Author: Vanessortia

I wonder if it is a huge coincidence that within the first few pages of this book, the author mentioned an incident that was also discussed in the book I read two weeks ago, that being Range by David Epstein. I remembered the story of firefighters dying as they tried to outrun a forest fire, because they didn’t consider that the equipment they were carrying could be dropped. The equipment was a part of them, they had been trained to treat their tools as an extension of themselves. Only when it dawned upon one man that they stood a better chance of reaching safety if they dropped everything in order to gain speed were some of them able to escape the flames. The story was told there as an example of why we need to look beyond using the tools we are familiar with, which is a very abbreviated summary of the entire chapter, one which I very much enjoyed. In Think Again, the author used the survival strategy of one man as his opening argument for why it is beneficial to think of alternatives when what you know, what usually works, isn’t working. The firefighters that are trained to battle the most destructive forest fires use tools to try to stop them, heavy tools like chainsaws and axes. If the team comes to the realization that they cannot stop the fire, they resort to retreating. But there are some occasions in which the fire is moving at such a speed that even making the decision to give up on the task may be too little too late. In this such incident even after dropping their equipment it didn’t look as though the firefighters would be able to outrun the flames. So one man, Wagner Dodge, did something that seemed insane. He started another fire. 

If you are considering reading this book, or if you want to look up the Mann Gulch fire of 1949, I won’t tell you why Wagner Dodge decided to create an additional smaller fire in the midst of a giant forest fire. It is actually pretty clever, and it makes for a spectacular introduction to this book. So if you couldn’t tell by my very large first paragraph, I did very much enjoy reading this. The author has a sense of humor, which I have said before and will say again, makes non fiction so much more pleasurable to read. There are charts, graphs, comics, and other visuals that provide you with nice examples to go along with the concepts you are reading through. I think the key ideas that I took away from this text are to be humble, be ok with making fun of yourself when you are wrong, always ask questions, don’t be afraid to break tradition or rattle the cage, and if you want something done, find the grumpiest people you can and tell them the task at hand is impossible because stubborn people love to prove others wrong. 

May is halfway over and that means I am halfway through all the books I had picked out for the month. I had two great reads and one disappointing one, so I am optimistic about the remaining two I have waiting for me. Wish me luck, it’s been a while since I have read this many non fiction books in a row, I usually take a break in between every one or two with a science fiction or romance novel. I hope to see you back next week where I will have another review hopefully praising another amazing book.

If you are a job shifter, changed paths later in life, or maybe you just feel a little lost, this might be a good book for you to read. I wasn’t expecting a pick me up from this book, or a different way of looking at my life, when I started reading. But that is exactly what happened. I learned that some of the best professionals in their particular fields didn’t start off there, that sometimes their planned path, or their complete absence of a plan, began in a completely different place. You can take comfort in the fact that not all the greatest athletes, doctors, actors, scientists, and artists, started along the path that you would have expected them to in order to have led them to where they are now. Your favorite basketball player may have run the gamut of soccer, baseball, and football before focusing on shooting hoops in college. A Nobel prize winning biologist may have gone to university with the intention to be a lawyer. A world famous CEO may have had no college education at all, they may have been content in their life as a parent and member of the community, but through chance and the observations of others they were encouraged to enter the business world. The author goes through many examples of these sorts of people. As far as intriguing tales, chapter nine had some of my favorites. 

This book is so much more than explaining why it is better to have a vast array of knowledge in many areas rather than having a very large amount of knowledge regarding a single subject. It also teaches you better memorization techniques. Chess grand masters in part gain that elite status by a memorization method called chunking, in which they group together several pieces on the board based on known possible combinations rather than trying to remember where each individual piece lies. There are also methods on better ways to learn to ensure that you remember information long term instead of short term. By interleaving, in which you study different topics at the same time all mixed together, you are more likely to hold onto the information if you had studied any one topic intensely before moving on to the next one. The author goes into detail about this in chapter four, another favorite chapter of mine. Branching off of that, a good research strategy is to think about how you are going to conduct that research before you even start it. Are you a teacher and you want your students to be better learners? Hit them with a question and try to get them to answer it without giving them any hints. Even if they come up with the wrong answer they will be more likely to remember the correct one, and accept that their answer was incorrect on top of it, than if you had helped them. 

I don’t know if it was the author’s intention, but by the end of the book I felt better about my varied education that always seems to confuse others when I tell them about my studies. I also started to feel a little bit better regarding my professional career path that I started later than I believe I should have. I still need to work on feeling like I am not behind. According to this book, my best years are probably soon approaching, my professional peak or my true calling may be just within my reach. Exploring different options, and taking chances, and being curious is a good thing. After reading this book I now want to be more adventurous and intuitive. I want to try to do as Fermi did and try to guess or estimate problems and questions by reasoning. I want to be confident and comfortable when I consider asking if there is more information rather than assuming I’ve been handed everything I need in order to make a decision. Even though it may ruffle feathers, sometimes going against protocol is the only way to prevent potential disasters. I am left feeling very inspired, and I hope this feeling stays with me. To think, this is only the first psychology book I have lined up to read for this month’s planned agenda. I hope the rest of the books in my pile give me just as much to consider.