Running head: Teach yourself to think book Review 1

Book Review of Teach Yourself to Think by Edward De Bono

Karanpal Singh - 11409276
Lovely School of Architecture and Design

Teach yourself to think book Review 2

Book Review of Teach Yourself to Think by Edward De Bono

Edward de Bono states that Western thought is based on the work of the Gang of Three
referring to Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. Socrates' has an approach that would ultimately result
truth - this leads to an overly critical approach. Plato describes his obsession with which can be
established logically. Aristotle gave us a category based approach - the "is" and "is not". The
legacy of those thinkers is a critical style of thought which neglects the importance of creativity.

The book is written in an intriguingly flat style, elementary punctuations full stops and
question marks, with frequent plugs for his other books and recycling of their ideas, such as Six
Thinking Hats. Conventional logical thinking is inclined to being overly sensitive to the order in
which facts are presented whereas, lateral thinking is the process of using information to bring
about creativity and insight restructuring - after that is done, conventional logical thinking is
employed.

De Bono has developed frameworks for thinking - he has already written a book about
his "six thinking hats" method. Focusing mainly on conventional thinking he develops a
framework established on various stages of thought and, stages are labelled with typical de Bono
neologisms:

TO (what do I want to do?);

LO (what information do I have/need?);
PO (how do I get there?);
SO (which alternative shall I choose?)
GO (how do I put this into action?)

Teach yourself to think book Review 3

Each stage and process of the To-Lo-Po-So-Go process is explained carefully with a
wealth of supporting material. At times, the book is so airily spaced, the subject matter that can
be understood almost easily at first seems trivial after lateral thinking. I feel this book is very
important in that it upgrades one of the key tools in any design thinking.