Better employment

In the UK the Holst Group working with New Deal (the government programme for unemployed youngsters) found that teaching just six hours of thinking increased employability FIVE FOLD. What was taught was a mixture of CoRT and Six Hats.

This is truly a remarkable result and if any reader of this message wishes to send it on to his or her member of parliament, minister or prime-minister, please do so.

If six hours of thinking can do more for employment than ten years of traditional education, then there is something seriously wrong with education.

Edward de Bono, 26-June-2000

EBS

Examine Both Sides (or E.B.S for short) is a simplified form of O.P.V which involves you and the other person's (or group) thinking. For the duration of this tool application, you put yourself in the shoes of the other party and try to read his mind. As with O.P.V you are not trying what the other party should think but what he or she is thinking based upon his wishes and environment.

Practicing this tool is same as practicing other thinking tools. You set a time limit (2-5 minutes) and write down first your thinking and then other persons' thinking.

Practicing this tool before a job interview or a business deal can increase your success rate. You understand the other side better and you prepare better.

A small business owner, I have worked with, is extremely good at doing E.B.S. His employees always remark that when they go to him for something he would already know what they were going to discuss or demand. So he always has counter arguments (or a solution) ready.

With E.B.S you are not forced to think humbly or cruelly. You just do your best possible effort to examine the thinking of both parties involved.

Exercises:

1. Your spouse wants you to go for a morning walk. You prefer to stay at home to study a book. Examine both sides and write down the thoughts of both parties (you and your spouse)
2. Your brother (who is also your business partner) wants to do aggressive marketing to get new customers. You want to focus on satisfying existing customers. Do an E.B.S.
3. You want your son (or daughter) to read books. He (or she) wants to watch moves or play video games. Do an E.B.S.

Your mission

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where ..." said Alice.
"Then it does not matter which way you go," said the Cat.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The famous quote above provides ample reason for a mission or direction in your life. A mission creates a filter in your life which gets applied to all your activities. A mission vitalizes you and gives you a sense of achievement with every small step or learning experience. This, in turn, makes you happy and vibrant.

Without a mission or direction you can live decades without achieving anything.

What is your mission?

QUOTE: Action

"Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action."
Benjamin Disraeli

OPV

Attention directing thinking tool OPV stands for 'Other People's Views'. To practice this tool in a given situation;

1. List the people involved or affected by a particular situation or thinking.
2. List the views of each person involved. For this put yourself in each person's shoes and imagine what he thinks.

As with any thinking exercise, time allowed for this is very short from 3-5 minutes (or bit more if the list of people involved is bit longer)

Note that with OPV you do not list what other people should think, but what they will think on their own. You are not trying to impose your thinking, you are trying to read their minds.

Exercises:

1. You are owner of a business. Your organization provides free lunch to all staff. You are thinking to discontinue this free lunch. Do an OPV. (List the people affected and what they will think)
   
2. You are tired of your job which is getting you nowhere in future. You just decide to take risk, quit your job and spend a year to build your own business or find a new job. Do an OPV for your wife, father, mother and a close friend.
3. Your employer stops the free medical care because a number of people were misusing it. Do an OPV for employees who were misusing it and for those who were fair.

Writing makes you think better.

Among other things, writing clarifies your thoughts and generates ideas. This guy had a problem and proceeded to write it down so that he could post it on internet to get recommendations. But he never posted it. His problem was solved while he was writing.

Paul Graham writes in his essay, "Writing, Briefly":

"expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong;"

So write it even if no one reads it.

Intelligence is not enough

"The general notion that intelligence (analysis, logic, and argument) is enough is dangerous in many ways. The emphasis is on the logical rather than perceptual skills, which are so important in real-life thinking and doing. The ability of an intelligent person to avoid obvious errors and to put together a coherent argument often blinds that person to the need to develop deliberate thinking skills. The avoidance of error is certainly not enough in thinking."

(Edward deBono, I am right you are wrong, p-275)

Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to achieve

An interesting article which says that if you announce your plans you are less motivated to achieve them. Agreed. I have experienced the same thing myself.

From the article:

Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.

...

It may seem unnatural to keep your intentions and plans private, but try it. If you do tell a friend, make sure not to say it as a satisfaction (“I’ve joined a gym and bought running shoes. I’m going to do it!”), but as dissatisfaction (“I want to lose 20 pounds, so kick my ass if I don’t, OK?”)

QUOTE: Conquering fear

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content
with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress,
saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?" Seneca.

Learning backwards

Dr. Edward de Bono says:

"If you were teaching someone how to use a wood-turning lathe you might use the following sequence: check the machine, switch it on, position the tool in the jaws, position the wood in the chuck, recheck, switch on the drive, observe and control the process ... switch off the drive, take out the tool, remove the formed wood, switch off the machine. This is the normal time sequence in which the operation would be carried out and it seems sensible to teach first things first.

But this way of teaching may be quite wrong. It may be best to teach the sequence backwards. Perhaps the first thing we ought to teach is how to switch the machine off, then how to remove the formed wood  ... and lastly how to switch it on." (I am right, you are wrong; page 96)

I have had great success with this method when teaching databases to students about 10 years ago. First I showed them a real database application running, dissected it into its parts, taught them how to build the major building blocks (tables, forms, reports). Database normalization, terminology and other abstract things were the last items they were taught. Learning was extremely fast as well as other benefits. Students were able to make sense of their learning immediately and were enthusiastic and looking forward to each learning session.

Alternate uses of blogs

Blogging platforms (blogger.com, posterous.com, wordpress.com etc.)
allow you to create a blog where you can publish your thoughts at a
frequency you like.

A blog is a web page which has a date associated
with each post (a sort of web page). These pages are presented in
reverse chronological order (that is, the latest post/page is shown
first followed by the older posts/pages.)

Simplicity of blog websites coupled with the ability to post updates
through email makes it possible to do a number of wonderful things like:

1. Publish a daily updated things-to-do list for yourself or your department or your organization.
2. Update daily (or weekly or monthly) prices and rates in your industry. (Gold, currencies, real estate etc.)
3. Make notes of what your learned today. (class room or self-learning.) Share it with world or keep it personal.
4. Build a repository of web sites links (bookmarks) you find useful while browsing internet and may want to visit later.
5. Prepare lecture notes and share with your students through a blog.
6. Update your inventory onhand list for your branches or salespeople reference.

etc.

Keep in mind that:

1. You can allow the whole world to view your blog or restrict it to yourself or a group of users.
2. You can allow multiple people to update the same blog.

QUOTE: Perfection

"Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away."
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The easiest way to build your blog

You wanted to build your blog but always thought it was difficult.

Not anymore. The easiest and simplest way to build a blog is here. You
only need to know how to send email.

1. Write something. Attach any images, videos, files etc.
2. Send it to post@posterous.com.

Your blog will be created and its URL sent to you in email. You can keep
updating it by sending more emails to the above email address.

See a sample one here: http://saqibawan.posterous.com/

Now there is no excuse to not having a website or blog.

QUOTE: Dressing up

"There is another branch of decorative art in which I am sorry to say we cannot, at least under existing circumstances, indulge ourselves, with the hope of doing good to anybody, I mean the great and subtle art of dress ...

There can be no question, that all the money we spend on the forms of dress at present worn, is, so far any good purpose is concerned, wholly lost." Ruskin

Provocations

"You are working in an organization for the last 5 years. You sometime
think about switching your job or starting your own business but dismiss
it immediately considering all the risks associated with it. One day,
your boss gets infuriated on some petty issue and threatens to fire you
from job. This episode is repeated next day too. Suddenly your brain
starts working and you no longer consider the idea of switching your job
or starting your own business (or changing your job) too risky."

"Some old friend of yours visits you and tells you how easily he was
able to setup an internet based business which allowed him to get rid of
his lousy 9-to-5 job (which is actually at least 8-to-6). He
enthusiastically discusses his newly got freedom, shows off his new car
and invites you to his new apartment. Suddenly you start thinking that
perhaps starting your own venture is worth the effort and risk."

"Your cough is not getting better even after a 3 months treatment by a
specialist doctor. You start thinking about alternate medicine and
treatment (acupuncture, herbal, homeopathy, yoga etc.)"

"Your star employee who is handling a key business function in your
organization stops performing and starts behaving strangely.This
triggers a thought in your mind to outsource that business function."

These are all examples of provocations which immediately make you think
in new possible ways your never thought. These are all chance or
(sometimes) unpleasant provocations.

With lateral thinking it is possible to sit down and setup provocations
for yourself with the sole purpose of leading you to new and better
ideas of doing anything. We shall explore this method in future posts.

QUOTE: Simplicity

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
Leonardo Da Vinci

LINK: History of advertising industry and its future

From the article:

"By the mid-1920s agency copywriters had already figured out how to appeal to the more psychologically complex aspects of consumer choice: print ads began to prey on the individual’s fear of social failure, and radio announcers told tales of how their competitors’ products would lead to illness. Unchecked by any sort of regulatory body, advertising agencies had the freedom to pitch whatever worked best. Over the span of just a few years, advertisers successfully convinced the great unwashed to brush their teeth regularly, rinse with mouthwash and smoke as many cigarettes as humanly possible."

"Ad agencies had mastered the ability to sell the American consumer products that they had never heard of and had no real need for. This was the cunning genius of advertising."

"Consider the sheer superfluity of certain kinds of goods which this forcing of turnover entails. We are deluged with things which we do not wear, which we lose, which go out of style, which make unwelcome presents for our friends, which disappear anyhow – fountain pens, cigar lighters, cheap jewelry, patent pencils, mouth washes, key rings, Mahjong sets, automobile accessories – endless jiggers and doodads and contrivances. Here the advertiser plays on the essential monkey within us, and uses up mountains of good iron ore and countless sturdy horse power to fill – a few months later – the wagon of the junk man."

Read full article here: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/84/pop_nihilism_adverting_eats_itself.html

iPhone price slash

According to Yahoo news, Apple has drastically reducd the prices of iPhones. Now:

• 8 GB iphone is $99
• 16 GB iphone is $199
• 32 GB iphone is $299
  

Though Apples' iPhone is not available officially in Pakistan, people here have been using it after getting it unlocked by creative phone vendors at Hall road and Hafeez Center, Lahore.

For those people who still don't know about iPhone, it is a mobile phone with email, internet and other computer applications. Its gesture based interface has been one of the reasons for its popularity. A large number of software applications are available on internet which can be downloaded and run on iPhone.

Elite school systems

I went to a mediocre public school. These schools have been built for "masses" and differ primarily on medium of teaching which is Urdu verses the English in elite schools. I also had the opportunity of observing an elite school closely while working there as a consultant.

Due to my "connection" (if there is any) with that particular elite school, people often ask me for information/process about getting their kids there. Though I avoid it but sometimes I cannot resist my urge to ask them "why they want their kids go there?". The usual answer is that they want to give the "best" possible education to their kids. If you ask they cannot define the "best".

Some people are honest with themselves and say that this school will help their kids build right kind of contacts. Yes, contacts and not the education. They want their kids to get rich and not interested in helping them become thinkers, philosophers or inventors. All these people are already rich people and they can "afford" to make their kids thinkers, philosophers, inventors etc.

William Deresiewicz taught for 10 years at Yale University, an elite educational institute in US and has written a detailed article on the disadvantages of elite education.

Few quotes from his article:
"The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you."

"The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth. Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value. It’s been said that what those tests really measure is your ability to take tests, but even if they measure something real, it is only a small slice of the real. "

"Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God does not love them more."

"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed."

"Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas—and not just for the duration of a semester, for the sake of pleasing the teacher, or for getting a good grade."

"The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have."

(Emphasis added by me)

Read the full article here.