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Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

Edward de Bono

The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Focus Powerful Process Simplicity Source
I’m a very loyal and unreliable friend.
EDWARD DE BONO

Friendship Loyalty Myself
Mock the devil, and he will flee from thee.
EDWARD DE BONO

Devil Run
We still seek to solve conflicts with ‘judgement’ instead of designing the way forwards.
EDWARD DE BONO

Design Judgement Seek
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
EDWARD DE BONO

Break Creativity Experience Freedom Need Order Temporary
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Believe Business Data Executive Ideas Mindset Perspective Science Wrong
The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.
EDWARD DE BONO

Arrogant Effect Sin Thinking Treat
Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Different Establishment Order Pattern Way
Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.
EDWARD DE BONO

Attention Deal Mental Energy Necessary Simplicity Time
My thinking was taught to tribes in South Africa like the Zulus and Xhosas. At the time there were about 210 fights breaking out among them every month, but after they listened to my lessons, this fell to just four.
EDWARD DE BONO

Fight Lesson Listening Teaching Thinking Time
Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway – we just disguise them as logic.
EDWARD DE BONO

Business Discussion Feeling Logic
Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.
EDWARD DE BONO

Fashion Human Language Progress Way
If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.
EDWARD DE BONO

Design Future Yourself
Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.
EDWARD DE BONO

Creativity Hope Idea Worth
You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future.
EDWARD DE BONO

Analysis Design Future Past Yourself
In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.
EDWARD DE BONO

Future Possible Preparation Strive

Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

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Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

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