Book Recommendation: How to Lie with Statistics
by Darrell Huff
We are bombarded with factoids and sound bites in political speeches, subway ads, water-cooler conversations—everywhere. It takes a sharp focus to separate the babble from the facts. For guidance with this important task, I recommend Darrell Huff's classic book, How...
Book Recommendation: Mind Over Mood
by Dennis Greenberger & Christine Padesky
Emotions are our automatic life-reporting systems. We experience joy in our successes, eagerness to achieve the next goal, fear of a deadline we need to pay more attention to. Emotions are crucial to enjoying life and keeping it on track. Unfortunately, emotions can...
Book Recommendation: Changing for Good
by James Prochaska, John Norcross & Carlos Diclemente
Making and Breaking Habits Bad habits. How do you break them? Good habits. How do you make them? In the simplest cases, all it takes is a little willpower. For example, if you want to stop uttering filler words like "y'know" and "um," it's fairly easy. Be vigilant —...
Book Recommendation: When Panic Attacks
by David Burns
Please ignore the title of this book and read on. David Burns, a well-known cognitive psychologist, has created an insightful guide to help people deal with a wide range of disruptive emotional issues: depression, anxiety, unearned guilt, phobias. In fact, his...
Don’t Let Pressure Sabotage Your Thinking
Pressure can sabotage your thinking. By pressure, I mean an issue weighing on your mind as you try to concentrate on something else. Perhaps it's an imminent deadline or a desperate desire to do a fantastic job. Maybe it's a highly-charged emotional situation you...
Case Study: New Year’s Resolutions
New Year's Resolutions. How often do they turn out to be empty rhetoric? A resolution is a special kind of goal. It is not just a one-time target, like doubling sales for the year. When you make a resolution to lose weight or stop smoking, your goal is to change your...
Applying a Thinking Tool to Create a Humorous Speech
Reading a "how to" book or taking a "how to" course doesn't magically transform a person's thinking abilities. Changing one's thinking methods can be as difficult as changing the established procedures of an entrenched bureaucracy. A person's old ways of thinking feel...
Book Recommendation: The Art of Nonfiction
by Ayn Rand
The Art of Nonfiction contains a host of insights about the writing process. I recommend it to all serious writers. The book is based on an informal course Ayn Rand gave to some of her associates in 1969. Although a few sections presuppose the original audience, most...
Case Study: Hard Thinking on Writing Problems
When I tell people about my course, sometimes they don't quite know what I mean by "hard thinking." I don't mean thinking on specialized subjects like astrophysics. I mean thinking on any subject in which, at times, it's not clear how to proceed. Some extra effort is...
Speed Up Confusing, Bogged-Down Tasks By Slowing Down Your Thinking
Sometimes, when there's more work on your plate than ever, your output slows to a crawl. When this happens, you may feel you should just speed up. But that impulse is mistaken. To get moving again, first slow down your thinking. Bogging down is evidence you've...
