Thinking Better

Essays on how to think better.

How To Get Ahead Over the Holidays

How To Get Ahead Over the Holidays

The year is dwindling down and the office gets emptier each day. But if you’ve run out of vacation either because you don’t have enough and/or have wisely taken up all of them so you’re not left with unused paid vacation, you may be stuck in an office building during...

Engineering With Soul: A Spiritual Dimension to Work

Engineering With Soul: A Spiritual Dimension to Work

This article is the third of an essay series on engineering, titled Between Jerusalem and Athens. Read the first here and the second here.   “I can’t just work with mice!” Billy told me after not seeing each other for 8 years. “I need people, human interaction.”...

From the EQuad to the World

From the EQuad to the World

From the Equad to the World is about the segmentation of knowledge and education. It’s an argument for multidisciplinary thinking.

Resonance: When Thinking Loves Company

Resonance: When Thinking Loves Company

Thinking is a private act and one’s inner life is singularly one’s own. But while there is no twin to our mind—no other mind can mirror the totality of our thoughts—it can find partial reflections in others. This alone can invigorate the whole being.   I’m...

The Solitude of Thinking

The Solitude of Thinking

Photo credit: Sunset Girl   My head is my address. I live there, most of the time, alone.   Sometimes there are guests, but they’re usually only a few steps inside or peeking in through the window.   Introverts Anonymous, anyone?   I recently...

The Story In Time

The Story In Time

Photo credit: dryicons   Time is something fleeting that’s barely felt in the present. Things move and change in time, but in the present, they are often imperceptible because we, the observers, move along with them. Only when we “pause and reflect,”...

The Paper Towel Problem

The Paper Towel Problem

In the women’s bathroom on my office floor, there are these paper towel dispensers that frustrate me on a regular basis.   They’re just the standard paper towel dispensers that you pull out folded white paper towels from the bottom. No sensor, no lever, just...

OK, But Not OK. Not OK, but OK.

OK, But Not OK. Not OK, but OK.

My reading journey through Thinking, Fast and Slow, Part 3   I care whether what I believe is true. I care whether or not my perceptions equal reality. I want the correlation between how I think things are and how things really are to be 100%. This is much like...

When Size Matters

My reading journey through Thinking, Fast and Slow, Part 2   Over the next year and an half, the North American news media will be inundated with polls. Who leads in what polls and what margin does one have over another. There is nothing wrong with polls, except...

Don’t Jump!

My reading journey through Thinking, Fast and Slow, Part 1 I’m thoroughly enjoying my journey through Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares whether the mechanism by which they think, process information, and...