• Start here 😎

👂 How did I come across this book?

(remind myself of the context)

Can’t remember. It was way back

💰 Any value I can share with others (podcast listeners)?

• The whole book 😆

🌟 Impressions from Summary

1. How to manipulate the brain to our benefits

🤔 Decision

(level of commitment)

• [x] Impressions
• [x] Summary
• [ ] Blinkist
• [ ] Audio Book
• [x] Book (or E-book)

Summary

Audio summary by ActionableBook

🚀 The Summary in One Sentence

1. Smart Thinking provides a simple framework to understand how memory and experience work while providing methods to implement specific strategies that will enable deliberate, helpful changes to improve our effectiveness.

☘️ Lessons I will Apply in Real Life

(what concrete actions will I take after reading this?)

• Changing my environment in order to act more automatically (like my objects on my desk)
• Take notes (3 main points of the subject) after every activity such as attending the meeting, reeding books, learning something and … before going to the next activity.
• Prepare (3 main points of the subject) before teaching or lecturing in a meeting.
• Summarise (with 3 key points) of the whole subject after teaching or lecturing.
• Try to explain myself everything new.

📒 Summary + Notes

Author Art Markman utilizes his years in cognitive psychology to “replace self-limiting habits with those that foster ‘smart thinking’”.  ‘Smart Thinking’ simply means:  do more, better. It is the ability to solve new problems using one’s current knowledge, and the good news is that it is a skill that one can develop.
So how do we rid ourselves of muddled thinking and destructive patterns of behavior?  Markman presents three key areas that we need to be in control of in order to engage in ‘smart thinking’:  smart habits, high-quality knowledge, and the application of that high-quality knowledge.  The fact is that most of what we do every day, we do without thinking – but that’s not a bad thing because the brain is designed to focus on the easiest, safest solutions to any problem without the heavy lifting of slow, ponderous thought patterns.  However, Markman believes that we need to organize our life so that the things we do by habit are actions that will promote ‘smarter behavior’.  This means we have to work harder at thinking about what we do as we do it.

Point 1: The formula for smart habits

• Mapping between an action and the environment consistently

The first part of forming a smart habit is creating consistent mapping, which is making a connection between the environment and a behavior. We need to slow down and be cognisant of the outside world and our internal mental feelings and thoughts. Consciously and slowly recognising an environment that brings a bad habit into presence is the first key to habit change. Then, when engaging in the new, desired habit, a ‘new map’ between the environment and action is created.
Surprisingly, you do not need massive amounts of willpower to create new habits intentionally (and this is backed up by the most recent studies in cognitive psychology). These new habits can develop as long as you consistently map your physical and mental environment to the behavior you desire to carry out. By slowing down and thinking about this linking of environment and behavior, you engage the frontal lobes of your brain that can empower you from not carrying out the undesired habit. In other words, be mindful about the unwanted habit and your environment, and you have the clues to begin to remove them.

• Performing that action repeatedly.

Repeating the action in that environment will result in a new habit forming.

Point 2: Smart thinking in practice

“By adding elements to your environment that remind you of actions that you are supposed to perform, you are providing a framework or scaffold to support your new behaviors.” -Smart Thinking, page 187
Slow down. Think. REALLY think before you act. By talking to yourself as you are learning something new and walking through new concepts around the higher-level knowledge, you allow your brain to flex its associative muscles and make patterns of understanding that will lead to smart thinking. When you are in a situation of new learning and challenged with understanding knowledge unfamiliar to you, it helps to create a summary of the experience before moving on to the next thing. Few people do this. You should. Stop. Structure your new learning by taking notes and write a summary of what you think you need to understand for the long term and isolate the key points.
This will create high-quality knowledge that you will be able to apply more readily when a situation comes up that requires smart thinking. Your (written) summary should organise around three elements: objects (people), events, and casual understanding. Casual understanding is organised around explanations and is always related to a particular why question. When you understand the reasons behind the acquisition of this new learning experience, then you will be able to use that information to determine its application towards your desired outcome.

Blinkist

🧐What’s in it for me?

💡In this Blink I’ll learn:

👀 Other viewpoints / Further reading

📒 Blink Notes

Blink 1

📋Final Summary:

☘️ Lessons I will Apply in Real Life

(what concrete actions will I take after reading this?)

Audio Book

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. XX

🧠 Anything I remember

Book

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Smart Thinking is the Ability to Solve New Problems using Your Current Knowledge.
2. The mind is designed to think as little as possible.
3. Habits are created by consistent mapping and repetition.

☘️ Lessons I will Apply in Real Life

(what concrete actions will I take after reading this book?)

• Prepare before every new situations such as meeting, class, learning sessions and … (I should think about what is going to happen in the next event and about what should I expect to achieve from it)
• Avoiding distractions and pay attention during the sessions.
• Review the new knowledge right after learning it and before going to the next event
• Teach the people around me to create a culture of smart

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• Make the every day recurring tasks as habits so you can do those without thinking.
• The role of three:
• Prepare
• Pay Attention
• Review
• We can improve the quality of casual knowledge through self-explanation.

📒 Summary + Notes

• Chapter 1 – What is smart thinking?
• Chapter 2 – Creating smart habits and changing behavior
• Chapter 3 – Promoting quality learning by knowing your limits
• Chapter 4 – Understanding how things work
• Chapter 5 – Making comparison and applying your knowledge
• Chapter 6 – Maximizing memory effectiveness
• Chapter 7 – Smart Thinking in Practice