How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing


Paul J. Silvia - 2007
    Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule.This revised and updated edition of Paul Silvia's popular guide provides practical, light-hearted advice to help academics overcome common barriers and become productive writers. Silvia's expert tips have been updated to apply to a wide variety of disciplines, and this edition has a new chapter devoted to grant and fellowship writing.

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids


Madeline Levine - 2006
    Materialism, pressure to achieve, perfectionism, and disconnection are combining to create a perfect storm that is devastating children of privilege and their parents alike.In this eye-opening, provocative, and essential book, clinical psychologist Madeline Levine explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies toxic cultural influences and well-intentioned, but misguided, parenting practices that are detrimental to a child's healthy self-development. Her thoughtful, practical advice provides solutions that will enable parents to help their emotionally troubled "star" child cultivate an authentic sense of self.

The Science of Self-Discipline: The Willpower, Mental Toughness, and Self-Control to Resist Temptation and Achieve Your Goals


Peter Hollins - 2017
    Learn to scientifically engineer a disciplined life, become relentless, and never give up. Whatever you want in your life, self-discipline is the missing piece. Goals will remain dreams if you make the mistake of relying on motivation and your best drawn plans. The Science of Self-Discipline is a deep look into what allows us to resist our worst impulses and simply execute, achieve, produce, and focus. Every principle is scientifically-driven and dissected to as be actionable and helpful as possible. You’ll learn how top performers consistently exercise self-discipline, as well as what drives us on an instinctual, psychological level to act. This isn’t just a book; it’s a roadmap to the human psyche and will allow you to accomplish exactly what you set out to do, every time. When you understand what drives your cravings and the true roots of self-discipline, you’ll be able to rise above your temporary discomfort and focus on what really matters. Discover every factor that impacts self-discipline for better or worse. Break free of excuses, distractions, laziness, and temptations. Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with dozens of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience. Beat instant gratification and create limitless motivation. • The biological basis of self-discipline - and why it’s beneficial to you. • Discipline tactics for high performers such as Navy SEALs. • Diagnosing what motivates you, what drains you, and what moves you emotionally. • Engineering an environment and social circle that boosts self-discipline. Form productive habits to increase your focus, strengthen your resolve, and stop giving up from boredom or frustration. • Why choosing two marshmallows over one matters. • Four questions for any potential lapse in willpower. • The interplay between habits, motivation, and self-discipline. Self-discipline and willpower will fundamentally change your life. A goal without the self-discipline necessary to enact it will remain just a dream or fantasy. Does this describe you more often than not? It doesn’t matter what you want to do - you might want to become a CEO or just clean more consistently - self-discipline is one of the most important life skills because it is the skill of doing and executing. Pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page.

The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-Based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education


Karl M. Kapp - 2012
    He has put together a brilliant primer for learning professionals on how to gamify learning, packed with useful advice and examples." --Anders Gronstedt, president, Gronstedt Group"After reading this book, you'll never be able to design boring learning again." --Connie Malamed, author, Visual Language For Designers; author/creator of The eLearning Coach Blog"Engaging, informative and complete; if you need to understand anything about instructional game design, this is the book you need. It provides the right amount of academic evidence, practical advice and insightful design tips to have you creating impactful learning in no time." --Sherry Engel, associate director learning technology, Penn Medicine Center for Innovation and Learning"What Karl Kapp has done with this book is looked at games and learning from every possible angle....he provocatively asks questions that the learning community needs to answer, like 'Do our design processes still work?' and 'Are we really meeting the needs of today's learners?' This book may make you anxious, make you laugh, or make you angry. But one thing it will definitely do is make you think." --Rich Mesch, experiential learning guru, Performance Development Group

Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence


Robin Karr-Morse - 1997
    Vincent J. Felitti, a leading researcher in the field. When Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence was published in 1997, it was lauded for providing scientific evidence that violence can originate in the womb and become entrenched in a child’s brain by preschool. The authors’ groundbreaking conclusions became even more relevant following the wave of school shootings across the nation including the tragedy at Columbine High School and the shocking subsequent shootings culminating most recently in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Following each of these media coverage and public debate turned yet again to the usual suspects concerning the causes of violence: widespread availability of guns and lack of mental health services for late-stage treatment. Discussion of the impact of trauma on human life—especially early in life during chemical and structural formation of the brain—is missing from the equation. Karr-Morse and Wiley continue to shift the conversation among parents and policy makers toward more fundamental preventative measures against violence.

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life


Nir Eyal - 2019
    Later, as you're about to get back to work, a colleague taps you on the shoulder to chat. At home, screens get in the way of quality time with your family. Another day goes by, and once again, your most important personal and professional goals are put on hold.  What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused and overcome distractions? What if you had the power to become "indistractable"?  International best-selling author, former Stanford lecturer, and behavioral design expert, Nir Eyal, wrote Silicon Valley's handbook for making technology habit-forming. Five years after publishing Hooked, Eyal reveals distraction's Achilles' heel in his groundbreaking new book.  In Indistractable, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more.  Eyal lays bare the secret of finally doing what you say you will do with a four-step, research-backed model. Indistractable reveals the key to getting the best out of technology, without letting it get the best of us.  Inside, Eyal overturns conventional wisdom and reveals: Why distraction at work is a symptom of a dysfunctional company culture - and how to fix it  What really drives human behavior and why "time management is pain management"  Why your relationships (and your sex life) depend on you becoming indistractable  How to raise indistractable children in an increasingly distracting world Empowering and optimistic, Indistractable provides practical, novel techniques to control your time and attention - helping you live the life you really want.

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity


Steve Silberman - 2015
      Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger’s syndrome, whose “little professors” were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences.

Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most


Steven Johnson - 2018
    So why do we know so little about how to get them right?Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they're also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums. Steven Johnson's classic Where Good Ideas Come From inspired creative people all over the world with new ways of thinking about innovation. In Farsighted, he uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. While you can't model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers. These experts aren't just the master strategists running major companies or negotiating high-level diplomacy. They're the novelists who draw out the complexity of their characters' inner lives, the city officials who secure long-term water supplies, and the scientists who reckon with future challenges most of us haven't even imagined. The smartest decision-makers don't go with their guts. Their success relies on having a future-oriented approach and the ability to consider all their options in a creative, productive way. Through compelling stories that reveal surprising insights, Johnson explains how we can most effectively approach the choices that can chart the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. Farsighted will help you imagine your possible futures and appreciate the subtle intelligence of the choices that shaped our broader social history.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains


Nicholas Carr - 2010
    He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance


W. Timothy Gallwey - 1974
    Now available in a revised paperback edition, this classic bestseller can change the way the game of tennis is played.

Everything is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer


Duncan J. Watts - 2011
    As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life—explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer—are less useful than they seem.Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to have been driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these “influencers” in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult even for experienced professionals.Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present—an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World


Jane McGonigal - 2010
    The average young person in the UK will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. What's causing this mass exodus? According to world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal the answer is simple: videogames are fulfilling genuine human needs. Drawing on positive psychology, cognitive science and sociology, Reality is Broken shows how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy, and utilized these discoveries to astonishing effect in virtual environments. But why, McGonigal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking exploration of the power and future of gaming, she reveals how gamers have become expert problem solvers and collaborators, and shows how we can use the lessons of game design to socially positive ends, be it in our own lives, our communities or our businesses. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality is Broken sends a clear and provocative message: the future will belong to those who can understand, design and play games.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World


Cal Newport - 2016
    If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking


Chris J. Anderson - 2016
      Since taking over TED in the early 2000s, Chris Anderson has shown how carefully crafted short talks can be the key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, spreading knowledge, and promoting a shared dream. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview. Done right, a talk is more powerful than anything in written form.         This book explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula; no two talks should be the same. The goal is for you to give the talk that only you can give. But don’t be intimidated. You may find it more natural than you think.         Chris Anderson has worked behind the scenes with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Amy Cuddy, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Gilbert, Salman Khan, Dan Gilbert, Mary Roach, Matt Ridley, and dozens more — everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage. This is the 21st-century’s new manual for truly effective communication and it is a must-read for anyone who is ready to create impact with their ideas.

Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries


Guy Winch - 2013
    But, as Guy Winch, Ph.D., points out, these kinds of emotional injuries often get worse when left untreated and can significantly impact our quality of life. In this fascinating and highly practical book he provides the emotional first aid treatments we have been lacking. Explaining the long-term fallout that can result from seemingly minor emotional and psychological injuries, Dr. Winch offers concrete, easy-to-use exercises backed up by hard cutting-edge science to aid in recovery. He uses relatable anecdotes about real patients he has treated over the years and often gives us a much needed dose of humor as well. Prescriptive, programmatic, and unique, this first-aid kit for battered emotions will appeal to readers of Unstuck by James S. Gordon and Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff.