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THINKING

Why is it important to think from a variety of perspectives?

What are the various ways people use their intelligence?

What kinds of superpowers can you harness by thinking differently?

Accomplishing something big often requires new approaches to thinking.

An observation usually attributed to Albert Einstein posits, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” And this of course makes perfect sense. So often, we adopt a particular perspective at work, in our home lives, and in our studies, and that outlook effectively walls out any approach that doesn’t fit into that viewpoint. But there are two key problems with that. One is that all perspectives should be challenged on a regular basis to confirm that they are still viable. For example, so often when a company goes out of business, it’s later shown that it was so completely mired in one approach to the marketplace that it wasn’t capable of seeing that the audience they were targeting was no longer as responsive as they once were. The second problem a fixed perspective faces is that challenges are often the product of a particular type of thinking, and the answer can be found only by bringing a fresh approach to the table.

Why do most of us have a restricted range of thinking? I think the answer is the same as it was when we were discussing focus: because we somehow missed out on “thinking class” when we were in school. Fortunately, it’s never too late to attend that class, and I’m going to enroll you in it right now.

THE THINKING HATS

Dr. Edward de Bono devised the concept of the “six thinking hats” as a tool for getting out of whatever rut of thinking one might be mired in.1 Regularly used to help groups problem-solve in a more productive way, it is easily adaptable by any individuals hoping to keep their thinking fresh. The core notion is to separate thinking into six distinctly defined functions by progressively donning a series of metaphorical hats:

You put on a white hat when you’re in information-gathering mode.

At this point, your focus is on collecting details and getting all the facts you’ll need to address whatever issue you’re trying to address. To help you remember this, think of a white lab coat.

You switch to a yellow hat to bring optimism to your thinking. Here, you’re trying to identify the positives in any problem or challenge you’re facing, highlighting the value inherently in place. As your memory tip here, think of the yellow sun.

Next, you’ll wear a black hat to pivot from looking at the good side of the challenge to facing its difficulties and pitfalls. This is where you’ll come face to face with the consequences of failing to successfully address a problem. Memory tip: Think about a judge’s robe.

Once you’ve done that, don your red hat to allow emotion to come into play. This is the point where you can let your feelings about the problem come to the surface, and maybe even express fears. This is also where you can allow speculation and intuition to enter into the conversation. To remember this, think about a red heart.

Now it’s time for the green hat. When you’re wearing this hat, you’re in creativity mode. You’ve looked at the problem analytically and you’ve looked at it emotionally. Now ask yourself, what new ideas can you bring to what you already know about the problem? How can you come at it in a way you haven’t considered before? Memory tip: Think about green grass.

Finally, wear the blue hat to be in management mode, and make sure you’ve addressed your agenda productively and gone through the process in a way that benefits from all the other hats you’ve worn.

Often, organizations will start with the blue hat to set goals for a meeting and then put it on again at the end. Even if you’re using the six hats by yourself, this is something you might want to consider. To remember this, think about blue skies.

The De Bono approach to problem-solving is an ingenious and elegantly organized method for getting the most from your thinking. At its core, it is a neatly defined way of looking at an issue from all sides. First, you make sure you’re clear on what you need to address. Then, you determine that you have all the facts in front of you. Next, you make sure you’re dealing with the issue with a positive perspective. Then, you get real about the challenges you’re facing, and allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling about it. After this, you allow yourself to attack the problem from perspectives you might not have considered before, letting your imagination run free. And then you circle back to make sure you’ve addressed what you set out to address during this session.

Look at how many different ways you’ve used your brain for this one task. You’ve been analytical, you’ve been emotional, and you’ve been creative. You’ve explored the sunny side and the dark side. And you’ve almost certainly attacked the issue with tools you don’t automatically use every single day (though you might from now on). Einstein would be proud of you.

KWIK START

Think of a problem you need to be solved right now. It can be anything from “How can I get that job,” to “How can I communicate better with my family?” Use the Six Thinking Hats model to run through the different perspectives of looking at the problem you’re trying to solve.

HOW ARE YOU SMART?

Why is it important for us to have tools to help us think in different ways?

Because people usually have a dominant way of using their intelligence. Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has studied intelligence extensively and has identified eight distinct forms of intelligence:2

1. Spatial : This is someone who usually thinks from the perspective of the space around them. Airline pilots tend to be spatial thinkers, but so do people who excel at playing chess, as both require an innate understanding of how things fit into space. The artist Claude Monet comes to mind as another example because of his remarkable use of space in his paintings.

2. Bodily-Kinesthetic: Someone with a dominance of this form of intelligence uses their body as a form of expression or problemsolving.

Gymnasts have refined bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, as do drummers. The first name that jumps into my head when I think of this form of intelligence is Venus Williams, who expressed her genius with her body on a tennis court in ways that very few ever have.

1. Musical : This is a person with a strong “sensitivity to rhythm, pitch, meter, tone, melody and timbre.”3 Musicians obviously have a dominance in musical intelligence, but you’ll also find it in poets, who often use meter and rhythm as effectively as they use words. My poster child for musical intelligence is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

2. Linguistic: Someone with a dominance in linguistic intelligence is particularly attuned to all the implications of words, not just their strict dictionary definition. Writers of course have this trait, but so do great orators and lawyers. The first person I think of with linguistic intelligence is William Shakespeare.

3. Logical-Mathematical: This is a strength in seeing the “logical relations among actions or symbols.”4 Mathematicians find themselves very comfortable seeing or seeking the connections between different numbers. Scientists likewise draw connections between physical objects or the forces acting on objects. Our friend Albert Einstein immediately leaps to mind as a prime example.

4. Interpersonal : Someone with a dominance in interpersonal intelligence has a deep innate ability to connect with other people and a rich understanding of how others might be feeling at any given moment. Therapists tend to have strong interpersonal intelligence, as do schoolteachers. When I think of interpersonal intelligence, I think of Oprah Winfrey, because of her amazing ability to relate to whomever she is speaking with.

5. Intrapersonal : If you have dominance in intrapersonal intelligence, you have a particularly refined sense of what is going on inside of you.

People with strong intrapersonal intelligence do a great job of “taking their own temperature.” They’re in touch with their feelings, they know what triggers them, and they have a good sense of how to manage this. If you know someone who is cool under even difficult circumstances, it’s likely that this person has strong intrapersonal intelligence.

1. Naturalistic: This kind of intelligence expresses itself in an ability to see the world of nature in all its complexities. Where you might see a field of flowers, someone with this dominance will see four different kinds of tulips, a couple of varieties of lavender, and a rare grass that you just thought was a weed. Zoologists tend to have a dominance in naturalistic intelligence, as do landscape architects. The first person with this trait who comes to my mind is the remarkable primatologist Jane Goodall.

Do you see yourself in one of these descriptions? There’s a good chance you’ll relate to more than one, because people rarely have only one form of intelligence. It’s likely you have a dominance in one or two, and there may be a couple of others that you employ with some regularity. At the same time, you’ll almost certainly find some on the list that you use rarely, if at all.

But all of these forms of intelligence identify successful ways of operating in the world, and any one of them might come into play when you’re facing a particular task or problem. Awareness of all eight, and considering each while wearing your six thinking hats, is a remarkably effective way to unlimit your thinking.

WHAT IS YOUR LEARNING STYLE?

Just as types of intelligence vary from person to person, the way one learns varies. The VAK learning styles model has been in use since the 1920s and is useful in showing you how you prefer to learn new things:

V is for Visual, meaning that you tend to learn through illustrations, charts, video, and other visual media.

A is for Auditory, meaning that you find yourself most comfortable learning by listening, either to a lecture, a discussion, a podcast, an audiobook, etc.

K is for Kinesthetic, meaning that you prefer to learn via physical interaction. Kinesthetic learners tend to gain more from taking a hands-on approach to learning.

Here’s a quick quiz you can take to give you a sense of what kind of learner you are (see eBook Supplemental Material for a downloadable PDF version):

In all likelihood, you’ll be some mix of audio (A), visual (V), and kinesthetic (K). But you might see a real dominance in one of these, and that can prove to be extremely useful as you embark on unlimiting your thinking, as you can make a conscious effort to bring the others into the mix.

MENTAL MODELS

Mental models are constructs for thinking that help us make sense of the world around us. Think of them as shortcuts. For example, we’ve all heard of the economic mental model of supply and demand. You’re probably familiar with the idea that supply is representative of the amount of something available within a market, whether that’s a service, product, or commodity. When that is juxtaposed against the demand for that item, value is determined, and that often dictates the price of the item. This model is a quick way to understand what’s happening in a market. It’s not always accurate and doesn’t explain every factor involved, but it serves as a simple way of evaluating the price or value of an item.

Mental models train your mind to think; after all, you don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training. Models can act as shortcuts that save you valuable energy and time when you’re evaluating an idea, making a decision, or problem-solving.

In the following pages, I’m including some of my favorite mental models for faster and sharper decision-making and for creative problem-solving.

Decision-Making: The 40/70 Rule

One of the greatest barriers to quick decision-making is the ever-present feeling that we don’t have enough information to make the “right” decision.

Colin Powell, former secretary of state, addresses this with his 40/70 rule.6 His rule is to never make a decision with less than 40 percent of the information you are likely to get, and to gather no more than 70 percent of the information available. According to Powell, anything less than 40 percent and you’re just guessing. Anything more than 70 percent and you’re stalling over making the decision. Of course, this means you need to be comfortable with the possibility that you’re going to be wrong, which is necessary in any case.

“When you have about seventy percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity. My own experience is that you get as much information as you can and then you pay attention to your intuition, to your informed instinct. Sometimes what my analytical mind says to me is not what I’ll do,” Powell said.7

Productivity: Create a Not-to-Do List

This one might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes it’s just as important to know what not to do as what to do. This tactic is used best for directing your attention to the essentials and avoiding what doesn’t matter in the moment.

Often at the beginning of a project, or even just a packed day, it can feel overwhelming to decide what to concentrate on. The power of the not-to-do list is that you decide from the very beginning what you will definitely put aside. When we write down our list of tasks for the day, we usually don’t prioritize, nor do we assign a value to these tasks. It’s easy for a conventional to-do list to become a catchall for all the things we know we have to do that day, instead of the things that must be done first, for the most value.

Lest you think that the not-to-do list is filled with things like participating in social media, let’s work out exactly how you should compile this list: First, write down tasks that might be important but can’t be done because of outside circumstances. Maybe you’re waiting for an e-mail from someone else, or you’re waiting for a colleague to finish their portion of a project.

Next, include tasks that you think need to be done but that don’t add value to your life; you might also think of these as busywork. You might ask yourself if you can delegate or hire someone else to do them. You can also ask if anyone but you will notice whether the task is left undone. The idea here is that your time is best spent on tasks that will move your life and goals forward.

Then include current and ongoing tasks that don’t benefit from additional attention. This might include systems that are already set up, such as making the kids’ lunches or having a brief meeting with your team at the start of the work day. These are part of your routine and shouldn’t be clogging your to-do list on a daily basis.

Last, include urgent tasks that are often to-do lists given to us by other people, such as getting some background research on a project or making follow-up calls. These are tasks that might be necessary to do but perhaps don’t need to be done by you.8

When you’re finished with your don’t-do list, it should read like an antimenu, a list of items that aren’t available for your time. You will then be able to easily identify what will actually move you forward and do those activities instead.

KWIK START

Do this right now. Take a moment to create your not-to-do list for today. What are the things you need to avoid today to focus and achieve your goals? Be specific and check off that list by not doing it.

Problem-Solving: Study Your Errors

When we take the time to study the mistakes we make, especially those that have a lasting effect on our lives, we turn every mistake into a learning opportunity. Use this model to evaluate what went wrong so you can get a better result next time.

First, get clear on what did or didn’t happen. Often, we confuse cause with correlation, so be sure you understand what happened and what led to the mistake or error.

Next, ask yourself why those mistakes happened. Look for the deeper layers behind the incident. You might ask “why” until you’ve run out of layers to question.

Then ask how you can best avoid the same mistakes in the future. If some of the factors that caused the error are out of your control, ask how you can prevent causes that can’t be eliminated.

Finally, using what you’ve gleaned from this exercise, determine how you can create the best conditions to support your desired outcomes in the future.9

To help illustrate this strategy, let’s imagine this scenario: the fundraising project you orchestrated for your child’s school greatly underperformed your expectations. First, you need to be clear on what happened. Did you and your team fail to inspire people to give, or did the donors fail to show up? In this case, let’s assume that the donors were available, but they didn’t give as much as you anticipated or sometimes didn’t give at all.

Now, you need to ask yourself why. Did it have something to do with the way you presented the need? Did it have something to do with the time of year? Did it have something to do with the economy? Remember that your answer here might lead to additional questions. In the scenario we’re playing out, let’s determine that you decide that you might not have emphasized the importance of this campaign, because there’d been a fundraiser at the school only two months prior and you didn’t want to appear pushy, and that your being overly polite caused potential donors to think the cause wasn’t critical.

So, how do you avoid this in the future? You decide that the next time you run the campaign, you’re going to do it earlier in the school year and, regardless of the proximity of any other fundraiser, you’re going to go out of your way to stress the value and importance of this one and why donors need to open up their checkbooks. The upshot of this is that you realize that you need to improve the way you send out the message about your campaign, and you determine to take a class on this so you will be much better prepared when next year’s campaign comes along.

Strategy: Second-Order Thinking

Most of us think about the consequences of our actions, but few of us think even two steps beyond the immediate effects our actions will have on our lives. Let’s consider Ryan Holiday’s book, Conspiracy, which describes how entrepreneur Peter Thiel planned and executed a takedown of one of America’s most prolific (and disliked) online magazines, Gawker.10 Thiel’s desire to confront Gawker was born after the mag outed him as gay. But he did not act immediately. Over the course of 10 years, he and a team strategically made one move after the next based on a plan they had devised to destroy Gawker for good. Regardless of what you think about Thiel’s actions, they were definitely not the product of impulsive thinking. This is an example of second-order thinking, the ability to think strategically through a series of events.

This model is simple and yet not always easy. To use second-order thinking when considering future actions:

Always ask yourself, “And then what?”

Think in increments of time. What do the consequences look like in five days? Five months? Five years?

Draw out the possible courses of action you might take using columns to organize consequences.11

First-order thinking is easy, but it’s second-order thinking that allows us to go deeper through time and consequences. Best of all, it allows us to see what others can’t see.

TAKING GIANT LEAPS

Moving forward incrementally is a significant sign of progress. Every step you can take in the process of becoming limitless is a step in the right direction. But what if you could move your genius forward exponentially?

After all, if we take 30 normal steps forward, we’ll wind up somewhere down the street. But if we took 30 exponential steps, we’d circle the Earth more than two dozen times. That’s the kind of thinking advocated by Naveen Jain, winner of the Albert Einstein Technology Medal and founder of some of the most innovative companies in the world, including Moon Express (the first private company to be authorized to land on the moon), World Innovation Institute, iNome, TalentWise, Intelius, and Infospace.

“Exponential thinking is when you start to see things from a different mindset,” Jain told me. “It’s not about thinking outside the box; it’s about thinking in a completely different box.”12 This is where normal genius begins to border on limitless genius. As Jain explains, linear thinking (the kind of thinking most of us employ) causes us to look at a problem and seek a solution. We might come at the problem from a number of angles. We might put on different hats to address the problem in ways that stretch our thinking. And we might even come up with a solution that addresses the problem effectively and moves us forward. That’s all meaningful progress.

But what if we looked at the root cause of the problem and solved that instead? This would lead to exponential progress, world-changing progress.

Jain uses as an example the lack of fresh water in many parts of the world.

One could attempt to tackle that problem from a number of viewpoints, including finding ways to improve filtration and creating systems for moving fresh water from places where it was abundant to places where it was scarce. But what if instead you identified that, among the various causes for fresh-water scarcity, the biggest is that so much fresh water is being used for agriculture rather than drinking? You would attempt to solve the problem in an entirely different way. What if you could use significantly less water for agriculture, perhaps through some combination of aeroponics, aquaponics, or other techniques currently being experimented with or not yet invented? This would result in such an abundance of fresh water that the original problem would become eminently solvable. That’s exponential thinking at work, and the value of it is obvious.

When Jain started his company Viome, his goal was to attack the pervasive nature of chronic illness, which he sees as underlying the world’s health crisis. Understanding that every individual’s immune system is different and therefore how each person processes the foods they consume can vary greatly, he and his team developed a tool for analyzing an individual’s gut microbiome so a person can “Get to the bottom of what foods are right for your body and discover how optimizing the activity of your gut can dramatically improve the condition of your health.”13 As I write this, they’re in the process of collecting information from a huge number of users, data that will lead to powerful recommendations for every individual who employs the tool.

Naveen Jain operates at the grandest of scales. He’s a successful entrepreneur who has never started two companies in the same industry, and one of his operating principles is that creating a billion-dollar company is simply a matter of solving a $10-billion problem. Now, most of us don’t think on such a massive scale, but you can still use exponential thinking to exercise your mind and unlimit your personal genius. To learn more about Viome and watch my interview with Naveen Jain, visit www.JimKwik.com/ Viome.

THINKING EXPONENTIALLY

So, how does an individual think exponentially? Maybe your goal isn’t to solve all the world’s problems, invent a new technology, or start a billiondollar company, but you can see how applying exponential thinking might make a real difference to your school, your business, or your personal growth. How can thinking less linearly and more exponentially make dramatic changes in your life?

The first step is having a good understanding of what the exponential mindset looks like. In a piece for the Harvard Business Review, Mark Bonchek, founder and chief epiphany officer of Shift Thinking, describes the linear mindset as a line appearing on a graph that rises gradually over time. He then juxtaposes this with a second line that curves upward, slowly at first, and then shooting over the other line before heading far off the graph. This is his visual depiction of the exponential mindset.

Phase of a Business

“The incremental mindset focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset is focused on making something different,” he notes.

“Incremental is satisfied with 10 percent. Exponential is out for 10X.”14 “The incremental mindset draws a straight line from the present to the future,” Bonchek continues. “A ‘good’ incremental business plan enables you to see exactly how you will get from here to there. But exponential models are not straight. They are like a bend in the road that prevents you from seeing around the corner, except in this case the curve goes up.” Bonchek is speaking specifically about applying exponential thinking to business, but the same perception can be brought to bear on thinking in other parts of life. Imagine, for example, that you were trying to figure out how to have everyone in your family at the dinner table at least three times a week. A linear mindset would involve looking at everyone’s work schedules, school schedules, activities schedules, and social schedules to try to find a way to clear out some space. But an exponential mindset would take the approach of turning your family’s harried schedules into something different.

Maybe “dinner” isn’t the goal at all, but rather finding key moments during the week when everyone can be in the same place and focus exclusively on each other. Maybe the issue isn’t your schedules at all but how each of you has chosen to commit their time. Progress might not seem much like progress (three months later, you’re barely better off than when you started), but then the changes you’ve been developing start to take shape, and suddenly you have lots more time together.

If you want to fire up your exponential thinking ability—and take a huge step toward unlimiting your genius—consider these four steps the next time you contemplate a problem or task in need of a solution:

Step 1: Get to the Underlying Problem

As Naveen Jain illustrated when addressing the world’s water problem, the core issue might not be the surface issue at all. As Jain noted, the underlying problem behind the shortage of fresh water isn’t the availability of the water, but rather that so much fresh water is being used for agricultural purposes. Solving the underlying problem allows for a much more workable solution to the surface problem.

Let’s go back to our dinner scenario. The surface problem is that the family rarely eats dinner together because everyone’s schedules are too busy. The underlying problem might be that your schedules are so busy because your spouse feels compelled to work long hours at work, your daughter feels compelled to be an elite athlete, your son feels compelled to get perfect academic scores so he can attend a college with a 3 percent acceptance rate, and you feel compelled to sit on three nonprofit boards.

But maybe even that is not the true underlying problem.

Maybe what’s really at issue is that you each feel the pressures you feel not because you personally aspire to these goals but rather because you live in a community that looks down on people who don’t have goals of this sort.

Step 2: Posit a New Approach

One of the keys to exponential thinking is filling your thoughts with what-if statements. Evie Mackie of the Innovation Hub at the John Lewis Partnership says that “’What If’ statements come into play to bring unruly scenarios into the picture. For example, ‘What if the human race needed to adapt and live in a world which was 90 percent underwater’ or ‘What if we could no longer touch things with our hands to interact.’ This helps conceptualize a WHOLE different array of things we may never have thought of otherwise and allows us to imagine what we would need to survive in a future world, which could be a very different place.”15 In our example, if you’ve realized the underlying problem is that the prevailing notions in your community have forced you into filling your daily lives with activities that take far too much of your time, you might ask yourselves, “What if we didn’t care what everyone else thought?” Or maybe you’d ask, “What if there were only 18 hours in the day instead of 24?” Or you might even ask, “What if we lived somewhere else?”

Step 3: Read about It

As you already know, I am an extremely strong advocate for reading as much as you possibly can. Reading liberates your brain more than virtually any other activity. Reading is especially important when it comes to exponential thinking. You can’t make huge cognitive leaps if you don’t have a well-rounded view of a subject.

So, now that you’ve gone through the what-if exercise, read up on alternatives. Maybe your spouse reads a number of books about the connection between corporate success and happiness. Maybe your daughter connects with bloggers and influencers on both the odds of becoming an elite athlete and the lives of elite athletes. Maybe your son reads a number of studies that look at graduation from ultra-competitive universities and occupational and emotional success afterward. Maybe you read books about the causes you’re championing via your nonprofits and reconsider how important these causes are to you.

Step 4: Extrapolate

You’ve now identified the underlying problem, posed questions that allow you to imagine a world without the problem, and done your research. Now, it’s time to try out a scenario. Let’s play one out here: You’re convinced that you’ve filled your lives with activities because you need these to maintain your status in your community. You’ve asked the question, “What if we lived somewhere else?” and found that everyone in your family is intrigued by this notion. You’ve done your reading and discovered that you could be happier and more satisfied if your job/sports/school/philanthropic goals were revised and reconceived.

So, what would happen if you moved a hundred miles away, across the country, or even to a different country? You know that doing something this dramatic might not immediately seem like progress. You’ve seen the straight line and the curved line, and you realize that it might even seem you’ve taken a huge step backward because of all the adjustments you’d need to make. But say the four of you play out the scenarios and decide that making a move is the right thing to do. Two years later, the family is thriving —and you have dinner together nearly every night.

BEFORE WE MOVE ON

This is the last of the method chapters, and I’m sure you’re itching to put everything you’ve learned in this book to use. Before we end, I’m going to give you a vision of how this might work for you and a 10-day plan to jump-start applying what you’ve learned to your life. But before we get to that, let’s try a few things:

Review Howard Gardner’s eight forms of intelligence starting on HOW ARE YOU SMART?. Which forms on this list align most closely with your own intelligence?

Now that you know what your learning style is, what can you do to incorporate the other styles into your thinking?

Try on all six thinking hats during a test case. Give yourself a relatively simple task, and approach it using Edward de Bono’s method.