Think sharper. Imagine bigger.

A thinking routine: What do you see? What do you think about that? What does it make you wonder?

Experts see more because they look slowly and on purpose, checking details before deciding.

Open questions (why, how, what if) lead to more learning than yes/no questions.

Curiosity helps memory: people remember more when they are curious about the answer.

Reasoning from rules to a certain conclusion: if all A are B and this is A, it must be B.

Reasoning from examples to a likely rule. It can be wrong if a new example breaks the pattern.

“If it rains, the ground is wet” does not mean a wet ground proves it rained.

Grouping by properties, as in Venn diagrams, reveals what things share and how they differ.

Moving sideways to new ways of seeing a problem instead of digging deeper in the same hole.

Many puzzles are hard because we assume a rule nobody stated. Ask: who said that?

Changing how a problem is described can reveal new solutions.

In a pattern, find what changes each step (adds, doubles, rotates, alternates) and what stays the same.

Picturing shapes, turns and positions in your mind; it can be improved with practice.

Count in an organised way (by size, row or type) so nothing is missed or counted twice.

Divergent thinking produces many ideas; convergent thinking picks the best. Creativity needs both.

Four parts of creative thinking: many ideas, different kinds of ideas, unusual ideas and well-developed ideas.

Generate ideas first and judge later; build on others’ ideas.

Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse: prompts for new ideas.

Taking a break from a problem can help ideas come. Stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification.

Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test: a human-centred way to solve problems.

Good designs start by understanding the people who will use them.

Build quick, cheap versions to learn fast. Failing early is part of the process.

Imagine, create, play, share, reflect, and imagine again; learn through projects, passion, peers and play.

A strong argument states a claim, gives evidence and explains how the evidence supports it.

Common errors include attacking the person, false choices and “everyone does it.”

Ask where it came from, how it was measured and whether other sources agree.

Two things happening together does not prove one causes the other.

System 1 is quick and automatic; System 2 is slow and careful. Use System 2 for important choices.

Biases like confirmation bias and anchoring push us toward errors without noticing.

White (facts), red (feelings), black (caution), yellow (benefits), green (new ideas), blue (managing the thinking).

Believing abilities grow with effort and good strategies helps people keep going after mistakes.

Planning, checking and reviewing your own thinking (metacognition) is one of the strongest learning strategies.

A system’s parts affect each other; feedback can make change grow (reinforcing) or settle (balancing).

Ask “why?” several times, or use a fishbone diagram, to find the deeper cause of a problem.

Consider not only the first effect of a choice but what happens after that.

Break a problem down to basic facts and rebuild a solution from there.

Success uses three abilities: analysing, creating and applying ideas in real life.

Many AI tools predict likely words or patterns from training data; they can sound confident and still be wrong.

Verify facts from AI with trusted sources, and never share private information.

Clear goals, context and constraints get better AI help; asking for options and reasons helps you think.

Curiosity, judgement, empathy and original goals stay human jobs; AI is a tool for thinkers.

Employers rank analytical thinking first and creative thinking among the fastest-growing skills.