The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

The simple and familiar hold the secrets of the complex and unknown.

In everything you do, refine your skills and knowledge about fundamental concepts and simple cases. Once is never enough. As you revisit fundamentals, you will find new insights. It may appear that returning to basics is a step backward and requires additional time and effort; however, by building on firm foundations you will soon see your true abilities soar higher and faster.

If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can’t solve: find it. —George Polya When

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 be successful.” This attitude frees you and allows you to think creatively without fear of failure, because you understand that learning from failure is a forward step toward success. Take a risk and when you fail, no longer think, “Oh, no, what a frustrating waste of time and effort,” but instead extract a new insight from that misstep and correctly think, “Great: one down, nine to go—I’m making forward progress!” And indeed you are. After your first failure, think, “Terrific, I’m 10% done!” Mistakes, loss, and failure are all flashing lights clearly pointing the way to deeper understanding and creative solutions.

mistakes are positive elements of quintessential thinking and failure is an important part of the foundation upon which to build success.

Deep work on simple, basic ideas helps to build true virtuosity—not just in music but in everything.

Sadly, many people spend their entire lives focusing on the wrong questions. They may pursue money, when they really want happiness. They may pursue the respect of people whose favor is really not worthy of being sought.

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. —Michael Jordan

Remember: Extraordinary people are just ordinary people who are thinking differently—and that could be you. Ordinary

the path to change is not through greater willpower and harder work, but rather through thinking differently.

Search for evidence and don’t be satisfied until you know the why.

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. —B. F. Skinner

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. —Winston Churchill

As you learn more, the fundamentals become at once simpler but also subtler, deeper, more nuanced, and more meaningful.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. —Pablo Picasso

It’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you do know that ain’t so. —Will Rogers or Mark Twain or someone else

Whenever you “see” an issue or “understand” a concept, be conscious of the lens through which you’re viewing the subject. You should assume you’re introducing bias. The challenge remains to identify and let go of that bias or the assumptions you bring, and actively work to see and understand the subject anew.

The image of building a life from solid success to solid success is a wonderful dream, but it is only a fantasy.

The mind-set that mistakes are poisonous often freezes us into inaction

Brilliant students and brilliant innovators create their own victories by practicing habits of thinking that inevitably carry them step-by-step to works of greatness

The whole of science is merely a refinement of everyday thinking.

Setting a higher bar for yourself for what you mean by understanding can revolutionize how you perceive the world.

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas. —Albert Einstein

successful people regularly focus on the core purpose of their profession or life. True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics. Trumpeting

Often we are persuaded by authority and repetition rather than by evidence and reality.

First just try to hit the moon … walking on its surface is for another day.

Mistakes, loss, and failure are all flashing lights clearly pointing the way to deeper understanding and creative solutions.