While it may be unfair to complain that a book on the benefits of “unfocusing” suffers from a lack of focus, Pillay’s...
A combination of self-help and theoretical science that suggests learning to “unfocus” may be the key to living a more productive life.
Harvard psychiatrist and brain imaging researcher Pillay (Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear, 2010) makes the case that the alternation of periods of focus and openness makes for increased learning and satisfaction. Letting go of precise goals allows one to “tinker” with one’s experience, whether romantic or work-related, in hopes of fixing problems, while dabbling in areas in which one has no expertise prepares one for new possibilities, and doodling opens the door to the unconscious. While the author throws out so many suggestions that any reader will be bound to find more than a few useful ones, Pillay’s affection for acronyms often makes the book difficult to read, and his use of language, with words like “tinkeringly,” can be off-putting. Although he tends to refer more frequently than necessary to celebrities like Jeff Bezos and Ryan Seacrest (whose life “sounds enigmatically unachievable and inconceivable”), Pillay cites an intriguing range of brain studies to support his argument, and his case studies of individuals with whom he has worked provide useful insights. The book might be most usefully read in fragments, since the cumulative effect of words of advice such as, “Be more playful and self-forgiving as you start to supertask” and “When lost, turn to your inner compass and ask, ‘Who am I?’ ” can bog down skeptical readers. The author takes his place in the spectrum of advocates of the power of positive thinking with his contention that “every person is responsible for his or her own greatness.”
While it may be unfair to complain that a book on the benefits of “unfocusing” suffers from a lack of focus, Pillay’s constant jumping from one suggestion to another, many of which seem off-topic, makes the book less useful than it could be.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-88365-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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