If you like Malcolm Gladwell-style writing you'll like this book: it has lots of often cutesy, counter-intuitive stories and plenty of "studies show" scientific studies that prove the author's points (naturally) throughout. It makes the book a diverting and easy read. Plenty of ideas in here to think about too if you'd like to get better at courting serendipity and insight in your day-to-day and/or professional life. All in all, a fairly useful book.
Notes:
* Kind learning environments (chess) versus wicked learning environments (reality).
* Cognitive entrenchment
* Rule seeking behavior... Learning by multiple choice or if/then statements. Why giving hints or supplying rules does not help you learn, where the appearance of learning isn't actual learning.
* "Easy learning" versus more "difficult learning," where more difficult learning actually sticks.
* Your perceptions of your own learning can be misleading. if it seems like it's easy, like you're making rapid progress, you're most likely not learning as well as you think.
* "Far transfer": a knowledge structure that is so flexible that it can be applied effectively even in new domains or extremely novel situations.
* Thinking analogically. Kepler using analogies.
* Career and job "match quality," how the army had trouble keeping people "matched" to careers that suited them or challenged them. Why it's important to have the ability to switch jobs or fields.
* "You have to carry a big basket to bring something home" [This goes toward open-mindedness, can you think broadly, how much can you "enlarge" your basket?]
* Serendipitous "outside thinking" to arrive at solutions. "Lateral thinking with withered technology": Gunpei Yokoi at Nintendo, making games out of very old tech materials.
* The "perverse inverse relationship" between fame and prediction accuracy. Yet another reason to ignore media pundits!!
* "Dropping your tools" as metaphor for cognitive flexibility in wicked learning environments: firefighters, NASA engineers, etc.