andreweverett360 Book Review, Psychology & Neuroscience

Decisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making

Decisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making

by Elspeth Kirkman

“Knowingly or not, we often draw on the logic of pictorial space as a metaphor for our decisions. We use phrases like getting things in perspective or blowing them out of proportion… And we implore one another to zoom out or see the big picture.”

Elspeth Kirkman is a behavioral scientist who uses the analogy of art making to explain the psychology of decision making. “I call this mental representation the decisionscape… The central idea of this book is that we could improve our decisions, whether personal or professional, by constructing and analyzing it deliberately, just as an artist approaches the canvas.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Finance

The Psychology of Money

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

by Morgan Housel

Financial success is a soft skill, writes Morgan Housel, “where how you behave is more important than what you know.” This is a book about developing the mindset of a long-term investor, with a realistic attitude towards risk and reward. The book is conspicuously free of financial jargon and math. Here are some key points.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Marketing

Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation

Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation

by Emmanuel Probst 

“Assemblage is a French word that refers to the art and science of blending different eaux-de-vies (brandies) before bottling cognac. It is the craft of the maître de chai (also known as the master blender or cellar master) to select brandies from dozens of samples and craft a unique cognac… Assemblage is also a metaphor for building successful brands.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Psychology & Neuroscience

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

by Oliver Burkeman

We live in an era where appliances and software supposedly make our lives easier. “Yet, paradoxically, you only feel busier, more anxious… And becoming ‘more productive’ just seems to cause the belt to speed up.”

We all have a finite amount of time in our lives—in the neighborhood of 4,000 weeks, assuming an 80-year lifespan and rounding to 50 weeks per year. “Our limited time… what Heidegger calls our ‘finitude’… isn’t just one among various things we have to cope with; rather, it’s the thing that defines us, as humans.”

“The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.”

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andreweverett360 Art, Book Review

Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception

Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change York Life

by Amy E. Herman

“Leonardo da Vinci attributed all of his scientific and artistic accomplishments to the same concept, which he called saper vedere—‘knowing how to see.’ We might also call his gift ‘visual intelligence.’”

Amy Herman, who has degrees in law and art history, teaches a course called the Art of Perception to police officers and FBI agents. The book is about how to assess, analyze, and articulate what we observe. To practice these skills, the author presents numerous works of art. She also discusses real-life crime and business cases.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, risk

Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

by Gerd Gigerenzer

Gigerenzer makes a distinction between risk and uncertainty. He uses the term risk “for a world where all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known… Most of the time, however, we live in a changing world where some of these are unknown: where we face unknown risks, or uncertainty. The world of uncertainty is huge compared to that of risk… We have to deal with ‘unknown unknowns.’”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work

by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer                  

“Inner work life influences people’s performance on four dimensions: creativity, productivity, work commitment, and collegiality… Inner work life matters for companies because, no matter how brilliant a company’s strategy might be, the strategy’s execution depends on great performance by people inside the organization.”

“To a great extent, inner work life rises and falls with progress and setbacks in the work. This is the progress principle and, although it may be most obvious on the best and worst days at work, it operates every day.”

The Progress Principle is the result of primary research by two psychologists who studied 238 knowledge workers from 26 teams in 7 companies representing 3 industries over the course of a team project—generally about 4 months. Participants submitted daily diary forms to the researchers confidentially. The authors cite some positive and negative scenarios, using pseudonyms to disguise the individuals and their employers.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, risk

Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t

Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t—and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger

by Dan Gardner

“One of the most consistent findings of risk perception research is that we overestimate the likelihood of being killed by the things that make the evening news and underestimate those that don’t. What makes the evening news? The rare, vivid, and catastrophic killers. Murder, terrorism, fire, and flood. What doesn’t make the news is the routine cause of death that kills one person at a time and doesn’t lend itself to strong emotions and pictures. Diabetes, asthma, heart disease.” 

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Psychology & Neuroscience

Freeing Yourself from Anxiety

Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want

by Tamar E. Chansky, Ph.D.

2020 has been a mentally-draining year. In this 287-page book, psychologist Tamar Chansky explains why our minds get overwhelmed with worry and she offers advice on how to deal with it. Here are some highlights.

Anxiety is “the first-reaction of a sensitive system that is wired to keep us alert to danger and protected from harm… But today, with our best interests in mind, anxiety sometimes makes mistakes, overshooting… grabbing your attention from what you need to focus on and insisting that you instead grapple with worst-case scenarios.” 

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