شش الگوی تفکر: درباره‌ی اطلاعات

by ادوارد دوبونو, مرجان مهدی‌پور (Translator)

Attention is a key part of thinking clearly and productively, and yet we pay very little attention to attention itself. If you see someone lying injured in the middle of the road, for example, your attention would go to that person but, if a bright pink dog wandered past at the same time, your attention would automatically stray to the dog. That is precisely the weakness of attention - it is pulled to the unusual. How much attention do we pay to the usual? So, what can we do about it? Instead of waiting for attention to be pulled towards something unusual, we can set out frameworks for 'directing' our attention in a conscious manner.Just as we can decide to look north, west or even south-east, so we can set up a framework for directing our attention, and that's where Edward de Bono's 'six frames' come in. Each frame is a direction or method in/with which to look, based on a different shape - triangle, circle, heart, square, diamond, slab. Today we are literally surrounded by information and it has never been so easy to obtain. Yet, information itself is not enough; it's how we look at it that really counts. Using the 'six frames' technique is the key to extracting real value from the masses of facts and figures out there and, like all de Bono's techniques, it is simple, effective and will utterly change the way you interpret information.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Science, Management

112 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could summarise this book very briefly (see below) and you wouldn't miss anything!
The rest is just a collection of stating the obvious (which I ended up skimming) and trying to create a set of clumsy verbal jargon.

SUMMARY
You would use the 6 frames when looking for or analysing information. They are:
Triangle: What is the purpose of knowing this information?
Circle: What is the accuracy of this information? (Like a target)
Square: Different points of view - Is this information biased?
Heart: What is my interest in knowing this information?
Diamond: What is the value of this information?
Slab: What conclusions can we draw from this information?

That's it!
I've saved you wading through obvious ideas, such as that newspaper stories might be biased or that some information might be more accurate than others.
I've also saved you from looking silly in a business meeting, by beginning a sentence with "Using my Heart Frame, I see that ..." or "I want you to look at this data through your Square Frame."

P.S. In the Square section, the author complains about a newspaper giving one of his books a negative review. I can see why someone would!

[Emma MacMillan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very repetitive. I feel like the book only needed two pages and all the information would still fit.

[Laleh · Rating 2 out of 5]

فرایند هدایت فکر، به این‌سو و آن‌سو، برایم جالب است و فکر می‌کردم این کتاب بیشتر از این‌ها به چنین موضوعی بپردازد؛ اما خیلی گذرا، ‌تنها به این ایده اشاره شده بود که می‌شود فکر را هدایت کرد!!!! به همین جهت از خواندنش خیلی راضی نیستم. شاید اگر در دوران نوجوانی خوانده بودمش برایم جالب‌تر می‌نمود و یا شاید چون کتاب "شش کلاه تفکر" از همین نویسنده را پر‌محتوی‌تر یافته‌ام،‌این یکی راضی‌ام نکرد.‏

[Sameh Maher · Rating 2 out of 5]

على الرغم من عشقى لكتابات دى بونو واعتباره مؤسس علم التفكير ومعلمى فى موضوع التفكير الابداعى واللى قرأ له كتب يعرف اسهاماته فى المجال ده
لكن الكتاب تافه جدا وغير مشبع بالمرة
ينفع يتعمل مجرد جزء ملحق لكتاب من كتاباته لكن كتاب منفصل لا
الكتاب مش وحش بس هايف اوى على دى بونو اللى اتعلمت منه كتير
كتاب معقول لحلقة دراسية صغيرة

[Jurgita · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not sure it's worth even this one star. A book that is aimed at adults and has sentences like this - "In a square, all sides are exactly equal. That is the definition of a square." - is not worth paper it is printed on. I lament all those trees that were cut for it. And my time I've wasted reading it even if it took me about an hour to go through the whole thing.

[Cassie Pearson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This small book brings pain upon reading. The ideas contained within are good but obvious and presented in such a way as to sound clever, as is de Bono's trademark.
Many of the examples given were offensive or irrelevant, and on multiple occasions the author references heavy material (men hurting women, rape, and so on) in too lightly a manner. Inappropriate.

[Mahmoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتابی ساده و عمیق. شاید به نظر بیاید که همه این مطالب را می دانیم ولی می دانیم که نمی دانیم.
کتاب شش الگو را معرفی می کند: هدف، الگوی مثلث؛ درستی، الگوی دایره؛ دیدگاه، الگوی مربع؛ جذابیت، الگوی قلب؛ ارزش، الگوی لوزی و نتیجه‌گیری.
نویسنده سعی می کند تا به ما راه خوب فکر کردن را بیاموزد.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

De Bono largely phoned this one in. The central premise is that we pay insufficient attention to attention, generally letting lots of things grab it, rather than deliberately choosing where to direct it. This is certainly a valuable point, and one in keeping with his usual “thinking about thinking” motif, but his prescription for dealing with this is rather shallow. Operating primarily within a business context, he suggests focussing attention deliberately in six directions:
△ — for Purpose
◯ — for Accuracy
▢ — for Point of View
♡ — for Interest
♢ — for Value
▭ — for Outcome

These all have some merit, but I was unconvinced that this selection is either necessary or sufficient for his specific goal; they seem to have been chosen largely to parallel his Six Thinking Hats, Six Action Shoes, Six Value Medals, etc. And, like several of his other business-focussed books, he presents his ideas in a rather “all or nothing” way, requiring that people make significant changes to how they run meetings, without either really presenting a particularly strong case for doing so — or, for those who do already use some of his other approaches, discussing how this might combine with those. (He also suggests, seemingly without irony, that having meetings full of statements like “Circle frame that point, will you”, or “you may need to polish your diamond frame” would be a good thing.)

Like most of his books, there are lots of little nuggets lying around. I particularly liked his discussion on how people will remember more readily things that grab their interest, and that even if they’re no immediately obvious value, the fact that they’re more likely to remember them at a later point may be of great value then. I’m also intrigued by his idea that when taking notes on what you read, you should explicitly make different notes of things you find interesting vs. things you find valuable. And I’d love to see some research on his comment that, when needing to judge the neutrality of news reporting, a useful rule of thumb for bias is to simply count the adjectives, as they’re the simplest way to slip into opinion. But the interestingness-density of this book was disappointingly low for me compared to his others.

[Rachel Abraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

With smartphones, tablets and most of everything going digital, we are in an age where access to information is really very easy. And this ease of access and information overload is only going to increase in the years to come.
This takes us to the next question on how do we understand and make right use of this information.
This book gives you 6 frames in which one can analyse information to reduce biases, inaccuracy, ineffectiveness etc. Gives the reader a better perspective on ways to slice information, look at it with different lenses and then finally using the information.

[Donn Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Update: like another de bono models and frameworks this actually does have quite a bit of value in the LLM/AI space. Try asking ChatGPT (or Gemini/Claude etc.) to apply six frames by Edward de Bono to something you’re thinking about. The structure is incredibly useful to “frame” the output — I used to do this with six hats and it worked really well, didn’t expect it to work with six frames as well.

[Original review]
I don’t know. This didn’t really do it for me. I’ve loved a lot of de Bono’s books but this one felt like it was a book thrown out just to have another book thrown out. It could have been made shorter (though I must admit this was already very short), but this could have been a chapter in a longer book on how to think.

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Simplistic, patronising (at points) and weirdly driven by the dislike of an unfavourable newspaper article about themselves. Principles are key (skills matter when knowledge is easily accessible) but there’s absolutely nothing meaningful or substantive here to help people execute this (e.g., what does a good critical evaluation look like) and it feels like an attempt to churn out another book with silly/branded terms or ideas business might want to use (frames this time) with little consideration for how. There’s loads of generalisations, extremes, claims that can’t be validated, and some offensive content making light of serious issues. In sum, short but not short enough or long enough.

[Bhomit Bhandari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light and short read, the book serves it purpose of creating the framework on approaching towards information gathering and helps readers learn various aspects of information and a little bit of points on how not to distract away from information in this age of information overload.

[Suptasree · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh dear. This could have been so good but it’s written like a bad overly long textbook and is missing the critical exercises to practice the concepts. Can’t believe it was written in 2008. Feels like 1950. Giving it 2 as the fundamentals concept (the frames) is not bad, just poorly written.

[Heba Hathout · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an ugly book that could have been summarized in just one page! Very dull, boring, didnt add value (it was all taking about the obvious) and i didnt get any useful info out of it. A complete waste of reading time.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

READ MAR 2023

Another in a series from de Bono on thinking that is a must to have in the library. On this one, I would have preferred lenses to frames as several may need to be used when thinking about information. But, overall, this is a good resource.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see the ideas in this book are reasonable but I can't imagine them being used practically.

[Salma · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t like this book at all, it’s so repetitive and boring it could’ve been written by a 6 grader as an assignment to be submitted regardless of its content.

[Kholood Khaled · Rating 1 out of 5]

يخربيت الرغي اللى ع الفاضي .. تضيع وقت

[Jeevan Koneti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives an overview in consciously processing huge volumes of information that is being pushed on to us at this times.

[Mohammad Javad · Rating 4 out of 5]

از جمله کتاب های کم حجم و جالب بود. انتظارم از کتاب در نگاه اول بیشتر از این بود.
ولی در مجموع جالب بود

[Aaryan Pashine]

meh

[Siddharth Raman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light read on how to process information. Nothing spectacular.

[Lee Belbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful short book that provides a practical way to think about information.

[Ajin Raj]

A good book for sieving information.

[ARC · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy and simple read, but the concepts and ideas may be a little too simple (obvious) and straightforward if you are an advanced thinker.

[Jitendra Mulay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The points laid out are thoughtful and are useful, writing though is very loose and somewhat repetitive.

[Haryo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ringkas, presisi...

[Yuyung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informasi yang kita cari harus diolah terlebih dahulu agar semuanya menjadi terurut dan rapi sehingga tidak terjadi misinformasi.

[Dorai Thodla]

Just finished reading it. It is a small book (less than 130 pages). Pretty good. Edward De Bono is one of my favorites. He proposes a framework for thinking about information and to make it visual associates one shape with each frame. Triangle is for purpose, circle is for accuracy, square is for points of view, heart is for interest, diamond is for value and slab(rectangle) is for outcomes.

The concept is good. I need to spend some time thinking about information in this framework to get used to it.

[Mark Wilson]

I thought this would take me longer to get through and was a little surprised that it seemed such a quick and simple read. It really only took a couple of hours. On the surface it seems like common sense, however we are so bombarded by information in today's world that we don't stop and think about how our brain processes this information. De Bono's principle is simple, but practical. Stop and think about HOW you think! There's some food for thought - literally!