Another book on how the brain works – for some reason I’ve been interested in reading these kinds of books as if I’m searching for the missing instruction manual to my own brain.
There was a lot of good stuff in this book, and a lot of stuff that wasn’t so useful. It sometimes felt like the writer just couldn’t stop and ended up pouring in all the little pet peeves he has had over the years – prostate cancer diagnoses, car repair estimates, and more.
However I did get a lot out of this book. The descriptions of the two states of the mind – active analytical and dream-state, and how there is a daily limit to how much analytical you can do. There was a lot on categorization and how you can (and should) offload information from your brain to the external world.
The focus on developing critical thinking skills when dealing with information (because of all the low quality information that is out there) was appreciated. Also he writes that we have to show understanding – not only to help other people but the characteristic of understanding has some strong positive effects for ourselves long term.
Finally it was interesting to think about where we go from here – now that just about everything is instantly available online it is far more important to have some strategies for selecting what you want.
Next I’m reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.
