A fast-paced, invigorating, and at times counterintuitive examination of the ingredients for success.
A debut guide offers a systematic program for realizing your potential.
“Maximizing our preparation requires one mindset,” writes Levenson in his book. “Performing at our peak potential requires a different one.” A deep analysis of this shift between preparation and performance thinking forms the heart of the manual, with the author concentrating on the inner game of achievement and the ways it can manifest to the outside world. He groups his insights around nine key mental gear shifts a person should practice when changing from a preparation-based attitude to a performance-based one. These include remembering that joy and a sense of fun are vital in casting off the “boulders of stress” and being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of perfectionism (“When you feel your discipline slipping, remind yourself that healthy perfectionism isn’t necessary for mediocrity, or even for being good, but if you want to be great, you have to tap into it in preparation”). The book is full of anecdotes and personality profiles used to illustrate his points, and Levenson draws many of these from the world of sports, both the players he has known and worked with and the greats of past and present. This is especially prominent in his discussion of the value of a certain kind of “arrogance” on the performance side, where he references legendary athletes like Serena Williams, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Satchel Paige, figures who weren’t shy about singing their own praises from time to time. “Having complete faith in your ability, holding on to the idea that you’re the best person for the job in the moment,” the author writes, “is an approach seen in successful boardrooms, sales presentations, and investment pitches all over the world.”
“One of my favorite questions to pose to clients at a time of conflict is: what advice would you give your best friend if he or she were in the same situation as you?” Levenson declares at one point in his energetic book. And in the bulk of his guide, this is exactly the role he takes for himself, offering his readers copious examples of his intriguing points and workbook-style sections where they can fill in comments, including areas for improvement. The author often embraces seeming contradictions in his material, from the benefits of a bit of arrogance (which he notes has traditionally been characterized in negative terms) to the helpfulness of fear and the strategic uses of selfishness (“We can’t help others if we’re incapacitated”). His rhetorical strategy of liberally mixing stories with strictures has several benefits for readers. Not only does it highlight Levenson’s personable nature as a narrator (while he isn’t always the hero, he’s always intensely relatable), it also works to illustrate many of his points in a way that more explanations couldn’t do as effectively. Some of these illustrations may go a bit too far (the author’s veneration of the New England Patriots, for instance, overlooks the rampant rumors of systematic team cheating). Still, in general, the combination of storytelling and clear thinking is a winning one.
A fast-paced, invigorating, and at times counterintuitive examination of the ingredients for success.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63331-046-9
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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