudite ones)

-Think in alternative and "out of the box" ways, enabling you to consider the problems and situations in a wider, clearer and objective perspective.

-Resolve problems in a creative, efficacious and constructive ways.

-Expand and enhance your thinking skills in general.

I think this book should be a essential reading in schools and colleges, but I'm sure that book would be especially useful for scientists and philosophers, because the latter professionals need to be creative, original and rigorous in the posing and solving of complex topics or problems in their fields.

This book would make easier their intellectual job!

A must read.

When you are growing up, your mind groups things in certain ways in order to help you process tons of information that innundates your every day life. It learns to recognize patterns and helps you quickly form opinions about something. In nature, animals may learn to recognize a predator if its parent runs away from it each time it sees it. As the youngling grows up, it too runs from the predator. Some would say that this is stereotyping and thus is wrong, but it most likely would save this animal's life one day.

My long winded story just points out the usefulness of teaching your brain how to think and not just react. Debono does a good job in this book as it gets you to think about thinking. Just as in any book you read, you walk away with some thing useful, you walk away with something you would not find useful, just as you would find something you would agree with and something you don't.

For me, it was a good investment in time because I now have in my arsenal methods to think analytically in situations that come about. If for nothing else, this book saves you time in your job and in your life. As a plus, you will be able to understand more of what is going on around you.

DeBono has some valid points, it's just that I've read most of them elsewhere, however, in other places he contributes original material to the discussion. I fail to see the point of a "thinking club" which he advocates at the end of this book, the purpose of which is not to solve any problem, but to develop thinking skills. He fails to convince me of the efficacy of such an activity.

On the positive side of things, the author said arrogance is not the point of being an effective thinker. It has nothing to do with being superior to other people or being clever. Developed thinking skills relate to the process and quality of the activity.

I buy his argument that just because an idea is "good" does not mean it cannot be improved upon. Seeing options one didn't perceive earlier is an effective way of expanding one's territory. Similarly, he makes a good case for action over perfectionism by saying, "If I were to rewrite my manuscripts they would always get better--but never get published as the process of improvement can be never ending."

He creates new words in this book and justifies himself in doing so by noting, "I believe they ought to be part of the language because without new words we cannot 'hold' new concepts--they just drift off into the old concepts if we have to use old words." Overall this book has some worthwhile points to make about thinking.

Edward de Bono presents simple, entry-level techniques for logic and problem-solving, such as Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI) and alternatives-possibilities-choices (APC).
Undergraduate logic courses, sciene labs training students in inductive reasoning and problem-solving, law schools and the Socratic method they use to teach, Dale Carnegie's thinking techniques (How To Stop Worrying and Start Living), and the Universal Traveler: the soft-systems guide to: creativity, problem-solving and the process of reaching goals by architecture school professor Jim Bagnall, as well as a study of the Bible, all will serve you well and in much more depth, complexity and thoroughness to make you actually able to think things through and make good choices and decisions.
Make Prof. de Bono's book your first step of many in learning how to think critically and thoroughly.