In our blog on HabrΓ©, we publish not only stories about community of ITMO University, but also photo tours - for example, along our , ΠΈ .
Today we've put together a selection of books that look at ways to improve work and study efficiency in terms of thought patterns.
Photo: /flickr/
Thinking Habits
Thinking Habits
Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid
Robert Sternberg (Yale University Press, 2002)
Smart people sometimes make very stupid mistakes. Those who blindly believe in their competence often fall into blind spots that they themselves are unaware of. The essays presented in this book examine the bad habits of intellectuals, from ignoring obvious causal relationships to the tendency to overestimate one's own experience. This book will help you become more critical of how we think, learn, and work.
How Children Fail
John Holt (1964, Pitman Publishing Corp.)
American educator John Holt is one of the most prominent critics of established educational systems. This book is based on his experience as a teacher and his observations of how fifth graders experience academic failure. Chapters are like entries in a diary - they go around situations that the author gradually analyzes. Careful reading will allow you to rethink your own experience and understand what "educational" habits you have been ingrained in since childhood. The book was published in Russian in the 90s, but has since gone out of print.
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1969)
According to the authors, a number of human problems - such as global warming, social inequality and the epidemic of mental illness - remain unresolved due to the approach to education that we instilled in childhood. In order to lead a meaningful life and actively change the world for the better, the first step is to change the attitude towards knowledge as such and the process of obtaining it. The authors give arguments in favor of critical thinking and the organization of the educational process around questions, rather than answers to them.
learning to learn
learning to learn
Make It Stick: The Science Of Successful Learning
Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel (2014)
In the book you will find both a description of the educational process from the point of view of psychology, and practical advice for its optimization. Particular attention is paid to educational strategies that do not work in practice. The authors will explain why this happens and what can be done about it. For example, they argue that it is useless to adapt to the educational preferences of the student. Studies show that the predisposition to certain teaching methods does not affect the effectiveness of learning.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi (Harper, 1990)
The most famous work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. At the center of the book is the concept of "flow". The author assures that the ability to regularly "join the flow" makes human life more meaningful, happy and productive. The book tells how people of various professions - from musicians to climbers - find this state, and what you can learn from them. The work is written in an accessible and popular language - closer to the literature of the "self-help" genre. This year the book was once again republished in Russian.
How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
George Polya (Princeton University Press, 1945)
The classic work of the Hungarian mathematician GyΓΆrgy PΓ³lya is an introduction to working with the mathematical method. It contains a number of applied techniques that can be applied to solve both mathematical problems and problems of a different kind. A valuable resource for those who want to develop the intellectual discipline necessary for studying the exact sciences. In the Soviet Union, the book was published back in 1959 under the title How to Solve a Problem.
Think Like a Mathematician: How to Solve Any Problem Faster and More Efficiently
Barbara Oakley (Tarcher Perigee; 2014)
Not all people want to study the exact sciences, but this does not mean that they have nothing to learn from mathematicians. So thinks Barbara Oakley, professor at Oakland University, engineer, philologist and translator. Think Like a Mathematician examines the workflows of hard scientists and shares with readers the key lessons that can be learned from them. It will be about mastering the material without cramming, memory - short-term and long-term, the ability to recover from failures and the fight against procrastination.
Learning to think
Learning to think
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
Douglas Hofstadter (Basic Books, 1985)
Shortly after cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Hofstader's bookβ was published, the writer began to publish regularly in Scientific American. The columns he wrote for the magazine were later supplemented with commentaries and combined into a hefty book called "Metamagical Themas". Hofstader touches on various topics related to the nature of human thinking: from optical illusions and Chopin's music to artificial intelligence and programming. The author's theories are illustrated by thought experiments.
Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge
William Poundstone (Anchor Press, 1988)
What is "common sense"? How is knowledge formed? How does our idea of ββthe world relate to reality? These and other questions are answered by the work of William Poundstone, a physicist by education and a writer by vocation. William addresses and answers questions of epistemology by talking about paradoxical features of human thinking that are easy to miss. Fans of the book include the previously mentioned cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstader, the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, and the mathematician Martin Gardner.
Think slow... decide fast
Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)
Daniel Kahneman is a professor at Princeton University, Nobel Prize winner, one of the founders of behavioral economics. This is the author's fifth and final book to date, in which some of his scientific findings are popularly recounted. The book describes two types of thinking: slow and fast, and their impact on the decisions we make. Much attention is paid to the ways of self-deception that people engage in in order to simplify their lives. It will not do without advice on working on yourself.
PS More interesting books on the topic you can find .
Source: habr.com