How to Think, According to MIT Professor Ed Boyden

By Alex in Everything Else on Mar 2, 2008 at 3:19 pm

Ed Boyden, assistant professor in the MIT Media Lab and Biological Engineering, wanted to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on "how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure."

I don’t know if he ever got to teach that class, but Boyden did compose a 10 rules on How to Think. For example:

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you’re reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

Read the entire list – it’s worth it: Link


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Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

  1. hobocop
    Mar 2nd, 2008 at 8:46 pm

    I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I’ve conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago–at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.

    Dude’s a bit of a nutter, don’tcha think?

  2. aj
    Mar 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    yeah, I haven’t seen any 10 MP cameras for under about $400, though I haven’t looked real hard.

  3. Christophe
    Mar 2nd, 2008 at 11:40 pm

    I’m very good at #7: I make a lot of mistakes, very quickly.

  4. Paul
    Mar 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 am

    I would like to know more about # 2 is there a study that would help you learn how to learn.


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