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Study Guide & Strategies
Thinking like a genius
"Even if
you're not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle
and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better
manage your future."
The
following eight strategies encourage you to think productively,
rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to
problems. "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of
creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."
1. Look
at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that
no one else has taken (or no one else has publicized!)
Leonardo
da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a
problem, you begin by learning how to restructure it in many
different ways. He felt that the first way he looked at a problem
was too biased. Often, the problem itself is reconstructed and
becomes a new one.
2.
Visualize!
When
Einstein thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to
formulate his subject in as many different ways as possible,
including using diagrams. He visualized solutions, and believed
that words and numbers as such did not play a significant role in
his thinking process.
3.
Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is
productivity.
Thomas
Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving
himself and his assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036
scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University
of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists
produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones. They
weren't afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive
at excellence.
4. Make
novel combinations. Combine, and recombine, ideas, images, and
thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or
unusual.
The laws
of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based came
from the Austrian monk Grego Mendel, who combined mathematics and
biology to create a new science.
5. Form
relationships; make connections between dissimilar subjects.
Da Vinci
forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone
hitting water. This enabled him to make the connection that sound
travels in waves. Samuel Morse invented relay stations for
telegraphic signals when observing relay stations for horses.
6.
Think in opposites.
Physicist Niels Bohr believed, that if you held opposites together,
then you suspend your thought, and your mind moves to a new level.
His ability to imagine light as both a particle and a wave led to
his conception of the principle of complementarity. Suspending
thought (logic) may allow your mind to create a new form.
7.
Think metaphorically.
Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that
the individual who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between
two separate areas of existence and link them together was a person
of special gifts.
8.
Prepare yourself for chance.
Whenever
we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something
else. That is the first principle of creative accident. Failure
can be productive only if we do not focus on it as an unproductive
result. Instead: analyze the process, its components, and how you
can change them, to arrive at other results. Do not ask the
question "Why have I failed?", but rather "What have I done?"
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