Conceptual Blockbusting Intro & chap1

Page 6:

Natural tendency in problem solving is to pick the first solution that

comes to mind and run with it. The disadvantage of this approach is you

may run either off a cliff or into a worse problem than started with. A

better strategy in solving problems is to select the most attractive path

from many ideas, or concepts.

This book is concerned with the cultivation of idea-having and

problem-solving abilities... to let you learn something about how your own

mind works and to give you some hints on how to make it work better.

Page 16-23:

The time-honored method of improving one‘s skill is to be continually

consicious of one‘s performance and to see to improve it -- usually

according to an ideal or standard of what is desirable. However, most of

us are surprisingly unconscious of the process of our own thinking. ... we

spend little time monitoring our own thinking and comparing it with a more

sophisticated ideal. ... partly because thinking is much more difficult to

observe, and thinking is also much more complex than golf. ... Yet,

despite these problems, effort spent in monitoring the thinking process

and attemping to improve it is a good investment for the

problem-solver.

About thinking: most of us think in traditional and habitual ways. ...

much of thinking is quite automatic and relies on a mix of conscious and

unconscious activity.

Habits have several benifits:

1) Allow us to live our complex physical lives -- our conscious

abilites are not rapid enough to control our bodies as we play tennis,

walk, etc...

2) Allow us to solve intellectual problems much more rapidly than we

could if we had to rely completely upon consciousness

3) Habit gives us stability. The mind depends heavily on structures,

models, and stereotypes. These are part and parcel of habit; without

habit, we couldn‘t process the information we need in order to exist

However, habits are inconsistent with creativity, which imples deviance

from past procedure. Habits often destroy creative ideas and include

conceptual blocks.

This book will be concentrating upon conceptualization, the process by

which one has ideas. Conceptualization doesn‘t alwasy receive the

attention it should be in problem-solving. Conceptualization in

problem-solving should be creative and should be treated as a major

activity.

Page 27

Thinking well (like playing tennis well) requires that many decisions

be made unconsciously. One can no more think well by consciously picking

each strategy and write each sentence out longhand in the mind than one

can play tennis well by consciouly thinking of what position to place each

joint in the boday as one attempts to reach a difficultt shot. However,

just as tennis benefits from your becoming so familiar with various

strategies that they become automatic, so does thinking.

Conceptual blocks:

Mental walls that block the problem-solver from correctly

perceiving a problem or conceiving its solution.

 簡言之，我們應該關注并改進自己的思維過程,進而更具有創新性, 其中最重要的是要打破conceptual blocks。