Focused and Diffuse: Two Modes of Thinking
Our brains employ two modes of thinking to tackle any large task: focused and diffuse. Both are equally valuable but serve very different purposes. To do your best work, you need to master both. As …
Cognitive Biases
Is Our Faulty Memory Really So Bad?
[This introduction is the first of a four-part series on memory. Also see Chatper One, Two, and Three on the challenges of memory.] The Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter has some brilliant insights …
The Art of Thinking Clearly
Rolf Dobelli’s book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, is a compendium of systematic errors in decision making. While the list of fallacies is not complete, it’s a great launching pad into the …
The Four Villains of Decision Making
You’re probably not as effective at making decisions as you could be. This article explores Chip and Dan Heaths’ new book, Decisive. It’s going to help us make better decisions both …
What Matters More in Decisions: Analysis or Process?
We all make decisions. Some of them are large and many of them are small. Few of us understand that the process we use to make those decisions is more important than the analysis we put into the …
“Everyone has filters to select information that receives attention.”
These excerpts were taken from Roger Fisher’s excellent book Getting It Done: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge. Everyone has filters to select information that receives attention. If …
What Is Critical Thinking?
Based on our dysfunctional national dialogue, Hamilton College Professor Paul Gary Wyckoff articulates the critical thinking skills he wants his students to learn. 1. The ability to think empirically, …
Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies
Robert Gula in Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies: Let’s not call them laws; and, since they’re not particularly original, I won’t attach my name to them. They are merely a …
Daniel Kahneman: Debunking the Myth of Intuition
In a SPIEGEL interview, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman discusses the innate weakness of human thought, deceptive memories and the misleading power of intuition. By studying human …
Daniel Kahneman Answers
In one of the most in-depth and wide-ranging Q&A sessions held by the Freakonomics blog, Daniel Kahneman answered 22 new questions about his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Three of the questions …
Putting people and things into categories
Putting people and things into categories is something we all do. It’s a useful shortcut but reveals biases. And it plays a role in everything from ethnic violence to childhood development. The …
The Ben Franklin Effect
Ben Franklin discovered that a person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do that person another favor than they would be had they received a favor. Or, as Franklin put it: “He that …
Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss
The HR department’s long run on gut instincts may be coming to a close. Recently, Google applied their engineering (data-driven) mindset to building better bosses and the counter-intuitive …
Dan Ariely on 10 Irrational Human Behaviors
Predictably Irrational is a fascinating examination of why human beings are wired and conditioned to react irrationally. We human beings are a selfish bunch, so it’s all the more surprising to …