One might ask what exercises can increase an individual's strategic thinking ability – besides reading this book, of course. There are in fact a number of concrete skills, practices, and techniques that can substantially enhance one's abilities in this area. It was mentioned earlier (p. 29) that intense concentration is essential for success on strategic problems. Games such as chess and problems in mathematics both help to foster this ability to concentrate. So experience with chess and mathematics carry over into other domains, even though the specific skills involved may not.

A key difference between the thinking of an untutored individual and a practiced strategist is that the strategist has mental structures at hand for organizing information and connecting events, whereas the untutored individual has disordered thought processes. The simplest example is the ability to order things in time. An impulsive person takes actions without following out the sequence of what will happen next, and is thus always being surprised by consequences. Such people do not schedule their errands so that their driving time is minimized and so that they finish in time, but are likely to go to the store and then find that the ice cream is melting in the car while they stop to shop for clothes. An impulsive person starts a major outdoor yard project 30 minutes before it gets dark, and ends up trying to cut the grass in the twilight, thereby running over the hose with the mower.