Books

Thinking is the most important thing that you will ever do. And you have to do it every day. If thinking were natural and easy we should all be geniuses.

Considering how important thinking is - for problem solving, making decisions, making plans, responding to situations and generally coping - we pay very little attention to it as a skill. Yet it is a skill, just like skiing and carpentry. We can get better at it if we want to. Learning to ride a bicycle may be awkward and artificial at first, but once we learn how then it becomes very easy and useful.

Computers are nothing without software. The human brain is just an excellent memory mechanism. It requires software to turn this memory mechanism into 'thinking' mechanism.

In this book as software for the mind, Edward de Bono lays out a very simple five-stage structure as a framework for thinking. Much of thinking is a matter of 'directing attention' to what matters. The structure laid out in this book does just that. Instead of the usual confusion of thinking there are clear steps.

1. The TO stage: where am I going to? With what do I want to end up?

2. The LO stage: looking around at the situation. What information is available and what is needed? What are the perceptions?

3. The PO stage: generating possibilities. Setting up alternatives and new ideas.

4. The SO stage: choosing from among the possibilities. Reducing the choices to a line of action.

5. The GO stage: going ahead and putting the thinking into action.

A simple coding system emphasises where we should put the maximum effort. Under each stage there are tools that enable the thinker to work through that stage.

The whole approach is very easy to remember to use. Yet it is based on years of experience in this field. Only a master teacher could afford to be so simple.