Michael Lewis has brought us provocative books in the past such as Liar’s Poker and The Big Short. He thinks big and presents what he discovers in eminently readable form.

His latest book, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, is not only a great read, but it makes us think about how we think, and that’s its purpose.

Here is part of what David Leonhardt shared in his review of The Undoing Project in The New York Times:

In the fall of 1969, behind the closed door of an otherwise empty seminar room at Hebrew University, two psychologists began a collaboration that would upend the understanding of human behavior. Those first conversations were filled with uproarious laughter and occasional shouting, in a jumble of Hebrew and English, which could sometimes be heard from the hallway.

When it came time for the two professors to write up their papers, they would sit next to each other at a single typewriter. “We were sharing a mind,” one would say later. They flipped a coin to decide whose name would appear first on their initial paper and alternated thereafter. The two names were Amos Tversky — the winner of that coin flip — and Daniel Kahneman.

Their work revealed previously undiscovered patterns of human irrationality: the ways that our minds consistently fool us and the steps we can take, at least some of the time, to avoid being fooled. Kahneman and Tversky used the word “heuristics” to describe the rules of thumb that often lead people astray. One such rule is the “halo effect,” in which thinking about one positive attribute of a person or thing causes observers to perceive other strengths that aren’t really there. Another is “representativeness,” which leads people to see cause and effect — to see a “narrative” — where they should instead accept uncertainty or randomness.

For writers, there is an important nugget in this review that ought to be stated in capital letters: “No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”

Read the entire killer-good review here.

It’s nearly impossible to read a news story or hear a network or cable broadcast without coming to the conclusion that we’re moving backwards, and that, to use the now-trite phrase, the world is “going to hell in a hand basket.”

That’s why Nicholas Kristof’s recent New York Times op-ed is so refreshing. It turns this gloom and doom on its head and instead of relying on “alternative facts,” looks at where we stand in the realm of human progress. Here is part of what he said:

There’s a broad consensus that the world is falling apart, with every headline reminding us that life is getting worse.

Except that it isn’t. In fact, by some important metrics, 2016 was the best year in the history of humanity. And 2017 will probably be better still. Here, take my quiz:

On any given day, the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty:

A.) Rises by 5,000, because of climate change, food shortages and endemic corruption.

B.) Stays about the same.

C.) Drops by 250,000.

Polls show that about 9 out of 10 Americans believe that global poverty has worsened or stayed the same. But in fact, the correct answer is C. Every day, an average of about a quarter-million people worldwide graduate from extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures.

Or if you need more of a blast of good news, consider this: Just since 1990, more than 100 million children’s lives have been saved through vaccinations, breast-feeding promotion, diarrhea treatment and more. If just about the worst thing that can happen is for a parent to lose a child, that’s only half as likely today as in 1990.

When I began writing about global poverty in the early 1980s, more than 40 percent of all humans were living in extreme poverty. Now fewer than 10 percent are. By 2030 it looks as if just 3 or 4 percent will be. (Extreme poverty is defined as less than $1.90 per person per day, adjusted for inflation.)

Want more? You can read the full article here.

When most people think about innovation they think thing of things, of widgets. But widgets don’t innovate, people do.

Two Stanford professors teach a course that has a unique twist. It’s called “Designing Your Life,” and it’s the most popular course on campus. Why? People want to live more creatively.

Here’s how the New Times article that provides a window on the course, and on their book, “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life”

You’re going to learn how to find a fulfilling career. You’re going to learn how to better navigate life’s big-moment decisions and kill your “wicked problems” dead. How? By training yourself to think like a designer.

After nine years of teaching their secrets to future Google product managers and start-up wunderkinds, Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans are opening up the curriculum to everyone. “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and “Am I living a meaningful life?” aren’t only subjects for late-night pot-fueled dorm hangouts, the men said.

“The question of ‘What do I do with the rest of my one wild and wonderful life?’ is on everyone’s mind,” Mr. Evans said.

Mr. Burnett recalled a conversation with Stanford’s dean of the engineering department, who was about to retire. “He said: ‘Can I take your class? Because I don’t know what I’m going to be now that I’m not the dean anymore.’”

Mr. Burnett added: “One of the meta-narratives out there is that you should figure it out by 25, or maybe it’s 27 now. Then there’s the other thing of failure to launch, that millennials are slackers. Part of the permission we give people is: Reframe this. You’re not supposed to have it figured out.”

Read more about how to think like a designer.

What do conservatives read? What do liberals read? What do progressives read? What are you reading? What you read has a huge impact on what you write. Here are some thoughts.

This political season brought many issues to the fore, and one of the most interesting was what various political camps considered “great books.” Here is part of what Molly Worthen shared in her New York Times piece, “Can I Go to Great Books Camp?”

A small but growing number of young conservatives see themselves not only as engaged citizens, but as guardians of an ancient intellectual tradition. The members of Ms. Havard’s group were alumni of a seven-week crash course in political theory offered by the Hertog Foundation, the family foundation of the Wall Street financier Roger Hertog. Attendees discuss authors like Aristotle, James Madison and Leo Strauss and hear lectures by scholars and policy experts. “Our curriculum represents what we think ought to be a high-level introduction to politics, one you rarely find in any political science department,” Peter Berkowitz, the program’s dean, told me.

The Hertog course is one of more than a dozen similar seminars sponsored by conservative and libertarian organizations around the country. Some last for months, others just a few days. Some recruit older participants, but most target college students and 20-somethings.

Liberals have their own activist workshops and reading groups, but these rarely instruct students in an intellectual tradition, a centuries-long canon of political philosophy. Why have philosophical summer schools become a vibrant subculture on the right, but only a feeble presence on the left? The disparity underscores a divide between conservatives and liberals over the best way to teach young people — and, among liberals, a certain squeamishness about the history of ideas.

Liberals, however, can’t afford to dismiss Great Books as tools of white supremacy, or to disdain ideological training as the sort of unsavory thing that only conservatives and communists do. These are powerful tools for preparing the next generation of activists to succeed in the bewildering ideological landscape of the country that just elected Mr. Trump.

Read this intriguing article here.

Made any New Year’s resolutions yet? Most who do focus on improving their lives in some way. But is this the smart play. What about resolving to accept yourself the way you are. I just read a compelling New York Times article by Jennifer Weiner who suggests we do just that. Here is part of what she shared:

But here we are, once again, in the month of New Year’s resolutions; the month where even the staunchest believer in self-acceptance can find herself falling for the pitchmen and the first-month-free come-ons. This year, the notion of self-improvement feels especially seductive. Diets, and resolutions in general, are all about hope — hope that things can get better, hope that you are going to actually learn that new language, de-clutter that junk drawer, lose those 20 pounds for good.

No matter what bit of 2016 has left you feeling battered and bludgeoned and blue, the siren song of self-improvement has never sounded louder. We can’t heal the divides in the country, can’t stop violence, and can’t keep death from taking the artists and actors who defined our youth. We can’t magically extend the term of a president who did not tweet as if he was channeling a furious, academically challenged 12-year-old, but maybe we can at least squeeze into our jeans from the era before it all went wrong.

Thought provoking? You can read the full article here.

Tom Friedman has a unique talent for spotting trends that impact our lives. So it was inevitable that he would talk about the sea change in our lives as we balance what we do in the “real” world with what we do in cyberspace. He even challenges the notion of what is real and what isn’t. While some pundits complain about this change, he embraces it. In his own words;

In 2016 we reached a tipping point. It was the moment when we realized that a critical mass of our lives and work had shifted away from the terrestrial world to a realm known as “cyberspace.” That is to say, a critical mass of our interactions had moved to a realm where we’re all connected but no one’s in charge.

After all, there are no stoplights in cyberspace, no police officers walking the beat, no courts, no judges, no God who smites evil and rewards good, and certainly no “1-800-Call-If-Putin-Hacks-Your-Election.” If someone slimes you on Twitter or Facebook, well, unless it is a death threat, good luck getting it removed, especially if it is done anonymously, which in cyberspace is quite common.

And yet this realm is where we now spend increasing hours of our day. Cyberspace is now where we do more of our shopping, more of our dating, more of our friendship-making and sustaining, more of our learning, more of our commerce, more of our teaching, more of our communicating, more of our news-broadcasting and news-seeking and more of our selling of goods, services and ideas.

Interested in this tipping point? You can read the complete article here.

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) is one of the most important missions for the United States’ military – and it is one that is growing in importance – with rouge nations such as North Korea and Iran possessing ballistic missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction.

The U.S. Navy’s contribution to U.S. BMD is based on the Aegis weapon system and has been on patrol in guided-missile cruisers and destroyers since 2004. Aegis BMD has grown in importance based on its proven performance as well as its long-term potential.

For years, the U.S. Navy’s contribution to U.S. BMD was secondary to many other systems. Today, the U.S. Navy is “in the van” as we describe in our article in the US Naval Institute Proceedings.

Mindfulness and mindfulness mediation have been around for a while now, with more and more practitioners finding value in living in the moment, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. As one convert put it, “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find out I didn’t show up for it.”

While millions have used this mindfulness discipline to help them in their personal lives, it has taken longer for it to take hold in the business world. But now, hard-boiled managers whose lives have been focused on the bottom line and returning shareholder value, have begun to embrace mindfulness in the workplace.

One example is the health insurer, Aetna, one of the hundred biggest companies in America. Its CEO, Mark Bertolini, has brought mindfulness meditation into his company for compelling reasons that help the company’s bottom line and increase shareholder value. In his own words:

We program C.E.O.s to be certain kinds of people. We expect C.E.O.s to be on message all the time. The grand experiment here has been how much of that do you really need to do?

Aetna is at the vanguard of a movement that is quietly spreading through the business world. Companies like Google offer emotional intelligence courses for employees. General Mills has a meditation room in every building on its corporate campus. And even buttoned-up Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are teaching meditation on the job.

The aims of such programs are eclectic. Some, such as Aetna’s, are intended to improve overall well-being; others to increase focus and productivity. Most of the programs — from yoga sessions for factory workers to guided meditations for executives — aim to make employees more present-minded, less prone to make rash decisions and generally nicer people to work with.

Adoption of these unconventional practices in the workplace coincides with growing interest among the American public. More than 21 million people now practice yoga, double the number from a decade ago, according to the National Institutes of Health. Nearly as many meditate, according to the N.I.H.

Want to deep-dive into the idea of mindfulness in leadership and management? You can read the full article here.

Can you be an engine of innovation where you work. If you DON’T work in Silicon Valley, you may think that innovation is something only done there. But wait, read more.

No doubt, Silicon Valley has changed how we work, for better or worse. Our smartphones keep us connected to the office all the time while internet searches bring the world’s information to our fingertips. But people may not realize that it is the subtler aspects of how tech companies operate that often have a more lasting effect on other industries.

The “agile” part of this increasingly popular management concept is simple: Rather than try to do giant projects that take months or even years, create small teams that do a bit at a time. This way, small problems don’t balloon into enormous ones hidden inside a huge bureaucracy. And progress can be measured in small steps — one little project at a time.

Read more about “You, the innovator”

One of the most rapidly growing areas of innovative technology adoption involves autonomous systems. The U.S. military’s use of these systems – especially armed autonomous systems – is not only changing the face of modern warfare, but is also altering the process of decision-making in combat operations. These systems are evolving rapidly to deliver enhanced capability to the warfighter and seemed poised to deliver the next “revolution in military affairs.” However, there are increasing concerns regarding the degree of autonomy these systems—especially armed autonomous systems—should have. Until these issues are addressed, military autonomous systems may not reach their full potential.

While DoD officials have issued comprehensive guidance regarding the need to ensure that autonomous systems have operator oversight – especially for lethal autonomous systems, that has not sufficiently mitigated public concerns that the U.S. military will unleash lethal autonomous systems that may do unintended harm. In the face of rapid advances in artificial intelligence, the need to contend with enemy systems that operate at machine speeds, and the growing concerns expressed in popular culture about the way machines might turn on their human masters, these concerns have grown. In short, will HAL try to kill us?

Read more of my Defense Media Network article about the possible dark side of autonomous systems here