“Life is hard, really hard, in all sorts of ways, ranging from the complicated to the weighty, the sad to the exhausting. Disappointments are hard. Paying the bills is hard. Strained relationships are hard. Raising children is hard. Losing a loved one is hard. There are periods in our lives when every day can be hard. To try to pretend that a book can eliminate these hardships would be fanciful. I didn’t write this book to downplay these burdens; I wrote it to help you lighten them. This book may not make every hard thing easy to approach and carry, but I believe it can make many hard things easier.”

Excerpt From: Greg McKeown. “Effortless.”

“I used to feel the same way. As a teenager, I loved reading How to Lie with Statistics. Bright, sharp, and illustrated throughout with playful cartoons, the book gave me a peek behind the curtain of statistical manipulation, showing me how the swindling was done so that I would not be fooled again.”

Excerpt From: Tim Harford. “The Data Detective.”

“To sum it up: The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic. But if that is true (and I wholeheartedly believe it is), and the key to successful writing lies in the preparation, it also means that the vast majority of self-help books and study guides can only help you to close the barn door correctly and according to official rules – not just a moment, but many months after the horse has already escaped. With that in mind, it is not surprising that the single most important indicator of academic success is not to be found in people’s heads, but in the way they do their everyday work.”

Excerpt From: Sönke Ahrens. “How to Take Smart Notes“

“The scientists found that inner experiences consistently dwarf outer ones. What participants were thinking about turned out to be a better predictor of their happiness than what they were actually doing. This speaks to a sour experience many people have had: You’re in a situation in which you should be happy (spending time with friends, say, or celebrating an accomplishment), but a ruminative thought swallows your mind. Your mood is defined not by what you did but by what you thought about.”

Excerpt From: Ethan Kross. “Chatter.”

“Over time, those world-class poker players taught me to understand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future. The implications of treating decisions as bets made it possible for me to find learning opportunities in uncertain environments. Treating decisions as bets, I discovered, helped me avoid common decision traps, learn from results in a more rational way, and keep emotions out of the process as much as possible.”

Excerpt From: Annie Duke. “Thinking in Bets.”

“Being the kind of person who welcomes the truth, even if it’s painful, is what makes other people willing to be honest with you. You can say that you want your partner to tell you about any problems in your relationship, or that you want your employees to tell you about any problems in the company, but if you get defensive or combative when you hear the truth, you’re not likely to hear it very often. No one wants to be the messenger that gets shot.”

Excerpt From: Julia Galef. “The Scout Mindset.”

“The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard is wedged into a small island in the Arctic, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. It’s not a popular vacation destination unless you’re Santa or a seed biologist. The vault is a secure bank for the future of the world. It holds duplicate samples – that is, spare copies – of seeds held in gene banks worldwide. The seed vault provides insurance in the event of large-scale regional or global crises. I propose that we need to have a similar back-up security plan for the human knowledge that underlies the internet.”

Excerpt From: David Eagleman. “The Safety Net.”

“We get, too, a unique satisfaction from thinking ourselves invulnerable. Who doesn’t enjoy the illicit glimpse into the life of the underworld—and the satisfaction of knowing that clever old you would be smarter than all that, that you can laugh at the poor sap who fell for something so obvious and still be safe in the knowledge that you are keener, savvier, more cynical and skeptical? They may fall for it. You? Never.
And yet, when it comes to the con, everyone is a potential victim. Despite our deep certainty in our own immunity—or, rather, because of it—we all fall for it. ”

Excerpt From: Konnikova, Maria. “The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time.”

“The sunk cost fallacy is most dangerous when we have invested a lot of time, money, energy, or love in something. This investment becomes a reason to carry on, even if we are dealing with a lost cause. The more we invest, the greater the sunk costs are, and the greater the urge to continue becomes.
Investors frequently fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Often they base their trading decisions on acquisition prices. “I lost so much money with this stock, I can’t sell it now,” they say. This is irrational. The acquisition price should play no role. What counts is the stock’s future performance. Ironically, the more money a share loses, the more investors tend to stick by it.”

Excerpt From: Rolf Dobelli. “The Art of Thinking Clearly.”

“I’m going to help you become limitless in your own way, within the three-part framework you’re about to learn: Limitless Mindset, Limitless Motivation, and Limitless Methods. Let me break it down:

• Mindset (the WHAT): deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions we create about who we are, how the world works, what we are capable of and deserve, and what is possible.
• Motivation (the WHY): the purpose one has for taking action. The energy required for someone to behave in a particular way.
• Method (the HOW): a specific process for accomplishing something, especially an orderly, logical, or systematic way of instruction.”

Excerpt From: Jim Kwik. “Limitless.”