185. Do You Need Closure?

How can you be more productive and creative? Most of us assume that the answer lies, at least in part, in managing our time better. But in Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: To focus in a world full of ever-increasing distractions, you must learn not just how to manage your time but also how to manage your attention.

Bailey explains why your current method of directing your attention isn’t working—like why you still feel tired no matter how many breaks you take—and then shares several strategies for managing your attention for better productivity and creativity. In this guide, we’ll compare these strategies to recommendations from neuroscientists and other productivity experts, supplementing Bailey’s ideas so that you can manage your attention in the most effective way possible.

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli breaks down the most common logical fallacies that inhibit decision-making, including confirmation bias, social proof, and hindsight bias. Dobelli aims to help people recognize and overcome these fallacies so they can make better decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore Dobelli’s main fallacies, including those caused by humanity’s past as hunter-gatherers and those caused by other sources such as misinterpretation of cause and effect. Along the way, we’ll compare and contrast Dobelli’s ideas with other experts on logical thinking, such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also provide concrete steps to overcome illogical thinking and explore why logical fallacies occur.

How can you be more productive and creative? Most of us assume that the answer lies, at least in part, in managing our time better. But in Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: To focus in a world full of ever-increasing distractions, you must learn not just how to manage your time but also how to manage your attention.

Bailey explains why your current method of directing your attention isn’t working—like why you still feel tired no matter how many breaks you take—and then shares several strategies for managing your attention for better productivity and creativity. In this guide, we’ll compare these strategies to recommendations from neuroscientists and other productivity experts, supplementing Bailey’s ideas so that you can manage your attention in the most effective way possible.

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli breaks down the most common logical fallacies that inhibit decision-making, including confirmation bias, social proof, and hindsight bias. Dobelli aims to help people recognize and overcome these fallacies so they can make better decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore Dobelli’s main fallacies, including those caused by humanity’s past as hunter-gatherers and those caused by other sources such as misinterpretation of cause and effect. Along the way, we’ll compare and contrast Dobelli’s ideas with other experts on logical thinking, such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also provide concrete steps to overcome illogical thinking and explore why logical fallacies occur.

The human mind is more prone to error than most of us would like to believe. Many of the ways the mind fools itself were discovered by the team of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose research changed how we understand human behavior. At a glance, the two psychologists were opposites in personality and style, yet both had an interest in the workings of the mind and a need to undo our most common misperceptions. During Tversky and Kahneman’s intense collaboration, they identified the mental errors that skew our everyday decisions. Their work gave us tools to sharpen our thinking and avoid the unconscious pitfalls of the mind.

This guide will look at Kahneman and Tversky’s partnership, the historical forces that shaped their lives, and the prevailing psychological theories they overturned. It will also examine how their insights reached beyond the field of psychology into economics, politics, and other domains of human knowledge.

Have you ever wondered why you often regret your choices? In Stumbling on Happiness, award-winning Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert offers an explanation for what are, in his view, unavoidable poor decisions: You fabricate a large part of your reality—your memories of the past, perception of the present, and vision of the future. When you then use these inaccurate perceptions of the future, present, and past to make choices about what to do in the future, your choices are often poor and hinder future happiness.

In this guide, we’ll walk through Gilbert’s thesis, describing how your brain works and how its fabrication of reality leads you to make six specific types of bad decisions about your future. We’ll also link Gilbert’s ideas to other, related areas of human cognition. Finally, while Gilbert claims you can’t counteract your tendency to make poor decisions about your future, we’ll offer suggestions on how to improve your decision-making as much as possible.

In When, Daniel Pink argues that timing is everything. Drawing on his extensive research on the science of timing, Pink shows how our daily lives and experiences follow predictable patterns with three phases: a crest, a slump, and a recovery. He offers guidance on how we can use these patterns to be strategic about our time, from being more efficient at work to taking advantage of momentum at important turning points in our lives. When is a handbook for those who want to harness the natural rhythm of their day and their lives to work and live more intentionally.

Throughout the guide, we’ll expand on the science behind Pink’s recommendations, adding advice from other researchers in the fields of well-being and productivity, while also highlighting studies that challenge some of Pink’s assertions.

Do you prefer to listen to sad songs? Do you seek out beauty in everyday life? If so, you may have a bittersweet disposition. In Bittersweet, Susan Cain defines bittersweetness as the state of experiencing intense joy, sadness, and yearning simultaneously. She argues that you can glean greater meaning and wisdom from life when you embrace bittersweetness, even if you don’t naturally have a bittersweet disposition.

In this guide, we’ll explore different facets of bittersweetness, starting with the link between bittersweetness and our yearning for love and belonging. We’ll also discuss the hidden power of sadness for fostering empathy and creativity. Finally, we’ll examine how awareness of life’s impermanence can help us find deeper meaning in our relationships and everyday lives. In our commentary, we’ll discuss the science behind bittersweet emotions, different perspectives on how to think about impermanence, and further suggestions for coping with grief.