Category Archives: Thinking Skills

“Rule for Success” – A Case Study for Multi-Brain Whole-Man Mindset

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Success is the desire of everyone. Having a Multi-Brain Whole-Man(MBWM) mindset is a key for people to know how to achieve it.  So, I use this “Rule for Success” as a case study to help introduce the MBWM mindset that will hopefully help you to attain the success that you want.

Here is the mind-map that summarize the whole story:

Multi-Brain Whole-Man(MBWM) mindset

   We all know that “exercise is good”, but many are still not exercising regularly. Why? Because the fact (‘Exercise is good”) only enters our mind and not our heart.  We don’t feel it is important enough for us to do something about it. Our heart is not fully persuaded. We make excuses like “I don’t feel like it now”, “I’m too busy now”, etc and the best excuse of all, “I’ll do it tomorrow”.  So we know that any behavior change or improvement, must address at least two parts of our “Whole-Man”, namely the mind and the heart. If we have friends, the relationship part, then perhaps our friends can encourage us and even force us to join them in their exercises. So now we have our mind, heart and relationship that trigger us to get our body to go out and exercise. This is the concept of Whole-Man mindset.

   One of the key part of the Whole-Man mindset is the MIND. To help us develop our MIND, I introduce the Multi-Brain model making up of rational Left-Brain, creative and intuitive Right-Brain, the Digital-Brain of the computer, software and knowledge bases and the internet collaborative Cloud-Brain of the millions of people of the world. Left and Right Brains are well covered in the literature or in the internet Cloud, and I shall not cover anymore except to remind us that we should not be fooled into thinking that we are either a Left or a Right Brain person. We have both and should develop and use both Left and Right Brains.
   I have intentionally show the mind-map to above to show that we can use computer and software to extend our biological brains. The digital brain serves as our brain or mind extender. We must develop our extended brain —- our Digitial Brain.  For more information on how to develop our digital brain, please see Thinking Frameworks, or at least the series on mind-mapping starting with Brain Storming with Mind Mapping – Illustrated with Future of Singapore.

“Rule for Success”

www.inc.com Small Business Ideas and Resources for Entrepreneurs is a good site for reference. So if I do a search “Rule for Success”, I will get back a list of quotes and short articles from the successful people. Here is the screen capture of the 1st page (as shown in the mindmap above):

These are the great wisdom from the crowd of successful people available in the internet Cloud Brain. It will be too much to digest, remember and to recall.

Making the Cloud Brain into Personal Digital Brain
For us to benefit from the Cloud Brain, we must do a little bit of processing and organization of knowledge. That’s where mind-mapping comes in. I did the following:

1. Copy & Paste or Retype the Key Words into the Mind-map.

2. Read the articles refered and try to make the article title more meaningful.
For example, the first article title by Evan is just “Do Less”. If we read the article, we get to know more. He is talking about doing less so that we can focus on the key thing (something that Steve Jobs also said in “Say No to a 1000 thing”). Furthermore, he said to follow our gut! His success in Blogger and Tweeter are subsets of his main thought that he felt have great potential. These keys are important. So I change the title from “Do Less” into “Do Less – Importance of Focus & Follow Your Gut”. Of coure, you are free to shorten it to whatever that help you understand and remember better. So a shorter title might be “Focus & Follow Your Gut”. But I prefer ‘Do Less’ because that is what focus means and ‘do less’ is a great reminder for us who naturally want to ‘Do More’.

I spent the time to read all the articles and rephrase the titles shown in the mind-map above.

3. Beautify the Map.
You can then color, number and format the map in whatever way you like to make it appeal and easier to understand.

4. Link it with Existing Mind-maps.
This is not the first time we look for the secrets of success. Most likely, we have read many quotes and stories of the rich, famous and successful people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Stephen Covey etc. That was what I did and have shared it in Integrated Success Principles – Adding the 5 Secrets of Richard Branson. So I put link in this mind-map to the “Integrated Success Principles”.

In fact, I have go one-step further to integrate this one into the larger “Integrated Success Principles” mind-map. When I do that, I will discover there are many duplicates and there will be some new thoughts. This is how an existing mind-map of knowledge grows with time.

Study the Rule for Success:
I have went to the mechanics of building a mind-map for success principles. Don’t forget to read the content of the “Rule for Success” and see if you can learn something from them. All the very best to your success.

Lim Liat (c) 7 Oct 2013

See also: Map Your Way to Greater Success from the Keys of the Super-Rich.

East West Fusion Mindset as a Key and as Simple as ABC

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The East and West mindset can be integrated and represented as a Key with the round base representing Eastern/Chinese circular mindset and the straight grooved pin as the Western linear and detailed mindset. The application of the fusion mindset is as simple as ABC represented using computer language statements of assignment, If-the-else and looping construct. The details of ABC can be found in my blog posts.

The East-West Key
After much study, comparisons and reflections on the Eastern/Chinese and Western(trained in high schools, university, post graduate, consultants, management books, HBRs etc etc) , I think both can be integrated into a key, represented by a physical door-key. The rounded based representing the circular, cyclical Chinese mindset, with Yin-Yang balance and harmony as objective and the pin with groves representing the linear, sequential, and detailed task oriented mindset of the West.  Here is the picture with greater details:

Fusion mindset calls neither East or West alone thinking but both, applying them in different degree, depending on the situations and the players, to achieve the right result by thanking the right action at the right time and place.  We should also be aware that the ‘right result’ is a dynamic balance of among multiple forces. The balance will and have to shift through time as situations change.

The Application of Fusion Mindset is as Simple as ABC:
Using the computer language as a means of representation, the following picture show this Fusion Wisdom can be applied:

If you have only one take away, just remember the IF statement:

IF then DO A else DO B.

All the very best to your business and career.

Lim Liat (C) 13 May 2013