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The Book of Brilliance
The Book of Brilliance
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Table of Contents
Genius is Self-Bestowed
11
12
Self-Critical Thinking
14
15
An Important Note
19
20
21
28
28
29
Points to Remember
31
33
34
35
35
37
Parting Words
38
40
41
Make a Donation
41
Genius is Self-Bestowed
Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.
- Walter Russell
You have the potential for genius. You have the capacity for brilliant
thought, amazing ideas, and incredible results. I know this, because I
spent years watching brilliant people. I watched, and I learned. Then, I
applied what I had learned, and it worked.
Brilliance is often thought of as a gift of nature. But consider this: no
matter how talented someone is at music, sports, or anything else,
they still need to acquire the skills of the trade. Without learning from
others, few novices would amount to much. Natural ability is typically
impossible to detect in the absence of training. In fact, proper training
often gives the impression of substantial talent.
The same is true of brilliance. From the outside, a person of high
intelligence appears just to be lucky; they seem as if they were born
with that extra something that lets them come up with ideas that
others simply dont see. But the outside is just a shell. Inside their
brilliant mind hides a process. I will show you that process, and if you
are willing to do the work, you can awaken your inner genius and find
the brilliance within!
what it was they did that made them exceptional in the world of
science. And I am proud to say, I figured it out!
First, I want to share with you a little more about my story.
Without going into too many details, I can tell you that my graduate
career turned out to be quite exceptional. I produced about four times
more work than was necessary for earning a PhD. My research papers
are not only read, but also are also cited. On multiple occasions others
have told me that they have read my papers and found them engaging,
highly interesting, and useful.
Let me add that I had a small child at the very beginning of my PhD,
and I devote a lot of time and attention to my son. I also learned how
to sing opera (from scratch) while doing my PhD.
I attribute all of my achievements to the skills I gained by watching
brilliant people. Now, I am going to share them with you.
The skills I gained in order to be able to do high quality research
turned out to be surprisingly helpful. They have positively influenced
virtually every aspect of my life, from my marriage to my hobbies.
Being able to think more effectively is a skill that will help you in
whatever you choose to do.
touch the hearts and minds of many. Or, to make a device or write a
piece of software that will prove useful to many. The possibilities are
endless.
Whatever goal you choose, make it intrinsic, and make it personal.
Winning the Nobel or Freize prize, or making a lot of money, are some
consequences of brilliant work. But your goal should be the main part:
doing something brilliant. Not the rewards you may get from it. Dont
worry, the rewards will come, but they should not be your focus.
Lastly, choose something that you are passionate about. It will make
the road a lot more enjoyable. Passion possesses incredible power. It
will help you persist, and make the end result that much more
rewarding.
Dont know what to choose? Well tell you how you find a problem that
would lead to brilliance in the second step.
Step 2:
Step 2:
Apply Polysolution Thinking
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I
stay with problems longer. - Albert
Einstein
We are now getting to the heart of what
makes a brilliant person, or even a genius.
Albert Einstein is one of the worlds most
recognized geniuses. If we really believe
that Einstein was a brilliant person, we
would be wise to believe his words.
Einstein says that he stays with problems longer. But what was he
doing with the problem all this time? How did spending more time on
it help him? While its true that persistence and time are often
required to solve hard problems, much more can said about the
process.
Problem
Solution
Search:
Solution
Think of an
idea
finding all of them. Our goal then becomes to find at least one very
good solution. Hopefully, a brilliant one!
Examples of problems with multiple solutions are abundant, much
more abundant than those with unique answers. Finding a theory for
explaining human behaviour is an open-ended problem typically
tackles by psychologists. Coming up with a model that explains an
aspect of our physical world is an open-ended problem tackled by
physicists. Problems with multiple possible solutions are also
abundant outside the world of science. Inventors are always trying to
come up with new products, and businesspeople are in search for new
services that they could provide. These are all problems that one could
solve in infinitely many ways.
Problems that have many possible solutions also occur frequently in
our daily lives. An interpersonal conflict, financial difficulties, and low
job satisfaction, are all examples of problems that can be solved in a
wide variety of ways.
My task here is to give you the tools so that you can identify multiple
solutions for your problems, including at least one great solution.
Want to come up with something brilliant? Then you need a new way
of thinking.
I call it polysolution thinking (poly is Greek for many).
Polysolution thinking is a method for finding many different solutions
to the same problem. The more time you spend practicing polysolution
thinking, the better your solutions become. Polysolution thinking can
be used to find extraordinary solutions and brilliant ideas. But it can
also be used to solve problems that occur in our everyday life.
Self-Critical Thinking
Most of us are familiar with critical thinking. When we hear or read
someone elses ideas, we are taught to consider them critically instead
of accepting them at face value. Critical thinking encourages us to
think of both the pros and cons of what is being proposed, check the
validity of the reasoning, and decide for ourselves whether it is correct.
Without critical thinking, we all become gullible and easy to
manipulate.
Critical thinking is a very important skill. The good news is that many
of us already possess it. In any case, a lot has already been said and
written about critical thinking. What I am about to propose is a small,
but crucial variation on this concept.
Self-critical thinking is the application of critical thinking to your own
ideas. Instead of waiting for others to find flaws with your ideas, you
become your own critic. When you have an idea that you like, first try
to emotionally detach yourself from it. Pretend that the idea is not
yours, but that somebody else came up with it. Now, try to find a
problem with it. At first, see if you can find any problem at all. Then
keep thinking about it, and try to find major flaws with your ideas.
Make a real effort to find its weakness. What could be done better?
Internalizing the critic is a crucial step to discovering brilliant ideas,
and it is an integral part of polysolution thinking.
Problem
Solution
Search:
Think of an
idea
Selfcritical
thinking:
Solution
Criticize your
idea
Good enough
for now
The good news is that if you choose to only do a few iterations, you will
still get better results than with monosolution thinking.
You may have already practiced polysolution thinking without
realizing it. People usually apply it naturally to problems where the
iterations can be done rather quickly. The most common example is
naming (a pet, an event, a website, anything!). People often dont go
for the first name they think of. They pick a name, and then they
notice something they dont like about it, and then they try to come up
with another name. Every iteration of the process is quick, and so we
are often willing to do quite a few iterations.
Practicing polysolution thinking can be beneficial for all types of
problems. But to reap the real benefits of polysolution thinking, youll
need to apply it to more difficult problems where an iteration can take
longer.
Moreover, even when people use polysolution thinking without
realizing it, they tend to stop the process too soon. By doing it
consciously, you gain the ability to push yourself further. Polysolution
thinking challenges you to criticize ideas that you would usually
accepts. It then urges you to search for even better ideas. It is truly
incredible what the mind can do when it is challenged.
An Important Note
In order for polysolution thinking to work, it is essential that you try to
do your absolute best at every step of the process. Even though you
know that you will have to criticize every idea that you come up with,
try to find the best possible idea. Dont bother spending time
criticizing ideas that are obviously weak. The process simply wont
work if you pick ideas that have obvious flaws just to increase the
number of iterations youve done. Wait until you have a really good
idea, even if it takes a long time, and then try to find flaws with it.
Thats how you make progress.
When you criticize, try hard to find real flaws. Every idea has some
kind of pitfalls. Even very good ideas have problems. You wont
know how serious the pitfalls are until you find them. Spend
time and effort looking for them. If you can only find minor flaws in
your first idea, keep looking. The first few ideas can usually be
improved substantially.
Polysolution thinking pushes your mind to come up with better and
better ideas, until the ideas become truly brilliant. If you really push
yourself, you will not only find great solutions and come up with
incredible ideas, but you will also experience tremendous personal
growth.
several of her own clients and, as Amanda has no other expenses, she
could save quite a bit towards her college education.
This is where most people stop. This is about as good as it gets with
monosolution thinking. Notice that Amanda did consider alternatives,
but she rejected them quickly. She didnt yet practice self-critical
thinking in the sense required for polysolution thinking because she
did not pause to criticize an idea that she liked. Nevertheless, she
found a pretty good idea just not a great one.
But Amanda doesnt stop here. She wants to do better.
was hoping by working only after school. Then she notices another,
perhaps ever bigger problem with this plan. Unless she would be able
to find enough of her own clients, she would be cutting into her
mothers income income that her mother still very much needs.
Amanda tries to come up with a new idea. For several days, she cannot
see any other options. She keeps thinking, and nothing much happens.
She comes up with a several more ideas (several other jobs that
teenagers typically hold) but they are all weak because she finds
serious weakness very quickly. Then, three days later, her mother asks
her to go down to basement to get the toolbox. Amanda has trouble
finding the toolbox because the basement is full of clutter. And, then it
hits her. She can de-clutter the homes of others! Because she has been
actively thinking about her problem over the past few days, she was
able to make a connection between wishing to get rid of clutter in her
own house, and the desire that others may have to have their home decluttered. Moreover, she was able to see how to use this to solve her
problem.
stuff would take a long time. Posting, monitoring, and shipping the
goods will be very time consuming. There is no way that she would
have the time to meet with the client to de-clutter their home, then sell
all of their stuff in a timely manner before her house had no more
space in it, and still have time to do her school work.
Amanda was devastated. It seemed like she could not come up with
anything that did not suffer from a fatal flaw. But she decided to keep
going anyways. Remember - most people give up when they are inches
away from success!
problems, she could not find a fatal flaw even after spending
significant time and effort trying to do so. So she decided to go ahead
and get started on her business idea. Even if there may be better
solutions, she decided that this solution was good enough in fact, she
felt quite brilliant for discovering it!
This is how the fourth solution became the final solution, at least for
now. If she later discovers problems with her idea, she could always
return to the process. But you might agree that this was an original,
genuinely creative solution to her problem. In order to be able to
afford to go to college, Amanda will start a business. She will hire
someone else to de-clutter her clients homes, and offer to dispose of
their clutter for them at no extra charge. She would then sell their
clutter online (of course, only after throwing away anything that her
clients wanted to dispose of for reasons of privacy). As she is looking at
having wealthy clients, some of the clutter will be worth quite a bit.
This solution has the potential to earn enough money so that Amanda
could go to college, and still leave her enough time to study. Because of
her mothers connections, it would also not take long to get started.
You might also agree that it would have been difficult to find this
solution without the process few people would have come with this
idea on their first try. Yet by criticizing even those ideas which she
really liked and pushing herself to come up with ones that were even
better, Amanda was able to find a truly great solution to an important
problem in her life.
Monosolution
Thinking
Polysolution
Thinking
Points to Remember
Make every iteration count! At each iteration of polysolution
thinking, make an effort to come up with the best possible idea. The
more time and effort you spend on each and every idea, the more
you will gain from polysolution system.
The more time and effort you spend criticizing your ideas, the more
you will gain from the process.
If you make every iteration count, then every iteration will lead to
an improved understanding of the problem, and eventually, to a lot
better solutions.
The first few solutions are usually the hardest to find, even though
they are the weakest solutions. Eventually solutions begin to come
faster.
For your first idea, forget that you are doing polysolution thinking.
Until the self-criticism step, pretend that you are doing
monosolution thinking.
When finding a solution, apply the same amount of time and effort
as if it were the last solution youll need to find.
Dont spend a lot of time criticizing ideas that are obviously weak.
Self-criticism is meaningful only when criticizing ideas that you
really like and want to go for. If you already dont like an idea, just
move on and look for another one. You are looking to criticize ideas
that you initially find very appealing.
You dont need to finish the polysolution thinking process all at
once. You can stop at any point and get back to it at a later time.
way. Otherwise, no one would know about their brilliant ideas, and all
their effort would have been in vain.
It is important to understand that other people are busy with their
own lives and their own ideas. They dont have the time to try to figure
if or why your ideas are brilliant. Theyre only going to look at what
you have to offer if you can manage to spark their interest.
I have isolated the main components for effectively selling your ideas.
They apply for live or recorded presentations, as well as written
material. The size of your audience also does not matter. Most of these
also apply to one-on-one conversations.
you could provide a handout. But the talk itself must focus on the big
picture.
Finally, take every opportunity to present your work. The more you do
it, the better youll get at it! It will also get the word out. Let the world
know about your brilliant idea. If you can make people see the
brilliance of what you propose, then they will thank you for it.
Parting Words
Brilliance takes practice. But you do have the potential for brilliance.
There is a genius within you just waiting to wake up. I hope that by
now you can see that brilliance is a skill. You almost certainly also
appreciate that it takes a lot of work.
If brilliant people did not want to put in the effort and had used
monosolution thinking instead of polysolution thinking, many would
not have come up with anything worthwhile. The first ideas that
brilliant people come up with are just like anyone elses. The difference
is that they do not stop there. They dont wait for others to find flaws
with their ideas, they search for flaws themselves. Then, they go back
to the drawing board and find new ideas. They keep doing it, and they
keep doing it, giving it their all at every step, and finally, they find
something brilliant.
It is not only more accurate, but also more useful, to see brilliant
people as simply hardworking, not gifted. It makes it clear that
everyone has that potential. However, even those who know that hard
work can lead to brilliance dont always know how to use their time
and energy to achieve great results. People often use a lot of their
resources on doing a lot of work, instead of producing better work.
My answer is to use your time and energy more effectively. It may
mean that you do less, but what gets done, gets done in a better and
more meaningful way. Although, from my experience, in the long run,
polysolution thinking actually saves me time. By doing revisions in my
head, I have to do fewer corrections after committing to a solution,
which is when revisions tend to become a lot more difficult and time
consuming.
So there you go. I didnt say that being brilliant is easy. But it is
possible. Go for it. You will surprise yourself. Let your inner genius
awaken!
About the
Author
Maya Ackerman divides her time
between research, writing,
teaching, singing, and her family.
She has authored over a dozen
academic articles and holds a PhD
in computer science.
Maya is passionate about personal
development, and her mission is to provide others with the tools they
need to become the best that they can be.
Maya would love to hear from you! Let her know what you think of the
book at maya@greatlivingnow.com. You are also welcome to contact
her regarding business, consulting, speaking engagements or just to
say hi.
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