The Front Line Guide to Thinking Clearly

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Chapter 1

The Lesson from the Other

Side of the Fence

man drives past an institution for mentally-disturbed

patients when his right front tire goes flat. He pulls to

the side of the road, jacks up the car, removes the wheel

cover, loosens the four lug nuts, puts them in the wheel cover,

and proceeds to remove the tire. As he does so, he bumps the

wheel cover and all four lug nuts spill out and roll through a

grate and into the sewer. Cursing his clumsiness, he exclaims

aloud, “What am I going to do?”

Behind him, a voice says, “Why don’t you take one lug

nut from each of the other three wheels and use them for the

spare tire until you can get to a service station?” He looks

around and notices a man in institutional pajamas and

bathrobe, standing on the other side of a tall chain-link fence.

“What a great idea!” he tells the man in the pajamas. “But

how is it you can be so helpful, when you’re in there and I’m

out here?”

“I’m in here because I’m crazy, not because I’m stupid.”

Well, it’s not necessarily stupidity that keeps us from

thinking through a problem situation to find a workable

solution. Even people with the mechanical skills required to

change a tire can go into brain-block when they see their lug

nuts roll down the drain. And some people are not mentally

agile enough to reflex into a problem-solving mode when the

situation demands it, especially if the problem is outside their

usual cognitive territory.

A

Thinking Clearly

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A true story this time: A headlight burned out on my

wife’s car, and she stopped at a neighborhood service station

to get it fixed. The mechanic handed her a bulb and said,

“Here, your husband can plug it in.” She replied, “You would

think so, but he’s a professor.”

The mechanic laughed and promptly replaced the bulb.

My wife drove away with a problem solved, rather than cre-

ating another (getting me to replace the bulb). She used

stereotyping in reverse to get the mechanic, who had never

gone to college, to imagine the stereotypical “smart profes-

sor” who has no practical skills. He performed the simple task

for her out of sympathy, and as a courtesy.

These anecdotes are offered to open this short investiga-

tion into thinking as a set of skills rather than as a byproduct

of intelligence or education. Along the way, I will introduce

you to some very competent people, educators whose life-

work is teaching creativity, thinking, problem-solving skills,

and information-organizing for better memory. You will dis-

cover that working “smart” is a lot more fun than working

hard, and it makes you more effective.

Some Brain-Blockers to Look Out For

Our brains take mental and linguistic shortcuts. Stereotyping

is one of them. It can obscure facts and distort the search for

information, but it can also accurately reflect established

characteristics of large groups of people (i.e., Italians are

warm people, or Estonians are serious and very intense).

Generally, however, this “hardening of the categories” is

unfair and negative; it reflects racial or sexual biases, or per-

ceptions about people on either side of caste and class

boundaries. Managers-versus-workers and them-versus-us