About this ebook
Every human being was born creative. Children — before they encounter the peer judgment, institutional standardization, and risk-averse cultural messaging of formal education — are relentlessly, naturally, magnificently creative. They generate ideas without inhibition, combine concepts without fear of judgment, explore problems from angles that adults have been trained to overlook, and find solutions that the "more experienced" miss precisely because they have not yet been told what is impossible.
By the time most people reach adulthood, the natural creative fluency of childhood has been significantly suppressed — by the educational system's emphasis on single correct answers, by the social penalty of nonconformity, by the professional reward of competent execution rather than original thought, and by the deeply internalized belief that creativity is a rare, innate gift rather than a universal, trainable capacity.
Research has demolished this belief. Creative thinking — the ability to generate original, valuable ideas and solutions through the novel combination of existing concepts — is not a fixed characteristic distributed randomly at birth. It is a set of cognitive skills that have known neural substrates, develop through specific practices, and are profoundly influenced by environment, habit, and culture.
This book is your guide to understanding, developing, and sustaining your creative intelligence across every domain where original thinking matters — which is every domain worth caring about.
About the author
Dr. Cole's fascination with decision science began when he noticed how often smart, well-intentioned people make choices they later regret — not because they lacked information, but because they lacked a reliable process for thinking things through. His books aim to fill that gap with simple, repeatable mental models.
He draws from behavioral economics, logic, game theory, and real-world case studies to create guides that are both intellectually stimulating and immediately useful. His writing is clear, structured, and designed for readers who want to think more carefully without overthinking.
When he is not writing, Dr. Cole enjoys strategy board games, mountain hiking, and reading about the history of great (and terrible) decisions. He believes that the quality of our decisions determines the quality of our lives.
