The Art of Thinking Clearly

By Rolf Dobelli

Book Overview

"A serious examination of the faulty reasoning that leads to repeated mistakes by individuals, businesses, and nations...In this fascinating book, Dobelli does not offer a recipe for happiness but a well-considered treatise on avoiding 'self-induced unhappiness.'" -- Booklist (starred review)

The Art of Thinking Clearly by world-class thinker and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli is an eye-opening look at human psychology and faulty reasoning -- an essential book for anyone who wants to improve their decision-making, avoid "cognitive errors," and make better choices in all aspects of their lives.

Have you ever: Invested time in something that, with hindsight, just wasn't worth it? Or continued doing something you knew was bad for you? These are examples of cognitive biases, simple errors we all make in our day-to-day thinking. But by understanding these mental models and how to spot them, we can avoid them and make better decisions.

Simple, clear, and always surprising, this indispensable book will change the way you think and transform your decision-making--work, at home, every day. It reveals, in 99 short chapters, the most common errors of judgment, and how to avoid them.

Learn to spot the mental traps that derail your thinking every day:

Survivorship Bias: Why we systematically overestimate our chances of success and how visiting the "graveyards" of failed projects can clear our minds.Sunk Cost Fallacy: The mental trap that makes us continue with a project or relationship, even when it's a lost cause, just because we've invested so much.Confirmation Bias: Uncover the mother of all misconceptions and learn why we actively filter new information to fit our existing beliefs.The Anchoring Effect: Discover how irrelevant numbers, from a wheel of fortune to your Social Security digits, can dramatically influence your decisions.Critical Thinking Tools: Go beyond simply knowing what these biases are and learn practical ways to avoid them and transform your choices at work and at home.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062219693
• ISBN13: 9780062219695
• Release Date: May 2014
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Interesting Read that Helped Me See Clearly

Very good read. Contains about 99 common fallacies, biases, illusions, and bad heuristics. It provides explanations and examples (usually business and finance related examples) for each one. I am probably going to use this for reference for a long time!

The book is certainly not to be missed by someone who wants to win over the emotional mind and long

The book gives a great insight on how the human mind thinks and all the paradoxes, effects, phenomenons that human minds get deceived by. The basics of how our emotional mind always controls us over the rational mind. There are 100 of such paradoxes Rolf Dobelli mentions in the book, I am not sure why he wanted to write exactly 100 of them in the book. Some of them are not very impressive and are just filled in there so he can do his century I am guessing. He mentions a lot of such examples he borrowed from other authors like Nassim Taleb and Robert Cialdini. The book is certainly not to be missed by someone who wants to win over the emotional mind and longs to use their rational mind.

Must read

I've read this book many times, got sick of going to the library and decided to finally purchase. Can't beat the price.