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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.

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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.

 简言之，我们应该关注并改进自己的思维过程,从而更具有创新性, 其中最重要的是要打破conceptual blocks。