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This quick, 25-day plan for thinking more clearly and effectively in every area of life shows readers how desires and emotions distort thinking and how they can correct such situations.
Better critical thinking can transform your life and help you improve every decision you make! Now, in just 30 days, master specific, easy-to-learn critical thinking techniques that help you cut through lies, gain insight, and make smarter choices in every area of your life -- from work and money to intimate relationships. World-renowned critical thinking experts Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul show how to overcome poor thinking habits caused by self-delusion or out-of-control emotions... clarify what you really want... recognize what you don’t know… ask better questions... resist brainwashing, manipulation, and hypocrisy... critically evaluate what you’re told by advertisers, politicians, your boss, and even your family… avoid worrying, conformism, and blame. Every day, you'll focus on a specific thinking habit, mastering practical strategies for achieving results, tracking your progress, gaining confidence, and getting smarter! Expanded, improved, and easier to use, Discover the Power of Critical Thinking, Revised and Expanded edition offers today's most complete, practical plan for using critical thinking to build a better life. This edition adds five new "days" of critical thinking workouts, delivering even more powerful "life improvement" ideas. Brand-new illustrations and diagrams help you see the direct relevance of critical thinking in your own life, and you'll find a practical new introduction to the authors' Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking, which is now being used by critical thinkers worldwide!
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.
The history of education is also the history of short-term solutions to deep-seated educational problems. While programs like No Child Left Behind or Common Core Curriculum are well-intentioned, they result in intense fragmentation of energy and resources in schools. A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Educational Fads critiques many current educational trends, illuminating their underlying motivations and providing holistic, sustainable solutions. Teachers, school administrators, and policy makers will find this book an eye-opening overview of education trends and fads, and a refreshing outlook on future reform. As part of the Thinker’s Guide Library, this book advances the mission of the Foundation for Critical Thinking to promote fairminded critical societies through cultivating essential intellectual abilities and virtues within every field of study across the world.
Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.
Combining cutting-edge theories of culture and government with programming examples—including Todd TV, Survivor, and American Idol—Better Living through Reality TV moves beyond the established concerns of political economy and cultural studies to conceptualize television's evolving role in the contemporary period. A major textbook on the impact of reality and lifestyle television on today’s programming, and on broader social, cultural and political trends Draws on a range of examples from The Apprentice and American Idol to Extreme Makeover and Wife Swap Argues that reality television teaches viewers to monitor, motivate, improve, transform and protect themselves in the name of freedom, enterprise, and personal responsibility
"In an effort to treat a debilitating mood disorder, Ayelet Waldman undertook a very private experiment, ingesting 10 micrograms of LSD every three days for a month. This is the story--by turns revealing, courageous, fascinating and funny--of her quietly psychedelic spring, her quest to understand one of our most feared drugs, and her search for a really good day"--
Silver Award Winner -- Nonfiction Authors Association Book Awards Stress and our overloaded brains are two of the underlying causes creating conflict, tension, and drama in the workplace. They also result in poor decision making and less-than-optimal thinking by leaders at all levels of the workforce. Daily juggling of data, reports, email, meetings, decisions, and way too much information has leaders operating in "mind full" modes. This is not good. A more effective method is to make decisions in a mindful mode, a skill that can be learned. As a leader, the decisions you make and execute shape the lives of team members, colleagues, direct reports, customers, suppliers, and the communities in which you operate and live. Unfortunately, the majority of leaders are unaware of how stress, multitasking, and overtaxed brains trigger poor decisions, thinking, and outcomes. This book will help readers become more cognizant of when stress is triggering them toward poor decision making. It will also help leaders become more aware of the many benefits that mindfulness practices will bring to their decision-making and thinking capabilities. Key topics include: How stress leads to poor decision making The impact and benefits of mindfulness for leaders Steps for reducing stress Techniques for shifting into mindfulness at work and elsewhere Brain facts and myths Tips for improving brain health Mindfulness techniques that can be used at work and elsewhere Mindfulness meditation techniques that can be used at work and elsewhere Additionally, Better Decisions. Better Thinking. Better Outcomes. delves into some of the latest neuroscience research on the steps that all of us can take to protect our brains and manage the health of our brains well into our elderly years. Unfortunately, we are entering an era when increasing dementia, Alzheimer's disease and stroke are going to hit individuals, families, and society hard. Current estimates predict the United States will see a 60% increase in Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia by 2030 from today's already staggering levels. Fortunately, using the techniques and tips in this book, such an increase is preventable. But only if the right actions are taken now, by you, your family members, your work colleagues, and everyone else. By helping ourselves, and one another, take the proper steps to enhance brain health, we can reduce the financial costs to society - and the brutal emotional costs to families - of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. This book shares some of the new scientific research that shows how mindfulness, stress relief and management techniques, meditation, and better dietary habits could slow and even postpone the debilitating effects of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. You will also learn about new neuroscientific studies showing that neuroplasticity -- the ability to grow neuronal connectivity across the brain -- can continue well into our 70s. The techniques described in this book will help you make better decisions and improve your thinking prowess. They will also result in you becoming a less stressed and far healthier person. Those are four great outcomes that will benefit you immediately, and for years to come.
The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can make mistakes and find flaws where they shouldn't, criticism as a discipline is one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence. Using his own film criticism as a starting point--everything from his infamous dismissal of the international blockbuster The Avengers to his intense affection for Pixar's animated Ratatouille--Scott expands outward, easily guiding readers through the complexities of Rilke and Shelley, the origins of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, the power of Marina Abramovich and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Drawing on the long tradition of criticism from Aristotle to Susan Sontag, Scott shows that real criticism was and always will be the breath of fresh air that allows true creativity to thrive. "The time for criticism is always now," Scott explains, "because the imperative to think clearly, to insist on the necessary balance of reason and passion, never goes away."
