xii One definition of "intelligence" is the capacity to cope: to function effectively in an
environment of some kind - to meet its challenges and capitalize on its possibilities in order to get what we want,
need, and deserve.
p.41 Practical Intelligence: the mental ability to cope with the changes and opportunities of life.
p.101 "You're only given a small spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." - Robin Williams
(comedian)"
p.103 The most important thing every expert needs to learn is to think like a beginner.
p.111 Once you let go of your need to feel certain about everything, you liberate your natural intelligence,
at all levels.
p.133 you're always connected to your perceptual environment; you can't turn off your biocomputer
as you can turn off the computer on your desk... Your "mental browser" is taking in information from your environment... And
everything that comes in has an effect.
You can, however, choose what you pay attention to... Let's coin a phrase and call
it "sensorship."
Sensorship: The practice of consciously and consistently choosing what you will allow into your mind.
p.190 [Inventor Charles F.] Kettering had this to say about the fate of ideas:
"Human beings are so constituted as to see what is wrong with a new thing, not what is right.
To verify this you only have to submit a new idea to a committee. They will obliterate 90 percent of rightness for the sake
of 10 percent wrongness. The possibilities a new idea opens up are not appreciated, because not one [person] in a
thousand has imagination."
p.191 Skilled "idea people" tend to be very possessive about ideas; not that they want to hoard
them or keep others from having them - quite the contrary. They want to make sure they don't get away. Consequently,
they typically have some kind of a personal system that enables them to capture fleeting ideas when they first appear...
very few of the most productive thinkers around us just rely on their memories to keep ideas from escaping.
p.197 I consider the index card - or "three-by-five card" as they're known in the United States
and other countries that measure things with the so-called "English" system of measurement - to be a near-perfect
idea-capturing system.
p.204 The true test of any thinker is his or her ability to see the potential in new-born ideas.
p.267-268 Try to think metaboxically - think about the problem as well as about the ingredients
of the problem. Sit back and look at it. Ask yourself, "What kind of thinking will it take to solve this?" "What
do I have to figure out?" "What do I know?"... draw a picture or diagram to set up a "mental scaffold" for your thinking.
p.325 Effective problem solving is not a series of steps; it's an
adaptive process that unfolds based on the nature of the problem that's being solved.
p.327-328 Heuristic thinking: arriving at a result by intelligent guesswork rather than by following
a pre-established formula.
For the technically minded, heuristic thinking can be contrasted with algorithmic thinking, which
follows a fixed, step-wise process... Suppose we think of solving any problem as a learning process; you "learn" your
way to a solution by increasing your understanding at every stage of the journey... we use our natural wisdom - our
common sense - together with our capacity to learn, discover, and conclude, to navigate from symptoms to solutions.
