"Six Thinking Hats" seems to be on Alan Kaye's list of favorite books: http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp

The Heart of Change - best book I read in the MBA

Six Thinking Hats - best way to think like an analyst (and to lead meetings that are effective)

Both of these are killer and quick and easy books.

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats is part of the reason I named my security startup "BlueHat Security, LLC" (http://www.bluehatsecurity.com). Unfortunately, now it's on hold. So, maybe I didn't see the big picture after all :-)

I read a bunch of books by Mr De Bono as a teenager, including "Six Thinking Hats" and "Lateral Thinking". As math and science nerd interested in creativity, it really gave me a different way to think.

Few thing pop to my mind about subject Tibetan Buddhism “tulpa”:

1. If I remember correctly, one of Thinking Techniques I read long time ago (not sure Edward de Bono) is to create distinctive quorum of distinctive characters you look up to, each having a different hat (book "Six Thinking Hats"). So when we think about problem, we should talk with each person to get its view.

2. Improving Chess ability can be done by playing on both sides.

3. In the movie "A Beautiful Mind" mathematician John Nash had vivid hallucinations indistinguishable from reality. (edit: it looks like rogue "tulpa")

4. Nikola Tesla had ability to imagine any object so intensively on demand they would float like a hologram, with eyes wide open.

What is amazing is that brain can do so much, and our knowledge about its abilities is so small. It would be nice if we knew techniques how to wake up some parts of the brain on demand, the same way one would learning hot to read or write.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Edward DeBono. Two of my favorite books are:
1) Lateral Thinking: http://tinyurl.com/88ugdjz
2) Six Thinking Hats: http://tinyurl.com/7t2w27y . There is a video course available on youtube as well: http://tinyurl.com/6q4rz2t

I learned about them through Alan Kaye's reading list: http://tinyurl.com/83bqlbx He has a section on learning and creativity that has some other good alternatives.

I am a particular fan of the Debono books. I swear, debono is unparalled in clear writing. Here are video versions of the two debono books mentioned in Alan Kay's reading list just in case anyone's interested:

Lateral Thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFFZ0XSfCRw

Six Thinking Hats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mtc_CBTIeI

I got "the emperors new mind" by roger penrose when it first came out as I was graduating high school. I found it really good and eye opening.

Various books by Tony Buzan ( memory, speed reading, mind mapping ) and six thinking hats (and others) by edward de bono really got me to see our minds are very versatile and, like our bodies, can be pushed in prodded to do lots of things

Puzzling through many philosophy books has probably given me some my more dramatic changes in the way I see the world. But not one in specific, each provided little "ah hah!"s

All of Calvin and Hobbes

The art of war,book of 5 rings, and the prince, all made it clear that strategy and winning are quite different from the sanitized western middle class life I was brought up in.

I've been thinking about something like this years ago. Basically I wanted to implement de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" as a website that would assist an individual to work through a problem with the help of a community. So a user would not state his problem to wait for complete solutions suggested by others. Instead, s/he'd, for example, try to explain what s/he wants to achieve and ask for strategies. The community would then suggest some options ("yellow hat thinking"). Next, the community could weed out bad options ("black hat thinking"). If there were any ideas left one could ask how everyone feels emotionally about the remaining options ("red hat thinking") and then pick the most popular one. In a next step, they could brainstorm creative ideas to mitigate possible problems with the chosen option ("green hat thinking"). Afterwards the OP could summarize the outcome and state what s/he is going to do. If after a while some more thinking turns out to be required one could continue the process again. For instance, you could discuss how to deal with unforeseen challenges or - if the chosen option turns out to be futile - investigate one of the other suggestions in more detail And so on and so forth ...

However, I worried that most people would not have the time/patience to really get involved with a problem. Furthermore, the process might be to cumbersome and rational for real world problems.

"Six Thinking Hats" was the first book that I read in this area. To this day I like to use his methodology from time to time when I have to find a solution to a big problem that confuses me so much that I don't even know where to start. Even if you don't have a problem at hand applying it to a hypothetical problem is quite a fun mind game when you have some time to kill (for example on a long bus trip).

That said I probably read the book at the right time because it works best when you have a certain naivete and faith that you stumbled upon the ultimate silver bullet for problem solving.

Had I encountered the book just yet I'd probably have been more dismissive of it. "Oh yeah, here we go .. another guy who wants to sell you some self-help fluff disguised in a business context"

> I did find Six Thinking hats useful

The biggest impact life lesson I had from that book was to be upfront with my feelings (red hat.) Unacknowledged emotions sit in the background and strongly influence thinking while often being quite dumb. Emotions brought out in the open tend to shrink to their proper significance and can be quite informative.