The Art of Thinking Clearly

Rolf Dobelli

May 2014 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

"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.

Ratings and reviews

I loved it. For those who might complain that the chapters are way too summarized, the author offers more than 50 pages detailing every possible source of information that he used, so there is no excuse for not enjoying the subjects and strategies provided. It definitely feels like a very functional book, as we can read and have fun as well as start applying the concepts provided. Moreover, it was through this book that I had the opportunity to be presented to many other authors and professionals that only now I can say I look forward to read as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.

This is a mishmash of a psychology first-year course, freakonomics, and the Black swan..... This book is worth reading if you're never going to read the original sources, but they are far better then this.

It's a lot to absorb but practicing a few tips at a time can get you started. Some ideas have proven my thinking processes to be both logical and illogical, which I can embrace because I know I want to be better and more wise everyday.

About the author

Rolf Dobelli is a bestselling writer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Zurich.Minds, a community of some of the world's most famed and distinguished thinkers, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs, and a cofounder of getAbstract, the world's largest publisher of compressed knowledge. He lives in Lucerne, Switzerland.