Every night before I went to sleep, my father…
Every night before I went to sleep, my father used to give me an assignment to write on two sides of an 8 1/2x11 sheet of paper everything that I could think of about one word. For example that word could have been paper. I had to fill up two sides of a piece of paper with everything that I knew about the word paper. If anybody tries this, they will find that it is pretty easy to write three or four lines about paper. Even when you are a kid. It is a little bit more difficult to write another three or four lines about paper. It is a lot more difficult to write another three or four lines about the paper. As an adult try to write about the word paper and fill up two sides of an eight and a half by 11 sheet. It is extremely difficult. I believe that that exercise contributed to my ability to think out of the box. Because it always made me look at different angles for how to get information.
— from The Mind in the Cockpit