Skip to main content

Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono

This was one of the most valuable books I read all year. It has certain problems (one of which is the author's inability to use a comma!), but this book will teach a patient reader anything and everything about how to think creatively. 

Some notes/reminders: 

* The mind as a self-maximizing memory system that grabs set patterns and is resistant to letting go of mentally acquired patterns and conceptions. 
* Sequence of arrival of information and how it locks in certain conceptual frameworks. 
* Logical/vertical thinking (where every step has to be judged/right), vs lateral thinking where you embrace being wrong on purpose, deliberate restructuring of inputs and information, etc. 
* Use of the made-up word "PO" as a conversational/cognitive trigger for lateral thinking, both linguistically and conceptually.

More Posts

The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by John H. Gleason

In-depth (and surprisingly interesting!) analysis of the shifting public and government opinion on Russia during late 18th and early/mid 19th century England, plus a useful (and telling) exploration of the various propaganda and media narratives used to drive these opinions. I've written before on this site, many times, that history rhymes, it doesn't repeat exactly, so you have to know your history--and by this I mean know your actual history, not your country's preferred propaganda narrative of history--in order to see that rhyme to make useful, accurate predictions. It is fascinating to see England in the 1800s applying various forms of the same propagandized and manufactured Russophobia that we see in the United States today. England went from a literal  alliance with Russia (against Napoleonic France) to a state of paranoid loathing of Russia in a matter of decades; the USA likewise went from " aren't they our friends now? " after the Soviet collapse to...
Read more

The Kybalion: Hermetic Philosophy by "Three Initiates" [William Walker Atkinson]

The best way to think about this unusual book from 1908 is to group it with other New Thought works from the same era (see the nearly incomprehensible Your Invisible Power by Genevieve Behrend  for example), and then draw a lineage directly down through various foundational success literature works of the early/mid-20th century (see Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich , or his lesser-known but much more impactful book Outwitting the Devil ).  [A quick  affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or my sister site  Casual Kitchen . Thank you!] We can also see the ancestry here of "positive thinking" books by Norman Vincent Peale as well as  Emile Coué's surprisingly useful works on autosuggestion , and we can continue this lineage through Maxwell Maltz's famous Psycho-Cybernetics right down to the 1980s-era birth of NLP literature, the wor...
Read more

Kroll on Futures Trading Strategy by Stanley Kroll

A simple and direct book, written in plain language, but the ideas here are the result of years of thought, practice and genuine mastery.  In fact, to a novice (or even intermediate) investor, some of author Stanley Kroll's trading advice may appear obvious, even tautological. I recommend instead to read them as koans: ruminate and chew them over, think of analogous situations you've been in yourself, and then think of ways to apply the idea. See for example, when the author discusses how long he holds a "long-term" position, he says, "You hold a position for as long as the market continues going your way." A novice investor would see this as inane; the advanced investor sees it for the wisdom it is, and knows he needs the reminder. [A quick  affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or my sister site  Casual Kitchen . Thank you!] The author counsels rea...
Read more