ASUPREMENEWYORKTHING

Photo By Alan Burles

First of all, what an amazing photo of this guy. You go on Google and you type his name in and this is the first picture that comes up. All the other pictures are pretty crappy, believe me, you don’t need to try it.

Anyway, I would categorize this guy with all those other guru motivational self-improvement/self-help guys. Do you know a few of them? Here’s some name dropping: Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Donald Trump, Dalai Lama… These are the few that I know and am familiar with. There are a lot more, like that Japanese guy who wrote about being a rich dad or even Suze Orman or Jim Cramer. I feel like they’re all kind of in that category.

Being a guru is big big business because look around you, most people are not exactly feeling or doing the best they can and a lot of them are looking for a solution, looking for help and these gurus are marketed as easy solutions -IF! you buy their books or audiotapes or even attend one of their Learning Annex classes (no, I have never went to one of those).

Okay, I’ll get into that other stuff a little bit later, this entry should really be about Edward De Bono.

Anyway, he is an interesting guy. I don’t know much about him but I recently downloaded this audiobook thing off of mininova.org and felt the need to let you know. He talks about thinking and how to be more creative. There are some managerial techniques for running a meeting like this whole Six Thinking Hats thing and there are just some techniques to help provoke the mind to be more active in thinking instead of just waiting for problems to occur or waiting for the mind to just stumble onto good ideas.

I have to say, after listening to the audiobook, I was still confused by some of the techniques but at the same time I did come away with some things that I should improve upon. He thinks that we should make provocations when trying to come up with a solution to a problem.

For example, if you’re trying to get water out of the ground through a small hole, you should recommend crazy ideas. A provocation he suggested was to put MORE water into it. The response to that would be, okay, douchebag, how the hell would that get the water out? Well, he says you already know the obvious, that you can’t, BUT!, think about how to adapt to THAT situation where you DO put more water to get the existing water out. Putting more water is something we CAN do and how in THAT situation would we be able to get the existing water out.

Yeah, I don’t know, his ideas are pretty interesting but confusing at times.

The solution to that problem was to put more water into a bag after you stick the bag into the hole so that the filled bag would push the water out. I guess that’s pretty interesting but it’s a lot of steps of thinking that I don’t know if I’m capable of. It’s pretty obvious after I tell you the solution but who would have thought you could use a bag? I don’t know.

The idea behind that example is that sitting where you’re sitting now may not necessarily provide the best perception of the situation. What if you were sitting somewhere else? What if instead of sitting with just some water in a hole, you’re sitting with water in a hole AND the possibility of having to put more water into the hole? Wild.

Here. Here’s the idea behind this entry: Listen to some of the stuff, think about it and get the idea behind the teachings but don’t just take it and accept it. Maybe a guru is just a douchebag. While the ideas may be generally good, they may not necessarily apply to your life.

Oh, Six Thinking Hats - Imagine you have six hats and when you’re wearing a hat, you’re suppose to use your mind for a specific task. The benefit of this is that you assume these six hats cover all the areas of thinking. A lot of people may be good at saying something is bad but never come up with something that’s good. The six thinking hats thing is just saying when coming up with ideas, here are six processes that need to occur in your head and by having these six hats, you can make the whole process more efficient. The efficiency comes from identifying these six areas and actively focusing on it. Here are the six hats:

White Hat - What is the data you have? Think about the current situation and all the information you currently have

Red Hat - How do you feel about it? Take this time that you’re wearing this imaginary red hat and allow yourself to express how you feel intuitively about something

Black Hat - The “Logical-negative” or Why is the idea or suggestion not good? Why would it not work? When you’re wearing this imaginary black hat, you give all the reasons why something would be a bad idea.

Yellow Hat - The “Logical-positive” or Why it would work? You look at all the advantages of something.

Green Hat - Creativity Hat - Come up with good ideas, suggestions, proposals

Blue Hat - Look at thinking itself. Look at thinking from a macro perspective, what is the next step in thinking? Which hat should you wear? Manage the thinking towards a positive productive direction.

Okay, so, if you’ve got a bunch of people during a meeting and they’re not assholes and they understand this whole Six Thinking Hats thing, then you can say, “Okay, lets put on our Red hat and give our feelings about this” or “Okay, lets first put on our White hats, then our Green hats and then our Yellow hats.” In this way, it is more efficient and it covers the six areas, assuming that Edward De Bono is right and that good thinking involves JUST these six processes.

You get it? No? Okay, this entry was probably more for me than you. Anyway, good luck, try downloading it, listening to it and then reading this entry.

Here’s the thing about these self-help/self-improvement things. They’re good in that they do make you want to focus on more important things but ultimately it comes down to you lifting your finger and doing stuff. I have found myself listening to a lot of this but not following the often times GREAT advice. Booyah!