How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

As you might expect from the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams is skeptical of the value of life advice from a cartoonist, even if he is that cartoonist. Even so, Adams has had very great success in his profession, so he might be doing something right even if he has a very wrongheaded explanation of it.

That is a point Adams makes in his book How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big. Some things work even if we don’t understand them. Some beliefs help us move toward the life we want even if they aren’t correct—often even if we know they’re wrong. Adams expresses skepticism about a lot of things, and encourages his readers to use discernment, but he is willing to use what works with our without a good explanation.

One of those things is affirmations. Adams does not believe that affirmations shape the universe, or that the human mind or will or being has the ability to do such a thing. In a late chapter of the book, he speculates on why they might have some effect or, more likely, how people might convince themselves that affirmations work. In any case, Adams correlates some of his greatest successes to his use of affirmations.

Of course, Adams’ life has not been one of uninterrupted success. The title of the book acknowledges his failures. He doesn’t get hung up on them. His view was that if he learned something or gained a new skill from a failed enterprise, he still gained something. In his estimation, “every sill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

“Odds” is a good way to put it. When it comes down to it, success is a matter of luck. Adams believes that you can take steps to improve your ability to take advantage of the luck that comes your way

The way you do this is by implementing good systems. Adams doesn’t believe in goals. You feel like a failure if you haven’t achieved your goal; you lose your motivation when you complete your goal. Systems are things you can continue doing as long as they are useful. If you do something to implement your system, you’ve succeeded. A system is anything you do regularly in improve the likelihood that you’ll be happy in the long run.

To Adams, happiness is the heart of success. If you can sustain happiness, you’re successful in the ways that matter most. He describes it as a “chemistry experiment.” The idea is that we know a lot about what makes us happy and we just need to find the right mix of elements that fits our particular needs. To be happy one needs to maximize control  over their schedule, find ways to improve skills for a long time (especially in their careers and hobbies), imagine a better future, take care of health (diet, exercise and sleep), help others, and reduce daily decision-making by creating routines.

The book includes a host of other advice. Most of this advice is told in the context of Adams’ life story. He particularly focuses on his business and career failures (from which he learned useful things), the rise of Dilbert and his battle with a unique health problem.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard with illustrations by Tomie De Paola

Toxic Success by Paul Pearsall

Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.

The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett

Hammett, Dashiell. The Dain Curse.

The bearer of the Dain Curse described herself as being in a fog, grasping for something solid to hold on to, but finding that everything fades just as it comes within reach. Her morphine addiction might have had something to do with that.

The Continental Op, Hammett’s nameless protagonist, argues that everyone is that way. Everybody is grasping in the fog, piecing together wisps of reality from what they can pick out. He makes a similar argument earlier in the book when he avoids the truth he’d like to find and settles for a story that explains the few things he knows.

I felt like I was in a fog as I read the book. Hammett seemed to wrap up an interesting little pulp mystery, but two-thirds of the book was ahead of me. Every new clue unraveled the ties I’d made. The explanations I’d accepted no longer fit. I was reeling, as dizzy as the drug addled and insane characters in the book.



Even so, I anticipated the identity of the criminal before it was revealed. I didn’t do this through the careful accumulation of clues or rigorous reasoning. I came to me by intuition and some sense of the story’s structure. I suspected this is how the Continental Op must have worked it out, too. He stumbled upon what must have been and tied it all together with a neat explanation afterward.

Dashiell Hammett also wrote
Red Harvest
The Thin Man

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook
Will Eisner's The Spirit by Darwyn Cook

150 Book Reviews Posted on Keenan’s Book Reviews

We’ve posted reviews of 150 books on this blog so far. The most recent 50 are listed below in alphabetical order by title.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
8 Minutes in the Morning for Extra-Easy Weight Loss by Jorge Cruise
Acres of Diamonds by Russel H. Conwell
Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller
The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska et al
The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith
The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton

The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear
Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck
The Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
The Difference Maker by John C. Maxwell
The Elements of Technical Writing by Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
Fathered by God by John Eldredge
Follow Your Heart by Andrew Matthews

Genesis
The Golden Age of DC Comics by Les Daniels et al
Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook
Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast
The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers
The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al
The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
Peace of Mind through Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller
The Private Investigator’s Handbook by Chuck Chambers

Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott
The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick
Water by Marq de Villiers
The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldredge
When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce
You Can Write a Column by Monica McCabe Cardoza
Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Additional or expanded reviews have been posted on these books:
The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Big Necessity by Rose George
Blink by Macolm Gladwell
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
The Emotional Energy Factory by Mira Kirshenbaum
Epic by John Eldredge
The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson
God Wants You to be Rich by Paul Zane Pilzer
The Gospel of Luke
Gratitude by Melody Beattie
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork
The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed
No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul Coughlin (see comments)
The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer
The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Proverbs
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper
The Spirit by Darwyn Cooke
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin
Walking with God by John Eldredge
The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Stephen Post & Jill Neimark
Wisdom from the Batcave by Cory A. Friedman

Additional reviews:
First 25 Reviews
Reviews 26-50
Reviews 51-75
Reviews 76-100

Late Bloomers by Rich Karlgaard

The heroes of our age are young. Mark Zuckerberg, the man who made millions on Facebook while still in his 20s, is a notable example. Though Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and Tiger Woods are no longer youngsters, they achieved fame and wealth early in life and that is at least one reason why they remain famous. Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard is concerned that our focus on early achievement is depriving our society of the untapped potential of many—probably most of us—who develop at a slower rate. He discusses his concerns, and what we can do about it, in Late Bloomers.

 An industry has developed around seeking early achievement. You have to do well in school and get great SAT scores to get into elite colleges. You have to go to elite colleges to get jobs with the best companies. You have to work for the best companies to get ahead in life. If you have the right stuff, you can skip some of these steps and create your own successful business in your 20s.

 Except it’s not really so. Becoming equipped to succeed on this narrow path, which depends on early achievement, does not necessarily prepare one to have sustained success or achievement in any other area of life.

 In addition, most of us don’t have the mental equipment to make wise choices and stick to them while where young. The brain doesn’t fully mature until we’re in our mid-20s. Though the brain starts to slow down after that, certain types of intelligence—based on knowledge—continue to increase into our 40s and can be sustained well into old age. This late-developing intelligence can more than make up for the slower processing speeds of older brains.

 Kalgaard shares the stories of some late bloomers. Martha Stewart started her catering business at age 35, and published her first book at age 41. Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, when she was 39. More up my ally, Raymond Chandler was 51 when The Big Sleep, his first book, was published. Karlgaard pulls examples from the arts, business, sports and other fields.

 Karlgaard describes himself as a late bloomer. He didn’t do well and struggled in dead-end jobs until he was 25, when his brain finally matured enough for things to start clicking. This was when he was able to get a job that most of us would consider  ordinary, and he still had a ways to go before his career took off.

 Late bloomers have several skill, some hard-won, that help them succeed in their own time. They retain curiosity; they do not specialize to early and they do no avoid failure they way early achievers often do. The have compassion for other and themselves; they’ve had to overcome failure. They are resilient; they have developed perspective and support networks. The have learned to stay calm. The have insight gained from varied experience. The have wisdom, the elusive quality that arises from a maturing brain and a wealth of experience. The have learned when to doubt themselves and when to trust themselves. They know when to stick and when to quit. They are patient.

 As a society, we need to recognize that early achievement is not the norm. People develop at different rates and may peak in different ways at different ages. If we want to enjoy the full potential of people, we have to value the contributions of late bloomers.  We also have to open pathways for them through life-long learning and late-career pathways that force people out just because there is no more ways for them to move up the corporate ladder.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Quiet by Susan Cain

Self-Love by Robert H. Schuller

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

 Karlgaard, Rich. Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement. New York: Currency, 2019.

The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

Cook, Darwyn. Richard Stark’s The Hunter. San Diego: IDW, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-60010-493-0

Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) introduced hardboiled thief Parker in a series of novels in the 1960s. The novels have been adapted to film, but Darwyn Cook’s comic book adaption is the first authorized to use the name Parker.



Parker is not a gentleman thief, which is an oxymoron anyway. He is probably a sociopath. At the least, he has no regard for human life, property, law or much of anything else. He is as heartless and hardboiled as they come.

In The Hunter, Parker is on a cross-country mission of revenge. He narrowly escaped being killed, at the hand of his beautiful but week-willed wife, in a double-cross after a job to rob gunrunners. He cut was to e $90,000. He walked from California to Chicago and killed his way through a gaggle of gangsters to claims his cut and drive away with a price on his head.

Parker is horrible, but he is interesting and The Hunter is full of action. It’s understandable how the character became popular.

In this adaption, one can enjoy both a classic hardboiled story and the art of Cook. Cook is one of the greatest hardboiled illustrators in comics. His drawing conveys the sensibility of this type of story. In this book, he makes the bold choice of using just two colors, which conveys a sense of the graphic design of the ‘60s. The style is both simplified like a cartoon and complex, carefully designed, even painterly.

Many comic adaptations are not very good, just abridgements with colored drawings, but this book delivers. Cook tells the story with art and words. His drawings don’t just illustrate events; they convey the action information about the characters. There is a long sequence at the beginning of the book that that tells the reader a lot about Parker without words or even showing his face until the end, like a shot from a movie. Even the opening page, with just a few words and a composition reminiscent of Will Eisner, shows a lot about what kind of man is Parker.

Darwyn Cook also wrote Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

October Featured Category

Okay, KBR features nonfiction.  We still enjoy a good suspense story, possibly even some horror, this time of year.  Curl up with a chilling tale, possibly our featured book, move a nightlight into you bedroom, maybe let the dog sleep in there just for tonight.

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Steel, Piers. The Procrastination Equation: How to stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done. New York: Harper, 2011.

I don’t have a reputation as a procrastinator. In fact, some employers and clients have hired me because of my ability to get things done. However, looking around my home and office I saw many unfinished and delayed projects that indicated procrastination was a problem for me in some areas.

In The Procrastination Equation, Piers Steel describes the reasons behind procrastination and its scary costs, both to individuals and society. Fortunately, he also provides strategies for overcoming procrastination.

The big issue for procrastinators is impulsivity. I balked at this at first; I didn’t see myself as an impulsive person. When I read Steels description of how it works, I admitted to myself that I was more impulsive than I realized.



Impulsivity is an issue for nearly all procrastinators, indeed for nearly all people. Our limbic system drives use to respond to immediate concrete payoffs. Most of us live and work in a world of more distant, abstract goals, the realm of the prefrontal cortex. In the battle between the will of the prefrontal cortex and the urges of the limbic system, the limbic system is much stronger, so most of us are wired to give in to immediate gratification and give up, for a while, on seemingly far off, ethereal and uncertain objectives.

The way we live hits us from both sides. The greatest benefits accrue to those who can delay immediate gratification for greater, later benefits (eat vegetables instead of cookies, exercise instead of sleep in late, save money rather than spending it on the latest gadget). On the other side, we are bombarded with distractions that have immediate payoffs (especially television and the internet).

Steel offers methods for bolstering the prefrontal cortex, reducing distractions and even turning our impulsivity to our advantage. Even before I was finished with the book, I was seeing ways I could put some of these techniques into practice for myself.

There are other reasons for procrastination, but not many. You can take a short test in the book to find out why you procrastinate. In my case, one other factor in Steel’s equation was significant in my procrastination. I could see how it influenced my delaying habits throughout my life, even going back to my rebellion against spelling homework and multiplication tables in third grade (it’s amazing that I passed third grade).

I haven’t eliminated procrastination overnight (I just finished reading the book), and Steel doesn’t suggest anyone can. One can start doing something about it right away, and the science-based approaches offered in this book offer a reasonable expectation of success.

As an aside, I tweeted that I was reading the book and Dr. Steel and he replied with a humorous tweet that demonstrates my theory that published authors are also salesmen. (By the way, the tone of his book is often humorous, too.) Any of us who have a product or service to offer are salesmen, including me. Anyway, if you’re reading this, Dr. Steel, I managed to return the book to the library on time. Perhaps a few of the readers of this review will due us both the favor of buying a copy of the book.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott

What I Read (9)

Date: March 24, 2007
Title: The Beethoven Factor Author: Paul Pearsall
Thoughts: “Remember, the first mental food of your day will set your mental tone for the entire day” (quote from the book).

Date: March 31, 2007
Title: The Big Sleep
Author: Raymond Chandler
Thoughts: These stories don’t end when everything seems to be tied up. If things to feel right to Marlowe, he’ll unravel his case, put a new twist on it and tie it up in a new way.

Date: April 12 & 14, 2007
Titles: Henry Huggins, Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Brave
Author: Beverly Cleary
Thoughts: I read and enjoyed these books as a kid. I enjoyed them again, especially Beezus and Ramona. These books were loaned to me by a friend who still had them from her childhood. The first time I read them, I checked them out from my elementary school library.

Date: May 6, 2007
Title: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
Author: Steven K. Scott
Thoughts: I have taken the challenge to read Proverbs every day.

Date: May 8, 2007
Title: Proverbs
Thoughts:
“I love those who love me [Wisdom],
And those who seek me diligently will find me.
Riches and honor are with me,
Enduring riches and righteousness.
My fruit is better than gold, yes, than fine gold,
And my revenue than choice silver” (Proverbs 8:17-19).

Date: May 10, 2007
Title: The Ghost Map
Author: Steven Johnson
Thoughts: There seems to be a subtle implication that Rev. Whitehead’s r
easonableness was unique among religious people, not the norm.

Date: July 8, 2007
Title: The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life Author: Hannah Whitall Smith
Thoughts: I enjoyed this book. I wish I had come across it as a young Christian. I’d like to read it again some day.

Date: July 12, 2007
Title: The Relaxation Response
Author: Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper
Thoughts: This is very interesting. If we have such a way to manage stress and counteract some of its worst effects, why aren’t we using it? I’m not signing up for TM, but surely, I can elicit this response in an appropriate way.

Other parts of What I Read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Benson, Herbert, and Miriam Z. Klipper. The Relaxation Response. Updated ed. New York: Whole Care, 2000.

Dr. Benson presents the relaxation response as a natural ability of people to reduce the activities of their sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is our “involuntary” nervous system, which responds to stress and relates to our fight-or-flight response.

For a variety of reason, modern living causes us to respond inappropriately to stresses with the fight-or-flight response. This leads to hypertension, or high blood pressure, which significantly contributes to atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and other diseases like heart attach or stroke. Benson is a cardiologist, so much of the book focuses on high blood pressure and related diseases.


The relaxation response is something of an opposite of the fight-or-flight response. Instead of preparing the body for action, it is a state of relative inaction and recovery. Blood pressure and oxygen use are lower during the relaxation response. Regular elicitation of the response results in generally lower blood pressure, and hopefully reduced risk and severity of related diseases.

Also in contrast to the fight-or-flight response, which kicks in automatically, the one must consciously enter the relaxation response. Though many techniques may elicit the response, they all amount to some form of meditation.

Two essential meditative practices that activate the response are a mental device and a passive attitude. The mental device is usually a word or phrase repeated silently or aloud. It may also be a gaze fixed upon an object. This focuses the attention and reduces distraction. When thoughts or outside stimuli distract, return to the mantra or fixed gaze.

A passive attitude is also necessary; it may be the most important thing. Disregard distractions. Do not try to force the relaxation response, let it happen. Do not worry about getting it right.

A quiet location and a comfortable position aid meditation. Too much comfort may result in falling asleep. Sleep is different from the relaxation response.

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

You may have heard of Lucinda Bassett and the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety. I remember hearing her on radio commercials talking about a book or audio program. You may have seen her infomercial or an appearance on a talk show, notably Oprah.

As you can guess form the name of her business, Bassett focuses on helping people overcome stress, anxiety, and fear. That is the purpose of her book, The Solution.

The first part of The Solution is a description of the problem. Of course, a certain amount of fear, stress, and anxiety are natural. They are our built-in emotional and physical responses to threats in our environment. They become problems when we experience them too often, when they capture us in constrained and unsatisfying lives. The worst part is that much of the fear, anxiety, and stress we experience is our own doing, responses to worries and imagined threats.

Worry turns our imagination into our worst enemy.  We seek out threats, conjure catastrophes, and foresee the worst. Bassett says we can turn this around. We can train ourselves to use our imaginations positively, to seek opportunities, to foresee desirable results. This notion is fundamental to most self-help, but Bassett frames it a little more interestingly. We can worry positively. A great worrier can be a great success.

These worries and the habitual behaviors they trigger, are rooted in a core story. This is another opportunity for reframing. A core story that once lead to defeat and discouragement can become motivation to strive for something better. Exercises in the book guide the reader in discovering his core story.

The second half of the book presents six strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety.

•  Detachment is about accepting and letting go of things you cannot change, being honest, and holding on to peace.
• Security is about improving your attitudes and beliefs about money and getting your financial house in order.
• Good health is important to coping with stress. Diet, exercise and sleep are the keys to good health.
• Compassion is a potent antidote to anxiety. Show yourself compassions by stopping the negative messages you repeat to yourself and intentionally practice positive self-talk.
• Reconnects with you dreams and decide what you want, the develop a plan to achieve your goals. Put the plan into action.
• A balanced life looks different for different people, but balance helps us all feel less anxious. Set your priorities, act on them, and live with purpose in the moment.

 
The strength of the book is Bassett’s own experience. She is someone who was once hindered by anxiety who has turned her imagination from and enemy to an ally. She reframed her core story from one of loneliness and lack to motivation to have a good life of family and abundance. Bassett also enlivens the book with stories of her clients, popular figures, and historical people.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Bassett, Lucinda. The Solution: Conquer Your Fear, Control Your Future. New York: Sterling, 2011.

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

A large creative project of the type Phyllis Korkki references in the title of her book The Big Thing can be hard to finish, or even start. Korkki identifies several characteristics of big things that make them challenging.

-Big things are personally meaningful. The dread of failing or falling short of a dream can keep us from crossing the finish line, or even the starting line.

-They have no deadline. It is your personal project that you get done on your own schedule.

-They are large and complex. At first, the structure of the thing you want to create may not be clear in your mind.

-They require sustained concentration and effort. It can be hard to keep going and going, especially in the face of the other challenges of taking on a big thing.

Creative projects are not just novels, movies, painting or other thing we typically think of as art. A healthy relationship, especially marriage and family, can be a creative undertaking. Other types of creative goals might lead to you to organize people and resources to make a difference in the world.

In order to find a way to complete her big thing, Korkki looked into areas that you might not find in other get-things-done type self-help books. For instance, she looked at the effects of health and sleep. Along the way she received coaching in breathing, posture and mindfulness. The bottom line is that if you’re going to have the energy, stamina and mental clarity you need to finish a major creative work, you’ll need to take care of yourself.

She also found that constraints were helpful. For her, her sense obligation help her design constraints around accountability to her editors and others. My background is engineering, so I tend to think of creativity in terms of dealing with constraints and how they can be overcome or possibly used to achieve a purpose.

Creative projects are rarely the work of one person. Korkki gives credit to her agent, her editor, and the many people at her publisher who turned her words into a book. Ego can get in the way of working with other and Korkki offers advice on how collaboration can work.

Something I found helpful was Korkki’s advice on figuring out when to let something go. Get real with yourself. Do you have the motivation, especially if you must learn and practice something new to achieve your creative goal? Are you committed to work on it regularly? Is it worth the sacrifice you’ll need to make? You may find that something else is more important to you, or that you don’t realistically have the desire to push through the obstacles that will inevitably show up. Instead of torturing yourself because of what you’re not doing, put you energy and talents into something else you want to do.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Korkki, Phyllis. The Big Thing: How to Complete Your Creative Project Even if You’re a Lazy, Self-Doubting Procrastinator Like Me. New York: Harper, 2016.

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Modern life presents us with too much stuff and too much information to deal with. In The Organized Mind, psychologist Daniel J. Levitin explains how we can work with our mind, instead of against it, to handle information and make better decisions.

Attention is the critical resources for taking in information, making good decisions, and forming memories. The difficulty is that we only have so much attention to go around. Our attentional systems work to make us unconsciously ignore many of the signals that come our way; we would be overwhelmed if they did not. Our built in systems pay attention to change or to things that seem important. Our natural state is to have a wandering mind, broadly attentive to the environment, screening out the stable and safe, occasionally zooming in on something novel or critical.

We can also use the executive functions of our mind to focus attention where we want it. This can consume a lot of energy, but we can do it very effectively, sometimes focusing to the point where we lose track over everything else.

Both forms of attention have their strengths and limitations. In addition, it is costly to our attention bank to switch between modes or to switch focus from one subject to another. The load of information that we have to deal with can exhaust our attentional system, leading to inattention, poor memory, and bad decisions.

Levitin offers solutions to alleviate these problems and work with the strengths of our brains. The primary suggestion is to offload as much information as possible to the environment. The less we have to remember, and the fewer minor decisions we have to make, the better off we’ll be. Highly successful people use systems of habits, calendars, filing, labels, and standards to minimize the amount of information they have to carry in their memories. It is often not so important to know something as it is to be able to find it when you need it.

A related concept is to use categories and chunk up information. Our minds do this naturally. For instance, we typically don’t remember a telephone number as seven digits, but as two chunks of digits. We can apply a chunking strategy by breaking large jobs into doable tasks, or be grouping related tasks together. We can create scenes or stories in our mind (we do it anyway) to connect a string of events. Sleep seems to be important our natural chunking process, consolidating memories, connecting new information to old, and formulating new concepts.

Levitin presents many tools to organize information and things to make it easier on our brains. In my opinion, one of the most helpful tools is the fourfold table. This is a simple method to organize statistical information and assess the probabilities of certain outcomes. We have horrible intuition for understanding probabilities and assessing risks. Even people trained in statistics typically get probabilities wrong when they guess. The fourfold table, which Levitin describes in some detail with examples, allows one to break down the numbers and evaluate the most relevant probabilities.

The Organized Mind is not a how-to manual, though it has many strategies for organizing based on how the brain works. Levitin discusses the structure and function of parts of the brain, but is not excessively technical. A reader could skim these sections without too much loss. A reader could also focus on a particular aspect of organizing (business, time, and even social life) based on the way the book is organized, though the first few chapters have a lot of information that is background for the other sections.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Levitin, Daniel J. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload. New York: Dutton, 2014.