p. 9-10: I like playing logic puzzles and games, because I feel they help sharpen how analytical my mind can get. Why is this so important? Well, the analysis step is perhaps the hardest part of the problem-solving process. So many ways of attacking the problem. Which one's the best? What's the impact of my solution? What are the side-effects? Who's going to be affected? How? When? How can I divert? How do I mitigate? What could go wrong in the implementation? This is only a taste of the questions we try to address while performing an analysis of a problem and any proposed solutions.

Try to do stuff everyday that sharpens your intellect. I used to do that a couple of years ago, but then I realized I was wasting my time. Instead, I spent time increasing my intellectual capacity. Increasing the capacity (i.e., the upper bound on intellectual sharpness) is way more effective than increasing just your intellectual level. Increasing the pitcher size somehow seems to increase the volume of water in it.

p. 11: Algorithms are important. Most of our problems are solved today by computers. And algorithms are the "language" we use to communicate orders to a computer. So what we need to keep in mind is that whenever we attack problems, our end goal is to come up with an efficient algorithm that anyone can execute. This end goal is critical.

p. 13: Different algorithms perform better in different situations so the best way to analyze the performance of an algorithm is to actually run it. The differences between two or more algorithms then become immediately apparent. If you can't actually run the algorithm, then you can at least simulate it, either on a computer or in your head. Pretend you are actually executing the algorithm and look for all the things that can go wrong. Close your eyes, and pretend you are about to cross the street. What things do you need to worry about?

p. 15: I have issues with this kind of solution technique [iteration]. I spent three years at the University of Waterloo and eight months working for them, and I noticed that this is how problems routinely get solved. The thing is, after 50 years of iteration, the solution did get much better than what they initially started with, but this is a solution made out of spare twigs, cello tape and newspaper clippings. What I'm looking for is a solution made out of reinforced concrete, glass and steel. There is no match between the two.

p. 19: if you find yourself trying to adapt past solutions to new situations, stop yourself at once. The adapted solution may only be incrementally better, a mere iteration over the previous solution. You want to instead think through a problem from scratch, re-consider every single variable again, and re-hash all the things that could go wrong. This might seem time-consuming but the importance of certain variables are always changing so frequently. What was just a minor detail last year now becomes critical.

In essence, if you can skip iterating and simply jump to the best solution at once, you'll be leaps and bounds better off than the rest of crowd that are relying solely on their memories and their experiences to solve their complex problems.