Making Up Your Own Mind: Thinking Effectively through Creative Puzzle-Solving

Edward B. Burger

nov 2018 · Princeton University Press

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How you can become better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills

We solve countless problems—big and small—every day. With so much practice, why do we often have trouble making simple decisions—much less arriving at optimal solutions to important questions? Are we doomed to this muddle—or is there a practical way to learn to think more effectively and creatively? In this enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring book, Edward Burger shows how we can become far better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills using simple, effective thinking techniques.

Making Up Your Own Mind teaches these techniques—including how to ask good questions, fail and try again, and change your mind—and then helps you practice them with fun verbal and visual puzzles. The goal is not to quickly solve each challenge but to come up with as many different ways of thinking about it as possible. As you see the puzzles in ever-greater depth, your mind will change, helping you become a more imaginative and creative thinker in daily life. And learning how to be a better thinker pays off in incalculable ways for anyone—including students, businesspeople, professionals, athletes, artists, leaders, and lifelong learners.

A book about changing your mind and creating an even better version of yourself through mental play, Making Up Your Own Mind will delight and reward anyone who wants to learn how to find better solutions to life’s innumerable puzzles.

And the puzzles extend to the thought-provoking format of the book itself because one of the later short chapters is printed upside down while another is printed in mirror image, further challenging the reader to see the world through different perspectives and make new meaning.

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Edward B. Burger is the president of Southwestern University, a mathematics professor, and a leading teacher on thinking, innovation, and creativity. He has written more than seventy research articles, video series, and books, including The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (with Michael Starbird) (Princeton), and has delivered hundreds of addresses worldwide. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.