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Turn a Good Idea Into a Great One With the ‘Six Thinking Hats’
A method to help you think big while staying realistic
One of my most life-changing moments took place back in college: I was giving a presentation on a product I had been developing over the semester, and midway through my talk, the professor interrupted with a question that caught me off guard: “Can we see the other concepts you worked on?”
My face turned red. The answer was no, because I didn’t have any. I was presenting the only idea I had worked on, because I thought it was great.
The instructor was less than impressed.
Walking out of the classroom a little while later, I looked down at notes my instructor had left for me on my assignment. There, scribbled in red pen, were instructions that would fundamentally change how I approach my ideas: “Research the Six Thinking Hats Method.”
Six Thinking Hats is a system designed in the 1980s by the psychologist and inventor Edward de Bono. The process involves wearing different imaginary “hats,” which represent different mindsets and emotions, allowing people to look at an idea from various angles with a different focus each time. “The main difficulty of thinking is confusion,” de Bono has said. “We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic…
