The Art of Clear Thinking

Mental Models for Better Reasoning, Judgment, Analysis, and Learning. Upgrade Your Intellectual Toolkit.

By: Patrick King

Narrated by: Russell Newton

Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

Think smarter, better, and faster. Clear thinking is the key to truth, wisdom, and knowledge.

Whether it’s from ourselves or others, we rarely see the world as it really is. We aren’t able to think clearly. We build our beliefs on lies, assumptions, and deceptions. This ends now.

Practical methods to never be fooled, stop making mistakes, and avoid traps.

The Art of Clear Thinking takes an in-depth look at the everyday illusions we come across, and how to defeat them once and for all. What makes us jump to conclusions, evaluate incorrectly, and consistently make errors when we should know better? Why do we act against our own interests so frequently?

It’s just how we’re wired. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. This audiobook gives you the tools to clear the fog from your eyes and simply think smarter.

Practical methods to instantly be quick-witted, more insightful, and think more critically.

Patrick King is an internationally bestselling author and social skills coach. He has sold over a million books. His writing draws of a variety of sources, from research, academic experience, coaching, and real life experience.

Discover and avoid biases, blind spots, and poor logic.

• The key to intellectual honesty and the biggest obstacle (that you control).
• Just how flawed and biased your perceptions, perspectives, and feelings are.
• Real logic and the fake logic people try to use to fool you.
• How to think independently without being influenced by others.
• Principles from some of history’s greatest thinkers: Descartes, Darwin, Einstein, and more.
  

©2019 Patrick King (P)2019 Patrick King

Interesting subject with good narration

Really interesting topic that this book covers and which I have discovered from my own experience that if you narrowly focus on what you want to prove you will find facts that prove it, and it is very easy to not pay attention to other facts that compromise your thesis, so this book very well covers how and why this confirmation bias happens, and what to do to avoid it.
For example, it is very common to ask: Are you "Patrick"? if you expect to meet Patrick for the first time, however you would be surprised how many people answer "Yes" to this question, even women! That is what almost happened to my Uber driver when he picked her up with similar question - luckily she did not have to go to airport like I did, so the Uber driver did figure out the mistake when I got to the car.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Challenging and inspiring!

I liked Patrick King’s “The Art of Clear Thinking”, especially his thoughts on how bias inhibits clear thinking and strategies for overcoming bias. I also enjoyed the performance by Russell Newton. Therefore, I’m grateful for having received a free copy of this audiobook.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Well thought out ideas

I listened to this book twice, and tried to absorb the information.
A couple of my takeaways were:
1. You are never thinking clearly if you are not willing to look at every angle of an idea. You can not pre-rule out any side of the story, and maintain a solid mental structure. This is super hard for me to do. I think all of us have a built reality that excludes many sides of an idea.
2. Ego can be as blinding as a pillow case over your head. One must be humble, even if they are an expert, in order to continue to learn.

I recommend this audio book. The narrator has a nice deep voice that helps the ideas sound authoritative.

Good for those new to critical thinking

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

So, I have mixed feelings about this book. The claims in the synopsis are a little too conceited, in my opinion. "Learn to stop making mistakes" is kind of a silly claim. It would be better to say improve your critical thinking and reduce your liklihood to make mistakes. Granted, that is a bit of me splitting hairs, but it bugged me. Like many books in this area, it is a great intro to the concept of critial thinking or basic reasoning. As in, thinking through a topic in a more detailed and logical way in order to form stronger conclusions. Kind of like the scientific method you learned about in high school science class, but at a slightly higher academic level. I don't mean that to be insulting to the book, its author or narrator. If you've ever been exposed to this sort of thing, you'll find this book to be very familiar and you may not get much out of it. If you've never really explored the topic of critical thought, I would highly recommend this book. I think you'd get a lot out of it.

This is a beneficial book!

If you want to learn without being influenced by common pitfalls that are meant to deter you from getting to the bottom of things, this is for you! Great tools and insights to clear thinking! I received my copy free, and happily leave this review and honest feedback! I consider The Art of Clear Thinking essential to my learning at a deeper level.

Well thought out, and organized!

This was an easy listen, and very well thought out! There are many useful concepts, including a section on perspective that was very well done. If you find yourself in a constant state of confusion, or are always getting stuck in the blame game this book is for you! Even if you are not it will open your mind in all the right ways! Narration was very clear and easy to listen to, even at faster playback speeds.

Another tool to your learning toolbelt

This another tool to add to your toolbelt if you are looking to improve your skills. It is short and concise and provides the reader with facts, examples, and ways to improve thinking. A counterpoint to this work would be Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Both have very valid points backed with data. I think high school and college level students would benefit from work like this. I wish I would have had this then.

Not great - Take a critical thinking class instead

The book is dated and goes against prevailing decision making science. Most people can’t separate emotions the way this book describes and this book offers rudimentary advice on bias mitigation. The book also feels very familiar to any “rationalist 101” creed. Skip it.

Feels like a book made to milk an audience

The writing is a bit too dumbed down and "chummy" and made me roll my eyes at a few points. It feels like it's just going through the motions. At least one or two sections were taken straight out of another book I think by the same author, "mental models". These were the sections describing Darwin and Elon Musk. I did like the chapter describing the methods of Descartes and Socrates, but those were the outliers and I guess if that's your thing you should just read books about them.

Love Patrick immense, but don' know about this one

Out of work, little depressed, thought this would offer some insight and clear my head. But oh my god, after listening for an hour, I felt so depressed I had to shut it off. Maybe try listening to when in better mood, probably not. His other stuff is awesome. Makes a poor psychologist.