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...
Book Recommendation: Getting Things Done
by David Allen
If you feel overloaded by all you have to do, there is hope. "It's possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control." So says David Allen in the opening line...