That’s because inside each of us is an internal editor whose job is to forever polish our thoughts, so we sound smart and in control, and so that we fit into society. But what happens when we encounter problems where such conventional thinking fails us? How to get unstuck? For Mark Levy, the answer is freewriting, a technique he’s used for years to solve all types of business problems, and generate ideas for books, articles and blog posts. Freewriting is deceptively simple: Start writing as fast as you can, for as long as you can, about a subject you care deeply about, while ignoring the standard rules of grammar and spelling. Your internal editor won’t be able to keep up with your output, and will be temporarily shunted into the background. You’ll now be able to think more honestly and resourcefully than before, and will generate breakthrough ideas and solutions that you couldn’t have created any other way. Levy shares six freewriting secrets designed to knock out your editor and let your genius run free. He also includes fifteen problem-solving and creativity-stimulating principles you can use if you need more firepower—seven of which are new to this edition—and stories of problems he and others have solved through freewriting. Also new to this edition: an extensive section on how to refine your freewriting into something you can share with the world. Although Levy originally taught freewriting as a private brainstorming technique, over the years he and his clients have found that, with some tweaking, it’s a great way to generate content for books, articles, and other thought leadership pieces.

    Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care?Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet.Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls “an intellectual Wild West.”The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.

    

    Weinberg shows you exactly how to become a more effective consultant. He reveals specific techniques and strategies that really work.Through the use of vividly memorable rules, laws, and principles -- such as The Law of Raspberry Jam, The Potato Chip Principle, and Lessons from the Farm -- the author shows you how to-- price and market your services-- avoid traps and find alternative approaches-- keep ahead of your clients-- create a special "consultant's survival kit"-- trade improvement for perfection-- negotiate in difficult situations-- measure your effectiveness-- be yourselfYou will also find straightforward advice on marketing your services, including how to-- find clients-- get needed exposure-- set just-right fees-- gain trustThe Secrets of Consulting -- techniques, strategies, and first-hand experiences -- all that you'll need to set up, run, and be successful at your own consulting business.

    Examining the latest scientific research into the smartest ways to deal with a flood of adrenaline, increase focus, minimize negative thoughts, and optimize emotions, Psyched Up teaches you what do in the last few minutes before a major event.Drawing on interviews with high-performing professionals such as retired General Stanley McChrystal, NASCAR champion driver Jimmie Johnson and legendary tennis coach Nick Bollettieri, McGinn illustrates how to develop a personal psyching up routine and reveals why introverts and extroverts might employ different methods.

    

    The no-nonsense guide to managing yur time at home or in the office. Learn how to cut paperwork to a minimum. Concentrate on important matters. Delegate responsibility. Schedule your day. And Other ways to improve your work-time.

    The insurance industry’s actuarial tables and the gambler’s roulette wheel both yield to the tools of probability theory. Most situations in life, however, involve a deeper kind of uncertainty, a radical uncertainty for which historical data provide no useful guidance to future outcomes. Radical uncertainty concerns events whose determinants are insufficiently understood for probabilities to be known or forecasting possible. Before President Barack Obama made the fateful decision to send in the Navy Seals, his advisers offered him wildly divergent estimates of the odds that Osama bin Laden would be in the Abbottabad compound. In 2000, no one—not least Steve Jobs—knew what a smartphone was; how could anyone have predicted how many would be sold in 2020? And financial advisers who confidently provide the information required in the standard retirement planning package—what will interest rates, the cost of living, and your state of health be in 2050?—demonstrate only that their advice is worthless.The limits of certainty demonstrate the power of human judgment over artificial intelligence. In most critical decisions there can be no forecasts or probability distributions on which we might sensibly rely. Instead of inventing numbers to fill the gaps in our knowledge, we should adopt business, political, and personal strategies that will be robust to alternative futures and resilient to unpredictable events. Within the security of such a robust and resilient reference narrative, uncertainty can be embraced, because it is the source of creativity, excitement, and profit.

    This "old power" was out of reach for the vast majority of people. But our ubiquitous connectivity makes possible a different kind of power. "New power" is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It works like a current, not a currency--and it is most forceful when it surges. The battle between old and new power is determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel. New Power shines fresh light on the cultural phenomena of our day, from #BlackLivesMatter to the Ice Bucket Challenge to Airbnb, uncovering the new power forces that made them huge. Drawing on examples from business, activism, and pop culture, as well as the study of organizations like Lego, NASA, Reddit, and TED, Heimans and Timms explain how to build new power and channel it successfully. They also explore the dark side of these forces: the way ISIS has co-opted new power to monstrous ends, and the rise of the alt-right's "intensity machine."In an era increasingly shaped by new power, this groundbreaking book offers us a new way to understand the world--and our role in it.

    When it comes to our daily lives, we often laugh off habits like procrastination as being human nature and just resolve to approach things differently next time. Or, when the issues facing us are enormous or traumatic, we might recognize that we’re dwelling on our problems, or otherwise spending our time on fruitless thinking, but have no idea how to get out of that miserable rut. Either way, it takes up a lot of our mental energy.But as André Kukla makes clear in Mental Traps, what we don’t recognize — or at least admit to ourselves! — is how thinking unproductively about even the smallest elements of everyday life can mount up and keep us from being happy, from living life to the fullest. For what appear to be minor lapses are actually “habitual modes of thinking that disturb our ease, waste enormous amounts of our time, and deplete our energy without accomplishing anything of value for us or anyone else.” So whether we’re dealing with how to attain our major career goals or deciding when to serve the salad course at dinnertime, the end results can be much the same: readily identifiable patterns of wasteful thinking. These, in Kukla’s view, are the mental traps.In his introduction, Kukla compares his method to that of naturalist’s guides, which take a very matter-of-fact approach to providing practical information. He then outlines eleven common mental traps, such as persistence, fixation, acceleration, procrastination and regulation. Devoting a chapter to each, he provides simple examples to help us to identify mental traps in our own thinking — and to recognize why it would be beneficial to change our ways. Our anxiety, our dissatisfaction, our disappointment — these are often the consequences of thinking about the world the wrong way. And it’s in the parallels he draws between the major and minor events of our lives that he truly brings his point home: How is refusing to eat olives like toiling at a job that has long ago lost all satisfaction? How is arriving at the airport too early a symptom of a life never fully lived? Again, what can seem to be a very inconsequential habit can actually signal bigger, more detrimental problems in our ways of thinking.Kukla’s goal — one that we should share, in the end — is to help us realize how much more enjoyable our lives would be if we were a little more attentive to our thought processes. Just as Buddhism, from which the author has drawn many of his ideas, teaches that we should perform all of our acts mindfully, Kukla suggests that we make a conscious effort to step back, clear our minds, and simply observe how our thoughts develop. By doing so, we will begin to recognize unproductive patterns in our own thinking, and then we can try to avoid them. Ultimately, Kukla hopes that Mental Traps will help readers move towards what he calls a “liberated consciousness” — a state in which we no longer allow mental traps to inhibit our experiences. From having more energy to being able to act impulsively, we’d realize the benefits of living in the moment and feel truly free.From the Hardcover edition.

    'Asking the Right Questions' helps students bridge the gap between simply memorising or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysis and synthesis.

    Great for individuals, great for groups -- large or small. Problems come in all shapes and sizes, yet most have common characteristics that can be addressed with the techniques found in this book. Rapid Problem-Solving with Post-it Notes shows you how to use six types of techniques:The Post-up-Provides methods for getting information into chunks The Swap Sort-Shows listing and organization methods The Top-down Tree-Works when the nature of the problem is unknown The Information Map-Maps messy problems and complex relationships The Action Map-Plans actions or maps an existing processMore than 70 diagrams and examples for solving everyday problems This refreshing book reminds us the simplest ideas are often the most effective. Solve problems, create solutions and find answers fast-all with the help of Post-it Notes. Tens of millions of Post-it®Notes users can now learn how to do far more with these great little tools. Post-it Notes can be used to help solve difficult problems because they:Are the right size to hold one piece of information from a problem Are easily to attached to flat surfaces and stay put Can be moved and reattached many times

    Combining Dave Trott's distinctive, almost Zen-like storytelling, humour and practical advice, One Plus One Equals Three is a collection of provocative anecdotes and thought experiments designed to light a fire under your own creative ambitions. From the First World War sailor who survived being sunk three times in one day to the one-time 'merchant of death' who made his name a byword for peace, and the gypsy who lost two fingers and then reinvented jazz. From boardroom to battlefield, these stories of unconventional wisdom from one of the world's true advertising greats are a rallying cry for anyone who wants to think differently, stand out and truly innovate.

    A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible. Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process -- a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets. Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one. In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life -- whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these problems -- without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking -- enjoy an extraordinary advantage. Think Like a Rocket Scientist will inspire you to take your own moonshot and enable you to achieve liftoff.

    Renowned scientist David Bohm believed there was a better way for humanity to discover meaning and to achieve harmony. He identified creative dialogue, a sharing of assumptions and understanding, as a means by which the individual, and society as a whole, can learn more about themselves and others, and achieve a renewed sense of purpose.