Making Up Your Own Mind ― Thinking Effectively Through Creative Puzzle-solving

How you can become better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills

We solve countless problems—big and small—every day. With so much practice, why do we often have trouble making simple decisions—much less arriving at optimal solutions to important questions? Are we doomed to this muddle—or is there a practical way to learn to think more effectively and creatively? In this enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring book, Edward Burger shows how we can become far better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills using simple, effective thinking techniques.

Making Up Your Own Mind teaches these techniques—including how to ask good questions, fail and try again, and change your mind—and then helps you practice them with fun verbal and visual puzzles. The goal is not to quickly solve each challenge but to come up with as many different ways of thinking about it as possible. As you see the puzzles in ever-greater depth, your mind will change, helping you become a more imaginative and creative thinker in daily life. And learning how to be a better thinker pays off in incalculable ways for anyone—including students, businesspeople, professionals, athletes, artists, leaders, and lifelong learners.

A book about changing your mind and creating an even better version of yourself through mental play, Making Up Your Own Mind will delight and reward anyone who wants to learn how to find better solutions to life’s innumerable puzzles.

And the puzzles extend to the thought-provoking format of the book itself because one of the later short chapters is printed upside down while another is printed in mirror image, further challenging the reader to see the world through different perspectives and make new meaning.

Edward Burger is the president of Southwestern University. Previously he was the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Mathematics at Williams College, and the Robert Foster Cherry Professor for Great Teaching at Baylor University. Burger has been honored as a leader in education and for his innovative work in developing educational and entertaining mathematics textbooks. During the late 1980s Ed was featured at a stand-up comedy club in Austin, Texas and also was an “independent contractor,” writing for Jay Leno. Humor is an integral tool among his teaching methods. Today he has a weekly, lively program on higher education, thinking, and learning produced by NPR's Austin affiliate KUT. The series is aptly called Higher ED.