The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

‍

‍

Author: Edward B. Burger & Michael Starbird

‍

Personal Score: 8.7/10

Goodreads Score: 3.99/5

‍

Get it here on Amazon.

‍

‍

🎨Impressions

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking presents practical, lively, and inspiring ways for you to become more successful through better thinking. The idea is simple: You can learn how to think far better by adopting specific strategies. If you're aim is to develop your thinking this is one of the most useful books out there. It's filled with practical examples and actionable exercises (bolded in the summary).

‍

🚀This Book in 3 Bullets

• The elements in this book will allow you to enhance your thinking skillset by adopting specific strategies and practical exercises.
  ‍
• The books core messages follow the four fundamental elements:
            - Earth - Developing deep understanding.
             - Fire - Embracing failure and iteration.
             - Air - Questioning everything and creating questions to direct attention to new insights.
             - Water - Understand the flow of ideas.
  ‍

• Embracing the elements of this book will effectively lead you to think better and be a more well-rounded, valuable member of society. The key is to be open to and actively work toward constructive change.

‍

📜Book Summaries & Key Lessons
‍

🏔️Earth - Grounding your Thinking

• If you can't explain something you don't know it, Earth is the solid ground that we stand firmly on which is analogous to the solid understanding we can have of the subjects we learn if we form deep and conceptual knowledge about the components that make that subject whole. Only then can we stand on its' foundation and grow larger.
  ‍
• Understand simple things deeply - Expertise in every skillset requires a mastery of the fundamental principles of that skillset. They realize the nuances of the most basic components of that skill on a deep level.
  ‍
• "Exercise: Master the basics - Consider a skill or subject that you want to improve on or learn and spend five minutes writing down the specific components to that skill or subject that make up its basic theme. Now pick one of those core components and spend 30 minutes actively improving your mastery of it" Through reading, drilling, practicing etc.
  ‍

• "The simple and familiar hold the secrets of the complex and unknown...To learn any subject well and to create ideas beyond those that have existed before, return to the basics repeatedly."
  ‍
• "Exercise: Ask: What do you know? How well do you actually know a subject you think you do? Choose a subject you are familiar with and think you understand then grab a piece of paper and, without any external resources, spend 20 minutes outlining on that paper everything you know about the subject. Imagine you were teaching it to somebody with zero information on it. Can you write detailed and descriptive explanations of the core components that make up that subject? Can you give thorough examples? Afterwards, compare your effort to external sources and highlight areas you were weak in."
  ‍

• When faced with a huge complicated subject or challenge, don't confront it head on. Break it up into smaller, more manageable exercises and then attack each one of those. Focus on solving the subproblems first, if you can't solve them, create smaller subproblems until you can.
  ‍
• "If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it." - George Polya
  ‍
• "Exercise: Sweat the small stuff - Consider a complex issue in your life and instead of tackling it entirely, find one small element of it and solve that part completely." For homework, don't focus on the entire project due at the end of the year, break that down into its tiniest components and tackle them week by week.
  ‍
• Uncover the essence: When faced with a challenging issue, discover its essential ingredients and focus on those. When humans first began to make airplanes, most inventors focused on the flapping of birds wings but the essential key that allowed birds to fly was not the flapping, it was the way the wind hit the shape and angle of the birds' wings. This strategy requires two steps:
               - Identify and ignore all distracting features.
               - Analyze and study the central issue and apply your learnings to the whole.

• "You may not be able to see everything, but you can certainly ignore most things."
  ‍
• "Having essential goals in mind makes daily decisions clearer." (Ie. for parenting and organizations)
  ‍
• Now see what's there: "You (and everybody else) have prejudices. Admit it already and move forward from there."
  ‍
• Assume you always enter knowledge with bias, your job is to discover what bias is there and avoid it. Only by removing bias, prejudice, or previous understandings can you see what is actually there.
  ‍
• Be honest and accurate about what you actually know about a subject or skill.
  ‍
• "What everybody believes is not actually what is always true... a combination of authority and reasonableness is a recipe for deep entrenched biases." Nearly every discovery made originally goes against conventional thought (Ie. evolution, law of gravity, etc.) so be aware that most of what we hold true, is probably still wrong.
  ‍
• "How do you know? Becoming aware of the basis of your opinions or beliefs is an important step toward a better understanding of yourself and your world." Regularly investigate your opinions and beliefs.
  ‍
• Exercise: Try on alternatives and size up the fit - Take an opinion you hold strongly in which other people may hold opposing opinions that are clearly wrong. Now spend a day on the other side completely and develop your best argument for that side of the opinion. Try not to be judgmental and be open to accepting what you learn. By fortifying opposing views, you will see clearly where your own view holds strong and where its lacking. Ask friends you know of on that side and proactively seek out ways of learning more about it.
  ‍
• "One of the most profound ways to see the world more clearly is to look deliberately for the gaps - the negative space as its known in the art world." But how?
  ‍
• "Add the adjective and uncover the gaps." before photographs came out in color, there were no "black and white" photos because they were all black and white. Now imagine if before we had color photos, someone began prefacing the word photo with black and white. This would unveil the true potential of photos. The same goes for World War 1, which was only known as The Great War beforehand but what if they referred to at as #1 from the start, would they have likely entered into a second so quickly?
  ‍
• We become conscious of issues and ideas when we explicitly identify and articulate them. Sometimes, by merely describing something as it is in greater detail will open up a world of possibilities.
  ‍
• Exercise: See the invisible - Select your own subject, issue, or object and attach an adjective or descriptive phrase that points out something we might take for granted. Then consider whether your phrase suggest new possibilities. (Ie. how might you describe the educational system? the nil illustration in the book shares one: "non-individualized education".
  ‍

• "The familiar is full of unseen depth and wonder. Clear away distractions and look to see what is actually there, then investigate it and make it clearly visible. Develop an understanding of what's invisible to others but clearly seen to those of deeper understanding."

‍

🔥Fire: Igniting Insights through Mistakes

• "Mistakes and failure are not signs of weakness, instead they are opportunities for success." Being willing to fail is a liberating characteristic you can develop with practice. Failure reveals the truth and allows you to make progress. "Whenever you feel stuck, and you don't know what to do, don't do nothing-instead fail."
  ‍
• It can be frightening and feel unnatural in society but its the most natural to growth so fail often and fail forward. This chapter shows you how to best to that.
• "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
  ‍
• "Failure is a critical element of effective learning, teaching, and creative problem solving"
  ‍
• "Exercise: 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 succeed." This attitude frees you from the misconception that everything has to go right immediately. It encourages you to takes risks and moves forward despite feeling apprehension.
  ‍
• Failing productively only requires to thoughtful steps:
               - Creating the mistake - Try your best to get it right and see where you land.
              - Exploiting the mistake - Analyze what went wrong by investigating specific areas of error.

• "Let your errors be your guide - A specific mistake is an excellent source of insight and direction, because a mistake gives you something specific to think about: "This attempt is wrong because X." When you fill in the blank, you are forcing yourself to identify precisely what is wrong with your attempted solution. This process shifts the activity from trying to think about the correct solution, which you don't know at the moment, to the activity of correcting mistakes, which is often something you can do."
  ‍
• The author then tells a story about a student answering a difficult math question in front of her class. She reluctantly says an answer she believes to be wrong which the teacher agrees, she is wrong, but then he asks her to name one wrong thing about the solution she gave, and they fix it, then the teacher asks again, what's one thing wrong? Which she offers another fix. This continues until she's cleared all the errors and has a correct solution. Her name was Mary.
  ‍
• The process: Make an attempt, Find a flaw, fix it, make another attempt... This process creates everything.
  ‍
• All great writing, speeches, lyrics, movies, architecture, and software have first drafts because the individual doesn't know what's wrong until they see the idea laid out.
  ‍
• "A man's errors are his portals of discovery." - James Joyce
  ‍
• "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling
  ‍
• "You may not know how to do it right, but you can certainly do it wrong." If you know you will fail then tackle the issue with the least effort possible so you can start the fixing stage.
  ‍
• Exercise: Don't stare at a blank screen - Take a problem, issue, or daunting project you are facing and open up a blank piece of paper (or take one out) and just start vomiting out any ideas that come to mind. The good, bad, and terrible. Don't be judgmental. "When you just write down ideas without worrying about correctness, your thoughts and ideas will flow more easily" Afterwards, review your ideas and throw out the bad ones while elaborating and expanding the elements of the good ones. You can repeat these sessions repeatedly to get more good ideas.
  ‍
• Exercise: Write a 5 page exercise titled My View of The World and write it again 6 months - one year later. See where you changed, made improvements and grew.
  ‍
• Give credit to failure, knowing what you know, don't just accept success, try, try and try again until you hit failure. When you make an almost success... like getting 80% on a test or nearly closing that deal, take a moment immediately to review failures.
  ‍
• An effective strategy for using failure to gain insights is to exaggerate conditions either through a physical or thought experiment. Thus exposing specific elements of your project or issue. So when you make mistakes you have 2 paths:
                    - Adjust and fix the mistake to fail better.
                    - Ask whether the mistake might be the correct solution to another problem, or a sub problem that you're having.

• Another way to use failure to your advantage is to intentionally fail BIG. exaggerate your failure. There are plenty of circumstances where this exposes the errors in your ways in a much more highlighted fashion... like how cars go under stress testing.(Ie. in business or a classroom - you could ask what you would do if there were NO budgetary constraints. This could lead to interesting insights.
  ‍
• Exercise: Exaggerate to generate defects - Consider an issue or a problem and now exaggerate a feature of it to a ridiculous extreme. For example, take an opinion you have where there might be opposing views and exaggerate your perspective on it to an extreme, make an argument so exaggerated that you realize it's way over the top. Now study the exaggerated description and uncover its defects. Do they exist in the original?
  ‍
• Lastly, learn from the mistakes of others. Internalize what might have led to their mistake and discover its root cause. Then write or repeat to yourself why their error exists and how you'll avoid it.

🌬️Air: Creating Questions out of Thin Air

• The theme of this chapter is be your own Socrates.
  ‍
• By constantly creating questions out of thin air, you take profound steps towards understanding the world around you. It's a mindset of tremendous impact. You become more alive and curious, because you are actively engaged while you are listening and learning. Question things, question people, and most of all, question yourself.
  ‍
• You gain wisdom just by asking questions, a challenging question can reveal biases, hidden errors, and alternatives just by generating it. You Also shouldn't reserve them for only when you do not know something, writing out questions for things you do know generate solutions too.
  ‍
• Asking "What if..." questions and "How could I..." lead to forcing you to challenge the status quo and understand the world differently.
  ‍
• "Effective teachers encourage, invite, and even force their students to ask those fundamental questions."
  ‍
• Get in the habit of asking "Do I really know this?" and challenge yourself with digging questions from an opposing viewpoint. Test your assumptions through questioning.
  ‍
• Moreover, we can use questions to learn the causes of change over time - Innovation, technology, and history is always changing around us. We're not at the end of it, we're in the middle of the everchanging world. Questions can help us discover causation for the patterns we see and project into the future more effectively.
  ‍
• "Everything fits together and interacts - take the transformative step of asking how"
  ‍
• "Exercise: Teach to learn - Consider an idea or a topic that you are trying to better understand, and create a list of fundamental questions that will guide you to a complete explanation, including motivation, examples, overview, and details, of that subject. With those questions in hand, prepare a mini lecture and teach the subject to someone."
  ‍
• "Creating questions enlivens your curiosity" Is how you prepare for Jiu Jitsu the most effective? Is your workout routine the most effective for a healthy and strong body? How could you make a routine that encourages ever lasting health? How could you change your diet to be healthier? How could you change your environment to encourage learning and writing? How could you change your environment to encourage a healthier lifestyle? What is the best way to read a book?
  ‍
• When teaching, instead of asking "are there any questions", assume there are and ask your students to come up with some.
  ‍
• Questions will help you become a more active and efficient listener. By asking questions you'll increase your engagement with what's being said. Even if they're just to yourself. Merely listening is not enough, questions will help you get more out of lectures and learnings.
• Life is about answering questions and sadly, people focus on the wrong ones lots of the time. In life, learning, and living, always ask "Whats the real question here?" Only real questions lead to the most effective actions.
  ‍
• "Effective questions turn your mind in directions that lead to new insights and solutions."
  ‍
• 3 common errors to questioning:
            1. Don't make them to vague (Ie. How can I be successful?) - a good question has very clear a well defined components that lead to a specific space of thinking.
  ‍
            2. Careful its not the wrong question (How can I ace my exam?) - A good question leads to effective actions around a goal our piece of knowledge. Wrong questions just lead to confusion and poor actions. "The right questions focus attention the features that matter and clarify understanding (How can develop a studying schedule that strengthens my knowledge in this subject?)
  ‍
            3. Don't make assumptions with questions (Ie. Why do African Americans underperform on math tests?) - Questions like this make assumptions about a population and take attention away from the components that actually matter. Variants like motivation, teaching methods, confidence in instruction, feelings about learning. Good questions expose real issues.

• "Exercise: Improve the question - For a student, asking the question of "How can I get better grades?" is not effective. Questions such as "How can I learn to think better and understand more deeply?" and "How can I increase my curiosity for the subject at hand?" are far more constructive. For the questions below create and craft questions focused on your objectives and relevant to you. Try to create questions that expose hidden assumptions, clarify issues, and lead to action.
                - How can I better manage my time?
               - How can I land the 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?
                - How can I live a healthier lifestyle?
                - How can I learn more effectively?

• "Asking questions about goals, you are better able to extract the advantages from assignments. Always question the questions."
  ‍
• Exercise: Ask meta questions - Asking questions about an assignment, project or goal before beginning the work in earnest always lead to a stronger final product. Ask "Whats the goal of this task? and "What value will flow from this task?" Keep that benefit in mind while posing questions and performing action. This will save time and improve the effectiveness of your actions.
  ‍
• "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently, that which should not be done at all." - Peter Drucker

💧Water: Seeing the Flow of Ideas

• Many people believe the world around them is in a complete state but this is far from the truth. It's much more realistic and healthy to view the world as one constantly in flux. "One in which construction is always underway-everything is a work-in-progress... "
  ‍
• "To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life." - Samuel Johnson
  ‍
• Everybody and everything around you is changing from one state to another, continuously. There is no normal state of things. "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."
  ‍
• "Every great idea is a human idea that evolved from hundreds, if not thousands of individuals struggling to make sense of and understand the issue at hand."
  ‍
• Exercise: Iterates Ideas - Engineer your own evolution. Take a goal, essay, or project that you're facing and write the first draft or take a crack at the first attempt quickly. Complete the first movements or first draft in fast forward. This will create a subpar first attempt but consider this your starting point. React to the work and re-iterate it, edit it and making small fixes to it.
  ‍
• "To understand a concept, discover how it naturally evolves from simpler thoughts. Recognizing that the present reality is a moment in a continuing evolution makes your understanding fit into a more coherent structure."
  ‍
• "To generate new ideas, first modify an existing idea within its context and then apply the same idea in different settings. Then you can construct extensions, refinements, and variations."
  ‍
• Newton explained himself "If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
  ‍
• A calculus introductory textbook presents two new fundamental ideas and the entirety of its 1,294 pages consist of examples, variations, applications. Students might be amazed that teachers know all the answers in the text but in truth, they just understand the two ideas so thoroughly, they are able to explain all of their variations. Discover the essential!
  ‍
• "Every subject is an ongoing journey of discovery and development." It's components and evolution are not made up of disconnected topics but a flow of ideas.
  ‍
• Exercise: 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 or a year. Acknowledging the reality will allow you to generate new insights as well as create fruitful directions in which to move forward."
  ‍
• To better master a subject, look beyond what's there and make guesses at what will come next. Even in a text or lecture. The practice of making it up will engage your mind and provide value even if you're wrong.
  ‍
• Once you understand more advanced areas of a subject, looking back to the fundamentals will improved your understanding of both. Strengthening your foundation and giving you new insights to use.
  ‍
• All new ideas we have, are only tiny variations of what we already knew. There just one small step taken from the last frontier position. Essentially every great idea today can be described as someone getting to know what we already new and extending by one tiny step.
  ‍
• "One of the challenges to life is to be open-minded about new ideas and new possibilities. Novelties that appear strange today will be familiar, natural, and perhaps beautiful to the next generation. "
  ‍
• A new idea or resolution should always be viewed as a new beginning, not the ending of something. Life long learners strive to uncover the hidden lessons and consequences from each successful step taken.
  ‍
• Failure is progression, success is a new beginning. There is no end, until one quits.
  ‍
• Thomas Edison invented hundreds of new useful products with the attitude "I start where the last man left off." He also said "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
  ‍
• Every new idea is only a tiny tip of its own monumental iceberg.
  ‍
• "Exercise: 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 challenges is to find them."
  ‍
• "We limit ourselves when we think success is an end"
  ‍
• One of our challenges in this is to see the world with fresh eyes, and not let the history we're aware of becoming an obstacle to current solutions. Get in the habit of seeing each advancement as the lowest slop of a much higher peak.
  ‍
• Once you have it, see if you can improve it: Once you have a completed essay, project or business go back to the drawing board and pretend there is something wrong with it. Assume there is a mistake, omission, or misjudgment. Find it and create alternatives to the original. See if any new insights come from this.
  ‍
• "Human beings do not instantly see far. Our field of intellectual vision is limited to a few steps from where we are now." This is why chess is a great game to play.
  ‍
• So how can we explore the consequences of progress and change, ask yourself "Whats next?" Explore the future domino sequence. You won't be right all the time but the exercise is powerful.
  ‍
• "By extrapolating the flow of future ideas, we can identify invisible problems today."
  ‍
• "Exercise: 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?
  ‍
• "The first real action item for all of us is to acknowledge that we are all prejudiced."

🌌The Quintessential Element: Engaging Change

• The fifth element is not like the others, it is not a technique to enhance thinking but a challenge to adopt the habit of constructive change.
  ‍
• Embracing the elements of this book will effectively lead you to think better and be a more well rounded, valuable member of society.
  ‍
• You just have to be open and proactive about changing yourself.
  ‍
• On one hand this is easy, on another its incredibly difficult. You have to see every aspect of your inner world as an evolving form.
  ‍
• As a beginner in this type of growth, expect to not see much but as you grow your perspective will change and you will see what was once unseen. If you closed you eyes to play tennis it would look similar to if you opened your eyes but the act would be missing a lot. The professional player sees the ball way better than the beginner, and therefore the beginner mise well be blind. At first, you will be blind to the potential of growth around you, but as you work, it will become visible. Have faith in the process.
  ‍
• To be open to change is to be open to doing things differently. The successful person is not just doing the same things better than you, their doing things differently than you. Instead of asking "What can I do better?" ask "What can I do differently?"
  ‍
• "In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks." - Warren Buffet
  ‍
• Expert Change - If you're learning something, developing a skill, or solving a problem, imagine in detail, what a professionally skilled and world class person in that area would do? Describe the different tasks they would be doing, compared to what you're currently doing. Instead of thinking you're going to be doing something harder, imagine the methods or approach that make it an easy one.
  ‍
• Everything is a learnable skill, you just have to be open to change.
  ‍
• The magic of the 10,000 hour rule is accumulated incremental progress from 1 - 9,999 hours in which the journey forward becomes aided by your persistence in deep and hard thinking. "This book is about what to do during hours 1 through 9,999.
  ‍
• Your most profound changes come from "letting old ideas crumble in the face of challenges in order to build yet better structures. Don't mute voices that challenge you beliefs" turn doubts into lessons that test assumptions. Be willing to change your mind, it is not your identity, only an idea or view you hold of the world. Be eager to update it.

🎴Top Quotes

• "The simple and familiar hold the secrets of the complex and unknown...To learn any subject well and to create ideas beyond those that have existed before, return to the basics repeatedly."
  ‍
• "You may not be able to see everything, but you can certainly ignore most things."
  ‍
• "Having essential goals in mind makes daily decisions clearer."
  ‍
• "You (and everybody else) have prejudices. Admit it already and move forward from there."
  ‍
• "What everybody believes is not actually what is always true... a combination of authority and reasonableness is a recipe for deep entrenched biases."
  ‍
• "How do you know? Becoming aware of the basis of your opinions or beliefs is an important step toward a better understanding of yourself and your world."
  ‍
• "The familiar is full of unseen depth and wonder. Clear away distractions and look to see what is actually there, then investigate it and make it clearly visible. Develop an understanding of what's invisible to others but clearly seen to those of deeper understanding."
  ‍
• "Mistakes and failure are not signs of weakness, instead they are opportunities for success."
  ‍
• "Whenever you feel stuck, and you don't know what to do, don't do nothing-instead fail."
  ‍
• "Failure is a critical element of effective learning, teaching, and creative problem solving."
  ‍
• "Let your errors be your guide - A specific mistake is an excellent source of insight and direction, because a mistake gives you something specific to think about: "This attempt is wrong because X." When you fill in the blank, you are forcing yourself to identify precisely what is wrong with your attempted solution. This process shifts the activity from trying to think about the correct solution, which you don't know at the moment, to the activity of correcting mistakes, which is often something you can do."
  ‍
• "You may not know how to do it right, but you can certainly do it wrong."
  ‍
• "Effective teachers encourage, invite, and even force their students to ask those fundamental questions."
  ‍
• "Everything fits together and interacts - take the transformative step of asking how."
  ‍
• "Creating questions enlivens your curiosity."
  ‍
• "Effective questions turn your mind in directions that lead to new insights and solutions."
  ‍
• "Asking questions about goals, you are better able to extract the advantages from assignments. Always question the questions."
  ‍
• "New ideas today are built on the ideas of yesterday and illuminate the way to brilliant ideas of tomorrow."
  ‍
• "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."
  ‍
• "Every great idea is a human idea that evolved from hundreds, if not thousands of individuals struggling to make sense of and understand the issue at hand."
  ‍
• "To understand a concept, discover how it naturally evolves from simpler thoughts. Recognizing that the present reality is a moment in a continuing evolution makes your understanding fit into a more coherent structure."
  ‍
• "To generate new ideas, first modify an existing idea within its context and then apply the same idea in different settings. Then you can construct extensions, refinements, and variations."
  ‍
• "One of the challenges to life is to be open-minded about new ideas and new possibilities. Novelties that appear strange today will be familiar, natural, and perhaps beautiful to the next generation."
  ‍
• "We limit ourselves when we think success is an end."
  ‍
• "By extrapolating the flow of future ideas, we can identify invisible problems today."
  ‍
• "The first real action item for all of us is to acknowledge that we are all prejudiced."
  ‍
• "Letting old ideas crumble in the face of challenges in order to build yet better structures. Don't mute voices that challenge you beliefs."

‍