Someone posted a pointer at www.internettime.com to The School of Thinking. Most of the material on the SoT's website struck me as claptrap and nonsense. (Their claim to be the Largest School in the World is based on the fact that they're on the net. By the same logic, this is the Largest Blog Posting in the world. Many of us are tied for the Largest Whatever honor.)
Nonetheless, I agree with the six career advancement principles ("CAP") used in training SoT trainers:
2. Knowledge into Skill: Developing a thorough understanding and conviction of the difference between merely having knowledge on a matter and owning a skill of performance in it. Understanding the strategy of practice and repetition.
3. Measurement: Unless one was deliberately willing to trade off the necessary time and energy needed to acquire a new skill - that is, logging the hours of practice and repetition - the trainee could never expect to go beyond the knowing stage and reach a level of operating skill. This means focusing on the process and measuring it in hours of practice.
4. Commitment to Action: The skills must be useful in daily life. To assist the transfer of skills acquired in training to real life situations, trainees designed specific "action commitments" on special planners including times, dates, places, etc.
5. Effective Follow-up: The monitoring of feedback and measuring results were an important part of CAP. Checking to see if what happened was what the trainee really wanted. This became a continuous part of the process.
6. Reinforcement: Noticing increments of progress in acquiring new skills and then recognising them in an appropriate way, were fundamental principles of CAP.
What is brain software?
Brain software is the basic program we use to do our thinking. Think of your brain as your 'necktop computer'. Now, ask yourself: What software do I use in my necktop and where did I get it from?
Many people are slow thinkers, not because they are short on brainpower, but because they're using very slow, outdated brain software. The software they were programmed at school to think with actually slows them down. It's just critical thinking. This software is the 2500-year-old Greek software - logic - which was spread around the world during the second millennium and is so, so sluggish. Many people are still stuck with logic as their main thinking software, and that's about as fast as they can go. (Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.)
Why should I be interested in increasing my own speed of thought?
If you don't upgrade your brain software then you'll be stuck with what you've got. Although this sounds a bit like a TV advertorial (But wait there's more!) I've listed some of the many real benefits that come from increasing your own speed of thought:
