Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday describes an old Roman role: a person who cleared the path in front of a patron. His version: when you are starting out, find canvases for other people to paint on. Clear the way for those above you, give away your ideas, take on the work nobody wants. He tells of a football coach who began as an unpaid assistant doing the film analysis others avoided, and of Benjamin Franklin, who slipped his early essays under the print-shop door under a false name and let others take the praise. Holiday says you learn the most, build relationships, and bank goodwill. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says it means putting aside the wish for credit, which is the very thing ego wants most. Note: advice from anecdotes. It assumes the people you help are fair. Some are not, so watch for being used. (Source: Ego Is the Enemy, 'Follow the Canvas Strategy'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday builds the book on a line from Marcus Aurelius: what stands in the way becomes the way. He breaks the response to any obstacle into three disciplines. Perception is how we see what happens: calmly, plainly, looking for the opening. Action is what we do: small, persistent, practical steps. Will is the inner strength to endure what action cannot change, and to find meaning in it. Each of the book's three parts takes one of these. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says most people fail at the first step, since panic and complaint arrive before clear sight. Note: Holiday popularises Stoic ideas through historical anecdotes chosen to fit. It is philosophy and storytelling, not research. (Source: The Obstacle Is the Way, Introduction.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: in the second chapter Krishna tells Arjuna that he has a right to his work and never to the fruits of the work. He should not act for the sake of reward, and he should not fall into inaction either. The next verse asks him to act with an even mind, the same in success and in failure, and calls this evenness yoga. Easwaran explains it as doing your best and leaving the outcome, which depends on many forces beyond you. Likely to trip me up: the verse is often misread as not caring about results or not having goals. The teaching is about attachment, not about effort. Note: a sacred Hindu text, read here for its practical psychology. Translations and schools of interpretation differ on many verses. It is a teaching, not a research finding, though it fits modern work on focusing on the process. (Source: The Bhagavad Gita, 2.47 to 2.48.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: in the sixth chapter Arjuna objects that the mind is restless, turbulent and as hard to control as the wind. Krishna agrees that it is restless and hard to restrain, and says it can be trained through regular practice and detachment. Earlier in the chapter he says a person must lift himself by his own efforts, since the mind can be one's friend or one's enemy. He adds that meditation is not for those who eat too much or too little, or sleep too much or too little, but for those who are moderate in eating, sleeping, work and recreation. Likely to trip me up: the text itself admits how hard this is, so I should expect the wandering and not count it as failure. Note: a sacred Hindu text. It is a teaching, not a study. Modern research does support regular meditation practice and the role of sleep in attention. (Source: The Bhagavad Gita, chapter 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday tells of Theodore Roosevelt, a sickly, asthmatic boy whose father told him he had the mind but not the body, and that he must make his body. Roosevelt worked out daily for years and turned himself into a famously robust man, which he later drew on through grief and hardship. Holiday takes the Stoic image of the inner citadel, a fortress inside that no outside trouble can break down, and stresses that nobody is born with it. It is built by deliberate effort, in advance. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says people skip the building when times are good, which is the only time it can be done. Note: a biographical anecdote, simplified. The benefits of fitness, sleep and savings as buffers against stress are well supported elsewhere. (Source: The Obstacle Is the Way, 'Build Your Inner Citadel'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday borrows a distinction from the writer Robert Greene. There are two kinds of time: dead time, when you are passive and waiting, and alive time, when you are learning, acting and using every second. His example is Malcolm X, who went to prison as a young criminal and used his years there to copy out a dictionary and read his way through the library. Holiday says that in any setback, a bad job, an illness, a wait, the choice between the two remains yours. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says resentment is the usual response to being stuck, and resentment is what makes time dead. Note: a biographical anecdote used as a parable. (Source: Ego Is the Enemy, 'Alive Time or Dead Time?'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday tells of Thomas Edison at sixty-seven, watching his factory and years of work burn. He told his son to fetch his mother and her friends, since they would never see a fire like it again. The next day he began rebuilding. Holiday uses the Latin phrase amor fati, love of fate: for what we cannot change, the step beyond accepting it is to embrace it, since it is the only material we have to work with. He is clear this applies after the fact, not as a reason to stop trying beforehand. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says it feels unnatural to be grateful for what we never wanted. Note: a well-known anecdote, retold simply. The idea is philosophical, not a research finding, and it is not meant to wave away real grief. (Source: The Obstacle Is the Way, 'Love Everything That Happens: Amor Fati'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday describes John Boyd, an American fighter pilot and strategist who changed modern air combat and was never promoted to general. Boyd gave promising officers the same speech. One day you will come to a fork in the road. One way, you can be somebody: make compromises, get the promotions and the good assignments. The other way, you can do something that matters, and you may never be rewarded for it. To be or to do: which way will you go? Holiday says ego pulls towards titles, credit and appearances, and that purpose asks only what needs doing. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says the two paths look alike at first, and that the rewards of 'being' are visible while the rewards of 'doing' are not. Note: one man's speech, used as a parable. (Source: Ego Is the Enemy, 'To Be or To Do?'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday passes on a system from a mixed martial arts champion, who says every fighter needs three people: a plus, someone better to learn from; a minus, someone lesser to teach; and an equal, to challenge themselves against. The point is to get constant, honest information about what you know and do not know, from every angle. Holiday also tells of a guitarist who, just after joining a famous band, went and took lessons, since he saw how much he still lacked. He says ego blocks this, since nobody can learn what they think they already know. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says taking the student's role means accepting that someone is better than you, which stings. Note: a training rule from sport, told through anecdote. (Source: Ego Is the Enemy, 'Become a Student'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Epictetus says people are disturbed not by things but by the views they take of them. His example is death: it is not terrible in itself, or it would have seemed so to Socrates. The terror lies in our notion that it is terrible. So when we are hindered or upset, we should never blame others, only our own judgements. He adds a progression: the uninstructed blame others, the beginner blames himself, and the instructed blames nobody. Likely to trip me up: the view arrives fused with the event, so it feels like part of what happened. Note: Lebell's book is a free modern rendering. The founders of cognitive therapy, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, both credited this passage as a root of their method, which is well supported by research. (Source: The Art of Living, rendering of Enchiridion 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday tells of a writer who, before running for office, published a book describing in the past tense how he had already won and fixed everything. He then lost badly. Holiday says talking about a goal and working on it draw on the same energy, and that talk gives a feeling of progress that replaces the real thing. He describes how social media makes this worse, by rewarding announcements. His advice: silence is strength, so do the work and let it speak. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says facing the hard, uncertain work is frightening, and talking about it is the easy way out. Note: an argument from anecdotes. A 2009 study by Peter Gollwitzer and colleagues found something similar: people who told others about an identity goal then worked less on it. (Source: Ego Is the Enemy, 'Talk, Talk, Talk'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: two verses lay out a chain. When you keep thinking about sense objects, attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire. Thwarted desire flares into anger. Anger clouds judgement. Clouded judgement loses the lessons of past experience, and with them the power to choose wisely, and the person is lost. Easwaran stresses how early the chain starts: not with the act, but with letting the mind dwell. The practical lesson is to step in at the first link, where it is still easy. Likely to trip me up: dwelling on a pleasure feels harmless and even enjoyable, which is why the first link goes unnoticed. Note: a sacred Hindu text, read here for its practical psychology. Translations differ. The idea that rehearsing a temptation in the mind strengthens craving does fit modern research on desire. (Source: The Bhagavad Gita, 2.62 to 2.63.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: one chapter advises planning for the difficult while it is still easy and doing the great thing while it is still small, since the hard things in the world always begin as easy ones. The next says what is at rest is easy to hold, what has not yet shown signs is easy to plan for, the brittle is easy to break and the tiny is easy to scatter. Deal with things before they arise. It then gives the book's most famous image: a tree you can barely get your arms around grows from a tiny shoot, and a journey of a thousand miles begins under your feet. Likely to trip me up: small problems do not feel urgent, which is the whole reason they are left to grow. Note: a short Chinese classic with uncertain authorship and many differing translations. Philosophy, not research. (Source: Tao Te Ching, chapters 63 and 64.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the book returns often to wu wei, usually translated as non-action or effortless action. One chapter says the Way never acts, yet nothing is left undone. Another says that in the pursuit of learning something is added every day, and in the pursuit of the Way something is dropped every day, until one arrives at non-forcing. A third says: act without striving, work without effort. Commentators explain that this is not laziness. It is acting in line with the nature of the situation, like a skilled cook whose knife follows the joints. Likely to trip me up: effort feels virtuous, so forcing feels like the right thing even when it makes matters worse. Note: a short Chinese classic, traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, though scholars doubt a single author and date the text around the fourth century BC. English versions differ a great deal, and some popular ones are loose interpretations. Philosophy, not research. (Source: Tao Te Ching, chapters 37, 48 and 63.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the chapter gives three images. Thirty spokes join at one hub, and it is the empty hole at the centre that makes the wheel useful. Clay is shaped into a pot, and it is the space inside that makes the pot useful. Doors and windows are cut for a room, and it is the empty space that makes the room useful. It concludes that we gain from what is there, and we use what is not there. Likely to trip me up: empty space looks like waste, so the urge is to fill every gap in a calendar, a shelf or a page. Note: a short Chinese classic with uncertain authorship and many differing translations. Philosophy, not research. (Source: Tao Te Ching, chapter 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the manual opens with one principle: some things are within our control and some are not. Within our control are our own opinions, aims, desires and the things that repel us. Outside it are our body, our wealth, how others regard us, and our status. Epictetus, who was born a slave, says freedom and calm begin only when you learn to tell the two apart and stop trying to command the second kind. Trying to control what you cannot brings only torment. Likely to trip me up: the line is not always obvious. I influence many things I do not control, and I can control only my part. Note: Lebell's book is a free modern rendering, not a literal translation. For exact wording use a scholarly translation of the Enchiridion. Philosophy, not research. (Source: The Art of Living, opening section.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the book says the highest good is like water, which benefits all things and does not compete, and settles in the low places people disdain. A later chapter says nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water, yet nothing is better at overcoming the hard and strong. The weak overcomes the strong and the soft overcomes the hard. Everyone knows this, it adds, and nobody can put it into practice. Likely to trip me up: yielding feels like losing, in the moment, which is why people know the principle and do not use it. Note: a short Chinese classic with uncertain authorship and many differing translations. Philosophy, not research. (Source: Tao Te Ching, chapters 8 and 78.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the fourteenth chapter describes three qualities that run through everything in nature and in the mind. Sattva is clarity, harmony and lightness. Rajas is passion, restlessness and drive. Tamas is inertia, dullness and confusion. Everyone has all three in shifting proportion. Chapter seventeen applies them to food: fresh, mild, nourishing food supports clarity; very hot, sour or salty food goes with agitation; stale or overcooked food goes with dullness. Easwaran presents it as a way to watch what your choices do to your state of mind. Likely to trip me up: rajas feels like energy and tamas feels like rest, so both are easy to mistake for what I need. Note: a traditional classification from a sacred text, not nutrition science. It works as a lens for self-observation, not as a claim about particular foods. (Source: The Bhagavad Gita, chapters 14 and 17.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Epictetus says to behave in life as at a dinner party. When a dish is passed to you, reach out and take a moderate helping. If it passes you by, do not stop it. If it has not come yet, do not stretch your desire out towards it, but wait for your turn. He says to act the same way towards children, a spouse, position and wealth, and that a person who can do this is a worthy guest of the gods. Likely to trip me up: the feeds I scroll are an endless view of dishes on other people's tables. Note: Lebell's book is a free modern rendering. Philosophy, not research. (Source: The Art of Living, rendering of Enchiridion 15.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Epictetus says everything has two handles, one by which it can be carried and one by which it cannot. If your brother wrongs you, do not take hold of it by the handle of his wrongdoing, since it cannot be carried by that one. Take hold of it by the other: that he is your brother, that you were raised together. Then you will be holding it by the handle that can bear the weight. Likely to trip me up: the injury is the handle nearest to hand, and gripping it feels justified. Note: Lebell's book is a free modern rendering. Philosophy, not research. It is advice for ordinary wrongs between people who matter to each other, not a reason to put up with abuse. (Source: The Art of Living, rendering of Enchiridion 43.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: one chapter says that the person who knows he has enough is rich. Another asks which matters more, your name or your self, your self or your goods, and answers that whoever knows contentment meets no disgrace, and whoever knows when to stop meets no danger. A third says there is no greater misfortune than not knowing what is enough, and no greater fault than the wish to acquire. The contentment of knowing you have enough, it says, is lasting. Likely to trip me up: 'enough' is never defined by the world around me, which always suggests a little more. Note: a short Chinese classic with uncertain authorship and many differing translations. Philosophy, not research, though it matches modern findings that we adapt quickly to having more. (Source: Tao Te Ching, chapters 33, 44 and 46.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Krishna tells Arjuna that it is better to do one's own duty imperfectly than to do another's well, and that there is danger in taking up a path that is not yours. The verse appears in chapter three and is repeated near the end of the book. Easwaran reads it as being true to your own nature and responsibilities, and not living by imitation, however admirable the person you are imitating. Likely to trip me up: someone else's path, done well, always looks better from outside than my own, done badly. Note: a sacred Hindu text. Interpretations of 'one's own duty' differ, and the verse has a long and debated history. This row follows Easwaran's reading. (Source: The Bhagavad Gita, 3.35 and 18.47.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday describes a famous American football coach who teaches his players what he calls the process. They are told not to think about the championship or even the scoreboard, only about what needs to be done in this drill, this play, this moment, and to do that well. Holiday says a huge task stops being frightening when it becomes a chain of small ones, each of which you can finish. Excellence, in this view, is a matter of steps done in order. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says the mind keeps leaping ahead to the outcome, and that thinking about the finish line is how people stumble on the step in front of them. Note: an anecdote-based argument. It fits research showing that focusing on the process supports persistence. (Source: The Obstacle Is the Way, 'Follow the Process'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Holiday says there is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means. 'This happened' is an observation. 'And it is bad' is a judgement we add. He borrows a swordsman's distinction between the observing eye, which sees what is there, and the perceiving eye, which sees more than is there. He describes Marcus Aurelius's exercise of describing grand things in plain terms, a fine wine as fermented grapes, to strip away their power. He also suggests imagining the problem belongs to a friend, since we see others' troubles clearly. Likely to trip me up: Holiday says our own problems come wrapped in fear and ego, which is exactly what blurs them. Note: Stoic practice retold with anecdotes. It is close to the cognitive therapy habit of separating facts from interpretations. (Source: The Obstacle Is the Way, 'Practice Objectivity'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Epictetus says never to say of anything 'I have lost it', only 'I have given it back'. Whatever we have was given to us for a time, and the giver may ask for it again. While it is with us, we should take care of it as something that belongs to another, the way travellers treat an inn. Lebell's rendering says nothing can truly be taken from us, and that peace begins when we stop saying of things 'I have lost it'. Likely to trip me up: this is easy to say about objects and very hard to say about people. Note: Lebell's book is a free modern rendering. This is a consolation from philosophy, not a finding, and it is not a substitute for grieving a real loss. (Source: The Art of Living, 'Care for What You Happen to Have'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors end by saying that a life run by dopamine alone is all pursuit and no arrival, and a life with none is aimless. Their advice is balance. They recommend mastery, since getting good at something satisfies the wanting system and gives present-moment pleasure too. They recommend paying attention to what is in front of you, and say that doing several things at once makes all of them worse. They also praise making things with your hands, such as cooking, gardening or woodwork, which joins a plan to a physical, sensory task. Likely to trip me up: the authors say modern life rewards the future-chasing side, so the here-and-now side needs deliberate protection. Note: sensible advice in line with wider wellbeing research. The brain-chemistry framing is simplified. (Source: The Molecule of More, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Seneca's friend complains that travel has not lifted his gloom. Seneca replies that he needs a change of soul, not a change of climate. He quotes Socrates: why wonder that travel does you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? The faults that drove you out go with you. Until the load on the mind is put down, no place will please, and once it is, any place will do. He returns to the point in a later letter: what you need is to be a different person, not to be in a different place. Likely to trip me up: Seneca says the restless mind reads every new place as the cure, for a week. Note: moral letters written around AD 65. Some surroundings truly are harmful, and leaving them is wise. The model is a check to run first, not a rule against ever moving. (Source: Letters from a Stoic, Letters XXVIII and CIV.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Seneca passes on advice from Epicurus: choose someone of high character and keep them always before your eyes, living as if they were watching you and doing everything as if they saw it. He says much wrongdoing disappears if a witness stands beside the person about to do it. Choose someone whose life and manner you approve, he says, as a guardian or a model, since without a ruler to measure against you cannot make the crooked straight. Likely to trip me up: Seneca's point implies the person must be chosen in advance and called to mind on purpose. At the moment of temptation nobody comes to mind unasked. Note: moral letters from a Roman statesman, written around AD 65. Modern studies do find that people behave better when they feel observed. (Source: Letters from a Stoic, Letter XI.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brach says desire is not the enemy. It is natural, and the trouble starts when we are taken over by it or at war with it. She describes the wanting self: when deeper needs for love, safety or belonging go unmet, we fix on substitutes that promise quick relief, such as food, shopping, praise or a substance. The substitute satisfies briefly, shame follows, and the wanting grows. Her practice is to pause when craving arises, feel the raw wanting in the body without acting or judging, and ask what we are really longing for. Likely to trip me up: Brach says most of us swing between indulging a craving and hating ourselves for having it, and that both keep it going. Note: a Buddhist teaching told through case stories. The method is close to urge surfing, a technique with research support for addictive habits. People with a dependence need professional help as well. (Source: Radical Acceptance, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Seneca writes after a fire destroyed the city of Lyons in a single night. His friend was shattered, since nothing like it had seemed possible. Seneca says what is unexpected hits hardest, so we should send the mind ahead to meet everything that could happen, not only what usually happens: loss of wealth, exile, illness, disaster. Whatever fortune can do to anyone, it can do to us. Rehearsed in advance, a blow lands more softly, and we also see that cities and people rise again after ruin. Likely to trip me up: Seneca's exercise is a deliberate, bounded rehearsal. Done without limits, picturing disaster is simply worry. Note: moral letters written around AD 65. Modern psychology finds that planning for setbacks helps, and also that dwelling on worst cases feeds anxiety, so the practice should be brief and end in a plan. (Source: Letters from a Stoic, Letter XCI.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors divide the world into what is within arm's reach, which you look down to see, and what is beyond it, which you look up to see. Things in reach are enjoyed through what they call here-and-now chemicals, such as serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins. Things out of reach are pursued through dopamine, which is about possibility and anticipation, not enjoyment. They call dopamine the molecule of more, since it responds to what you could have and loses interest once you have it. Likely to trip me up: the authors say the wanting system cannot be satisfied by getting, only switched off for a while. Note: popular neuroscience by a psychiatrist and a writer. Dopamine does many things in the brain, and tying whole areas of life to one chemical is a simplification. (Source: The Molecule of More, Introduction.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Jeffers says the issue is not the fear but how we hold it: from a position of pain, which is helplessness and paralysis, or from a position of power, which is choice and action. She says the words we use move us along that line. Her swaps include: 'I can't' becomes 'I won't', 'I should' becomes 'I could', 'it's a problem' becomes 'it's an opportunity', and 'if only' becomes 'next time'. 'I can't come to dinner' hides a choice. 'I won't come, since I have chosen to prepare for tomorrow' owns it. Likely to trip me up: Jeffers says helpless language is a habit, and also a comfort, since it lets us off the hook. Note: her own method. It fits the cognitive therapy view that 'should' statements feed guilt and resentment. (Source: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Tolle teaches feeling the body from inside. Close your eyes, put your attention in your hands, and ask if you can feel the aliveness there, then in the feet, arms, legs and the whole body at once. He says attention placed in the body is attention taken away from compulsive thinking, so the body works as an anchor in the present. He suggests keeping some attention there during ordinary activity, especially while listening to someone or waiting, and scanning the body before sleep and on waking. Likely to trip me up: Tolle says attention slides back to thought within seconds, and that the practice is simply returning. Note: Tolle's explanation is spiritual and cannot be tested. The exercise itself is very close to the body scan used in mindfulness courses, which has research support for stress. (Source: The Power of Now, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brach defines radical acceptance as clearly recognising what is happening inside us and regarding it with an open, kind heart. She calls these the two wings of a bird: mindfulness, which sees what is true, and compassion, which holds it with care. With only seeing, we tend to notice our pain and judge it. With only kindness, we may comfort ourselves without seeing clearly. She stresses that acceptance is about our inner experience in this moment. It is not approval of harmful behaviour and not passivity. Likely to trip me up: Brach says many people fear that if they accept themselves they will stop trying to improve. Note: Buddhist teaching from a psychologist. Separate research on mindfulness and on self-compassion supports both parts. (Source: Radical Acceptance, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brach says many people live with a constant background sense that something is wrong with them. She calls it a trance, since it is so familiar that it goes unnoticed. It shows up as strategies: endless self-improvement projects, playing safe, withdrawing, staying busy, criticising ourselves first, and judging others. She says the strategies reinforce the belief. The first step out is simply to recognise the trance when it is operating. Likely to trip me up: Brach says the feeling of unworthiness seems like the truth about us, not like a belief, which is what makes it a trance. Note: Buddhist teaching from a clinical psychologist and meditation teacher, told through stories from her clients and her own life. It is not research, though it fits studies on shame and self-criticism. (Source: Radical Acceptance, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Jeffers says we freeze at decisions because we use a no-win model: one path is right, one is wrong, and we will torment ourselves either way. Her no-lose model says each path holds opportunities to learn and grow, whatever the result. Before deciding she advises: focus on that model, do your homework, set your priorities, trust your impulses and lighten up. After deciding: throw away your picture of how it should go, accept full responsibility, do not protect the decision, and correct your course, as a pilot does, off track most of the way and still arriving. Likely to trip me up: Jeffers says we demand a guarantee before acting, and there is none. Note: a reframe, not a research finding. Some choices do carry real and lasting costs, and doing the homework still matters. (Source: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Tolle separates clock time from psychological time. Clock time is practical: setting a goal, keeping an appointment, learning from a past mistake. You use it and come back to the present. Psychological time is dwelling: replaying the past for identity and grievance, and projecting into the future for salvation or dread. He says nearly all anxiety lives in an imagined future and nearly all guilt and resentment in the past. His test question is: what problem do you have right now, at this moment? Usually there is a situation to handle or accept, and no problem as such. Likely to trip me up: Tolle says the mind resists the present, since it draws its sense of self from past and future. Note: a spiritual teaching, not research. Present-focused attention is, however, a core part of well-supported mindfulness therapies. (Source: The Power of Now, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Seneca advises setting aside a few days now and then to live on the scantiest and cheapest food and wear rough clothes, while asking yourself: is this the condition that I feared? He says soldiers practise in peacetime so they are ready for war, and we should rehearse hardship while things are going well. His claim is that the mind finds poverty far easier than it imagined, and that a person who knows this can enjoy wealth without anxiety, since it is no longer needed. Likely to trip me up: Seneca warns that it must be a real test, not a game for bored rich people. Note: moral letters written around AD 65. Seneca was one of the richest men in Rome, and critics then and since have held that against his praise of simple living. (Source: Letters from a Stoic, Letter XVIII.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Jeffers sorts fear into three levels. Level one is the surface story: things that happen, such as ageing or losing a job, and things that need action, such as public speaking or ending a relationship. Level two is about inner states: fear of rejection, failure, disapproval, helplessness. Level three, under all of it, is one sentence: 'I can't handle it.' She says that if you knew you could handle anything that came your way, you would have little left to fear, so the real work is building trust in yourself, not controlling the world. Likely to trip me up: Jeffers says we try to feel safe by controlling what happens, which cannot be done. Note: a self-help classic from 1987 by a psychologist, built on her teaching and her own life, not on trials. (Source: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Tolle says surrender is widely misread as giving up. He defines it as yielding to the present moment, not to the life situation. His example: if you are stuck in mud, you do not tell yourself you are fine with being stuck. You accept, without inner resistance or complaint, that right now you are stuck, and then you do all you can to get out. He says action that comes from acceptance is more effective than action that comes from anger or despair. Likely to trip me up: Tolle says the mind equates acceptance with weakness and keeps the fight going. Note: a spiritual teaching. The same distinction between accepting a feeling or fact and approving of it is central to well-researched acceptance-based therapies. (Source: The Power of Now, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors describe a desire circuit driven by dopamine that produces wanting, and say it is separate from the brain systems that produce liking, the actual enjoyment. In addiction the two come apart: the drug boosts wanting more and more while the pleasure shrinks, so people crave what they no longer enjoy. Cues linked with the habit, such as a place, a time or a feeling, set off the wanting by themselves. Likely to trip me up: the authors say the desire circuit makes a promise it has no duty to keep, and the promise always feels true in the moment. Note: the wanting and liking distinction comes from well-regarded research by Kent Berridge and colleagues. Anyone dependent on a substance should get medical help. (Source: The Molecule of More, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Tolle says that if you find your situation intolerable you have three options: remove yourself from it, change it, or accept it completely. Anything else, he says, is madness: staying and resenting pollutes you and the people around you. He treats complaining as a form of non-acceptance that casts you as a victim. If you take one of the three, he says, take it fully, and drop the negativity: speaking up to change something is not complaining. Likely to trip me up: Tolle says the mind prefers a fourth option, to stay and resist, since a grievance gives it something to be. Note: a spiritual teacher's rule of thumb. It is close to the old Serenity Prayer and to the Stoic focus on what is in your power. (Source: The Power of Now, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Jeffers asks readers to draw a grid of nine boxes and label them with the parts of a full life, such as contribution, hobby, leisure, family, time alone, personal growth, work, relationship and friends. She says many people's grid is really one box, usually the relationship or the job, and that this breeds neediness and terror of loss. If that one box empties, nothing is left. With a full grid, a loss hurts and does not destroy. She adds that each box should get your full commitment while you are in it. Likely to trip me up: Jeffers says that when one box is going well, or badly, it tends to swallow all the others. Note: her own exercise. It fits research showing that people with several roles and sources of identity cope better with setbacks. (Source: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Ch. 8.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors explain that dopamine cells fire not for reward itself but for reward that is better than expected, which researchers call reward prediction error. Novelty and surprise produce it. Once something becomes reliable, the signal stops. They apply this to love: the thrilling early phase runs on dopamine and lasts roughly a year or so, and lasting love has to shift to the here-and-now chemicals of closeness and companionship. Couples who expect the thrill to continue take its fading as falling out of love. Likely to trip me up: the authors say dopamine keeps pointing at whatever is new, so the pull towards a fresh start is built in. Note: reward prediction error is solid science from animal and human studies. Mapping it on to romance is the authors' interpretation. (Source: The Molecule of More, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Seneca warns his friend against reading many authors and books of every kind, which he calls a sign of a restless mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. Food does no good if it leaves the body as soon as it is eaten, and a plant that is often moved never grows strong. His advice is to linger among a limited number of master thinkers and digest their work. His own habit: from what he reads each day, he picks out one thought to digest thoroughly. Likely to trip me up: Seneca says variety is pleasant, like tasting many dishes, which is exactly why it spoils the appetite for one. Note: moral letters from a Roman statesman, written around AD 65. Philosophy, not research. Other books in this database argue for reading widely, and both can be true at different times. (Source: Letters from a Stoic, Letter II.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Tolle says the main source of suffering is identifying with the stream of thought, the voice that comments, judges, compares and worries all day. His first instruction is to watch the thinker: listen to that voice as an impartial witness, without judging what it says. He says the moment you notice the voice, you are no longer fully caught in it, and a gap of stillness opens. With practice the gaps grow. Likely to trip me up: Tolle says the mind will turn the exercise into another thing to think about and judge yourself on. Note: this is a spiritual teaching, not an empirical one. Tolle's claims about consciousness and Being cannot be tested. The exercise itself closely resembles mindfulness practices that do have research support. (Source: The Power of Now, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors describe two dopamine pathways. The desire circuit says 'I want that now'. The control circuit, which runs to the front of the brain, handles planning, calculation and persistence towards things that are far off. Both are about the future, and they often pull against each other. The authors say the control circuit is what lets people turn wanting into a plan, and that it can be strengthened by making goals concrete and breaking them into steps. For addiction they point to methods that recruit it, such as therapy that builds coping plans, alongside the support of other people. Likely to trip me up: the authors say raw willpower tires and fails against a strong urge. Note: the book treats willpower as a fuel that runs down, an idea that has largely failed to replicate. The two-pathway picture is a simplification of real anatomy. (Source: The Molecule of More, Ch. 2 and Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brach retells a Buddhist story. After the Buddha's awakening, the demon Mara, who stands for fear, craving and doubt, kept coming back. The Buddha did not drive him off or ignore him. He said 'I see you, Mara', invited him in, and served him tea as an honoured guest. Mara would stay a while and go. Brach says we can treat our own difficult feelings the same way: name them, say yes to their presence, and offer a kind of friendliness. She teaches a simple practice of silently noting what is there: 'fear', 'wanting', 'judging'. Likely to trip me up: Brach says that saying yes does not mean liking the feeling or acting on it, and that people mix these up. Note: a traditional story used as teaching. Naming feelings without fighting them is central to acceptance-based therapies that have research support. (Source: Radical Acceptance, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brach describes the pause as a suspension of activity: you stop moving towards any goal and simply notice what you are feeling. She says we spend our lives leaning forward, reaching for the next thing or running from discomfort, and that the habits we regret happen in that forward lean. Pausing breaks the chain for a moment, and in that moment a choice appears that was not there before. She tells of a test pilot who survived a plane going out of control only when he stopped fighting the controls. Likely to trip me up: Brach says pausing means feeling the very thing we were about to escape, which is why we skip it. Note: a teaching told through stories. A brief pause before acting on an urge is also a standard part of research-backed methods for cravings. (Source: Radical Acceptance, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Jeffers gives five truths. The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow. The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it. The only way to feel better about yourself is to go out and do it. Everyone else feels fear on unfamiliar ground too. And pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying dread that comes from feeling helpless. She says she spent years waiting for the fear to leave before acting, and that confidence comes after the doing, not before. Likely to trip me up: Jeffers says we assume confident people feel no fear, so we read our own fear as a sign we are not ready. Note: her experience and teaching, not trials. The second truth matches the principle behind exposure therapy, which is one of the best-supported treatments for anxiety. (Source: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goleman draws on John Gottman's studies of married couples. A complaint names a specific action and how it made you feel. A criticism uses the action to attack the person's character, and it invites defence or contempt, which Gottman found to be the most corrosive sign of all. Goleman also describes flooding: once the heart rate jumps during an argument, people can no longer hear or think clearly, and they stonewall or lash out. The advice is to take a break of about twenty minutes to calm down, then return. Likely to trip me up: Goleman says that in a flooded state everything the partner says sounds like an attack, so the break has to be agreed in advance. Note: Gottman's observations are widely used. His claims to predict divorce with very high accuracy have been criticised on statistical grounds. (Source: Emotional Intelligence, Ch. 9.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Haidt reviews research on growth after adversity and says the people who benefit are those who make sense of what happened. He describes James Pennebaker's studies, in which people wrote about their most upsetting experience for fifteen minutes a day over several days. Those whose writing moved from raw feeling towards understanding showed better health in the following year. Haidt's instructions: write continuously, do not edit, and by the end try to say why it happened and what you can draw from it. Likely to trip me up: Haidt says venting alone does not help. The benefit comes from building a story that makes sense, which is the hard part. Note: later reviews of expressive writing find real but small effects. The idea that trauma reliably leads to growth is contested, and serious trauma calls for professional help. (Source: The Happiness Hypothesis, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goggins describes running a hundred-mile race with almost no training. When his body was failing, he thought back through his earlier wins, such as losing a great deal of weight and passing brutal training. He names the technique after the cookie jar his mother kept filled when he was a child. His sixth challenge is to write down all your past obstacles overcome and victories, small ones included, and draw on them when you need fuel. Likely to trip me up: Goggins says the list has to be made before the hard moment. In the moment, the mind only offers reasons to stop. Note: a memoir, motivational and not scientific. (Source: Can't Hurt Me, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goggins says the mind has a governor, like the one that limits a car's speed. It tells you to stop long before the body must. His slogan is that when you think you are done, you are only at forty percent. His seventh challenge is modest: when you hit your limit, push five to ten percent further, and let the limit move over time. Likely to trip me up: Goggins himself ran on broken bones and suffered lasting damage, and he has a heart condition that was found late. Pushing through injury or a medical problem can cause real harm. Note: the forty percent figure is a slogan with no measurement behind it. Sports science does support the idea that the brain limits effort ahead of true physical failure. (Source: Can't Hurt Me, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown says perfectionism is not the same as striving to be your best. Healthy striving is self-focused: how can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: what will they think? She calls it a heavy shield that we think will protect us from blame and shame, and says it leads to paralysis. Her remedy is self-compassion, using Kristin Neff's three parts: self-kindness, a sense that failure is part of being human, and mindful balance in place of over-identifying with the feeling. Likely to trip me up: Brown says many of us believe that being hard on ourselves is what keeps us performing. Note: Brown's own work is interview-based. Neff's self-compassion research is separate and has good experimental support. (Source: The Gifts of Imperfection, Guidepost #2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goggins failed twice in public at a pull-up world record before he broke it. After each failure he wrote what the military calls an After Action Report. He listed first everything that went well, then, without sparing himself, what went wrong, including his own preparation and thinking. Then he wrote the fixes and put the next attempt on the calendar. Likely to trip me up: Goggins says the urge after failure is either to make excuses or to collapse. The report has to be honest about both the good and the bad. Note: a memoir. The practice itself is standard in the military, aviation and medicine. (Source: Can't Hurt Me, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Haidt says each of us has an inner lawyer whose job is to find reasons why we are right, and who is never asked to find the truth. We see the world as it is, we think, so anyone who disagrees must be biased. He calls this naive realism. We also tend to believe that people who harm us act from pure malice. His advice: in a conflict, look for one thing you did wrong, however small. When you own it, your anger softens, and the other person usually answers with an admission of their own. Likely to trip me up: Haidt says learning about bias makes us better at spotting it in others and no better at spotting it in ourselves. Note: built on well-replicated research on self-serving bias. (Source: The Happiness Hypothesis, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Haidt gives a formula from positive psychology: happiness equals your biological set point, plus the conditions of your life, plus your voluntary activities. We adapt quickly to most conditions, including more money and bigger houses, so they add little. He lists the few we do not adapt to: noise, long commutes, lack of control, shame, and the quality of our relationships. He adds that spending to be seen, such as on luxury goods, is a race nobody wins, while spending on time and shared activities lasts. Likely to trip me up: Haidt says we are poor at predicting what will make us happy, so we keep buying the wrong things. Note: the formula is a teaching device. The exact share due to each part is disputed among researchers. (Source: The Happiness Hypothesis, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown says fitting in and belonging are not the same thing, and that fitting in gets in the way of belonging. Fitting in is assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging does not ask you to change who you are. It asks you to be who you are. She says our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance. Likely to trip me up: Brown says showing your real self risks rejection, which is exactly why people choose fitting in. Note: Brown's findings are themes drawn from many interviews. This is qualitative research, not experiment. (Source: The Gifts of Imperfection, 'Exploring the Power of Love, Belonging, and Being Enough'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown quotes the writer Lynne Twist: our first thought on waking is 'I didn't get enough sleep', the next is 'I don't have enough time', and we go to bed listing what we did not get done. Brown says scarcity thinking has three parts: shame, comparison and disengagement. She says the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It is simply enough. Likely to trip me up: Brown says scarcity thrives on constant comparison with edited versions of other people's lives and with our own nostalgia. Note: a cultural argument built on her interview research. (Source: Daring Greatly, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goggins compares the mind to hands that toughen with work. His third challenge is to write down what makes you uncomfortable, especially things that are good for you, and do one of them daily. He says doing something hard every day builds what he calls a calloused mind, so that when real difficulty comes it feels familiar. Likely to trip me up: Goggins takes this to extremes, including training through serious injuries. Small, safe doses are the transferable part. Note: a memoir, motivational and not scientific. The general idea that manageable stress builds tolerance has research support, as Ratey describes for exercise. (Source: Can't Hurt Me, Ch. 3 and Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown separates shame from guilt. Guilt says: I did something bad. Shame says: I am bad. She reports research that shame is strongly linked with addiction, depression, aggression and eating disorders, while guilt is linked with the opposite, since guilt pushes us to repair what we did. She describes four parts of shame resilience: recognise shame and what triggers it, check the message against reality, reach out to someone, and speak about it, since shame grows in secrecy. Likely to trip me up: Brown says shame makes us want to hide, which is exactly what feeds it. Note: the shame and guilt distinction is well supported by other researchers. Brown's resilience steps come from her interviews. (Source: Daring Greatly, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goleman reports research that anger builds on itself: each angry thought adds fuel, and a body already stirred up reacts more strongly to the next provocation. Studies found that venting rage, the supposed catharsis, typically pumps up arousal and leaves people angrier. What works is challenging the thoughts that feed the anger early, and cooling off physically somewhere away from the trigger, with a long walk or other exercise, as long as you do not spend it brooding. Likely to trip me up: Goleman says anger is the most seductive of the negative moods, since the self-righteous inner monologue feels good. Note: the finding that venting does not reduce anger has been confirmed by later studies. (Source: Emotional Intelligence, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Haidt pictures the mind as a rider on an elephant. The rider is conscious, reasoning thought. The elephant is everything else: gut feelings, emotions, habits. The rider can see further and plan, and can steer only when the elephant has no strong wish of its own. Haidt says the rider is an adviser, not a king, and is skilled at making up reasons afterwards for what the elephant did. Lasting change comes from retraining the elephant, not from lecturing it. Likely to trip me up: Haidt says we identify with the rider, so we keep expecting a good argument to change our behaviour. Note: the chapter also cites priming experiments that later failed to replicate. The metaphor does not depend on them. (Source: The Happiness Hypothesis, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown takes her title from a 1910 speech by Theodore Roosevelt, who said the credit belongs to the person in the arena, marred by dust and sweat, who at worst fails while daring greatly, and not to the critic. She defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure, and says that waiting until we are perfect and bulletproof before we walk in means wasting our gifts and our time. Likely to trip me up: Brown says perfect and bulletproof are tempting, and do not exist. Note: a framing drawn from a famous speech, supported by her interview research. (Source: Daring Greatly, 'What It Means to Dare Greatly'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goggins describes himself as a failing teenager who wanted to join the Air Force. Each night he faced the bathroom mirror and told himself the truth about his grades, weight and effort. He wrote his goals and the steps to reach them on notes stuck to the mirror, starting with small things such as making his bed, and removed each note when it was done. He calls it the Accountability Mirror. Likely to trip me up: Goggins is harsh with himself on purpose. For many people harsh self-talk slides into shame, which research links with giving up. The facts can be stated without the insults. Note: a memoir by a former Navy SEAL. It is motivational, not scientific. (Source: Can't Hurt Me, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown says she expected to find that joyful people are grateful. She found the reverse: every person she interviewed who described a joyful life actively practised gratitude, with journals, daily rituals or spoken thanks. They spoke of it as a practice, not an attitude. She adds that joy comes in ordinary moments, and that we miss them when we are busy chasing the extraordinary or bracing for loss. Likely to trip me up: Brown says that in good moments many of us rehearse disaster, since joy makes us feel exposed. Note: Brown's finding comes from interviews. Separate experiments on gratitude journals show real but modest gains in wellbeing. (Source: The Gifts of Imperfection, Guidepost #4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown takes apart four myths. First, that vulnerability is weakness: she says it is the clearest measure of courage, and we admire it in others while fearing it in ourselves. Second, 'I don't do vulnerability': life is uncertain, so you do it anyway. Third, that it means telling everyone everything: she says it is sharing with people who have earned the right to hear it. Fourth, that we can go it alone. She describes trust as a jar of marbles, filled one small act at a time. Likely to trip me up: Brown says we want to see others' vulnerability and hide our own. Note: interview-based research. (Source: Daring Greatly, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goleman says most criticism at work is delivered as a personal attack, late, and in anger, and that it leaves people defensive and demoralised. He passes on a psychoanalyst's four rules for what he calls the artful critique. Be specific: pick one incident and say exactly what was done well and what was not. Offer a solution. Be present: give it face to face and in private. Be sensitive to how it lands. He adds advice for the receiver: hear it as information about how to do better, not as an attack. Likely to trip me up: Goleman says managers put feedback off until they boil over, and then it comes out at its worst. Note: practical advice that fits later research on feedback. (Source: Emotional Intelligence, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown says most of us take the edge off hard feelings with something: food, alcohol, work, shopping, screens, staying busy. Her interviews led her to a blunt finding: we cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful ones, we also numb joy. She describes her own decision to stop drinking. The people she calls resilient had the same urges, and they felt their feelings, leaned on others, and asked for help. Likely to trip me up: Brown says numbing is normal and mostly unnoticed, which makes it hard to catch. Note: interview-based research. Anyone dependent on alcohol or drugs should seek medical support, not rely on insight alone. (Source: The Gifts of Imperfection, Guidepost #3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goleman describes moments when a person explodes and afterwards cannot explain why. He calls them emotional hijackings. Drawing on the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, he says a small, fast pathway lets the brain's alarm centre react to a rough match with past danger before the thinking brain has finished its work. The reaction is quick and sloppy, which was useful against predators and is less so in a meeting. The thinking brain can quieten the alarm if given time. Likely to trip me up: Goleman says the hijack is over before you know it has started, so the skill is catching the early bodily signs. Note: this is a 1995 simplification. Later neuroscience finds emotion is spread across many brain networks. The practical advice to pause holds up. (Source: Emotional Intelligence, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown says the people she calls wholehearted make time for play and rest, and that our culture treats exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as a measure of worth. She draws on the play researcher Stuart Brown, who says play is time spent without purpose and that its absence is linked with low mood. She describes her family writing a list of the conditions present when life feels good, such as sleep, exercise and time together, and finding that their goals were crowding those very things out. Likely to trip me up: Brown says rest feels lazy when your worth is tied to output. Note: interview-based research. The costs of lost sleep are well established elsewhere. (Source: The Gifts of Imperfection, Guidepost #7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Brown borrows the warning from the London Underground. She says every family and organisation has aspirational values, the ones we state, and practised values, the ones our behaviour shows. People, children above all, believe the practised ones. Her example is a parent who preaches honesty and then lies on the phone within the child's hearing. She says the gap is where we lose people, and that we cannot give others what we do not have ourselves. Likely to trip me up: Brown says nobody's values line up perfectly, and that the aim is to pay attention to the gap, not to be perfect. Note: interview-based research. (Source: Daring Greatly, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Haidt says the mind reacts to bad things faster and more strongly than to good ones, and that people differ from birth in how sunny or gloomy their automatic reactions are. He says you cannot change this by deciding to. He names three methods that do retrain the elephant: meditation, cognitive therapy, which teaches you to catch and question distorted thoughts, and antidepressant medication. Likely to trip me up: Haidt says all three take weeks of steady use, which the rider's love of quick insight resists. Note: meditation and cognitive therapy have good research support, with moderate effects. How well antidepressants work, and for whom, is debated among researchers, and medication is a decision to make with a doctor. (Source: The Happiness Hypothesis, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Goleman calls self-awareness, recognising a feeling as it happens, the keystone of emotional intelligence. He describes it as a neutral, observing attention: the difference between being swept away by rage and thinking 'this is anger I am feeling'. He reports a psychologist's three styles: the self-aware, who notice moods and recover sooner; the engulfed, who are swamped; and the accepting, who notice and do nothing. He also describes people who lack words for their feelings and so cannot use them to guide decisions. Likely to trip me up: Goleman says feelings often work below awareness and still steer us, so checking in has to be deliberate. Note: later studies support the idea that putting feelings into words reduces their intensity. Goleman's broader claims for emotional intelligence, such as that it matters more than IQ, are disputed. (Source: Emotional Intelligence, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Grant reports experiments by Alison Wood Brooks in which people about to sing, speak or do maths in public were told to say either 'I am calm' or 'I am excited'. The excited group performed better. The explanation is that anxiety is a high-energy state, and it is easier to steer it towards another high-energy state than to shut it down. He also describes defensive pessimism: some anxious people do best by imagining everything that could go wrong and preparing for it. Likely to trip me up: Grant says timing decides the strategy. Once you are committed and about to perform, picturing disaster hurts, which is when the relabelling works best. Note: these are lab studies with short tasks, and the effects were modest. Mel Robbins gives the same advice, resting on the same study, in The 5 Second Rule (Part 4, Ch. 13, End Anxiety). (Source: Originals, Ch. 8.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duckworth offers two equations: talent multiplied by effort is skill, and skill multiplied by effort is achievement. Talent is how fast your skill improves when you work. Without effort, talent is unmet potential, and skill is only what you could have done. She describes how we prefer to call achievers naturals, which she says lets us off the hook. Likely to trip me up: Duckworth says the bias towards talent is often hidden. People say they value hard work and still choose the 'natural' when tested. Note: the equations are her way of summarising, not a measured formula. Independent reviews find that grit overlaps heavily with the long-known trait of conscientiousness, and adds only a little to predicting success. (Source: Grit, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: King says that if you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. He reads seventy or eighty books a year, everywhere, in small sips as well as long sittings. Good books teach style and bad ones teach what not to do. He says that if you do not have time to read, you do not have the time or the tools to write. He writes every day, to a quota, in the same place with the door shut. Likely to trip me up: King says the television, and by extension any screen, is the first thing that has to go. Note: one writer's practice. It fits research on the role of volume in creative output. (Source: On Writing, 'On Writing'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Grant tells of an entrepreneur who pitched investors with a slide listing the reasons not to invest in his company, and got funded. He later sold the company using a list of its problems. Grant calls this the Sarick effect. He gives four reasons it works on a critical audience: it disarms them, it makes you look smart, it makes you more trustworthy, and it leaves them struggling to think of further problems, so the ones named seem minor. Likely to trip me up: Grant says it works when the audience is sceptical and the idea is basically sound. With a supportive audience, or with fatal flaws, it can backfire. Note: built on a few cases plus related studies of persuasion. (Source: Originals, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Manson says happiness comes from solving problems, and that life is an endless series of them, so the aim is to find problems you enjoy having. He tells how he wanted to be a rock star for years, and finally saw that he loved the image of the result and not the daily grind of practice and gigs. His conclusion is that what you are willing to struggle for decides who you become. Likely to trip me up: Manson says we fall in love with the victory and not the process, and mistake wanting the prize for wanting the life. Note: a personal story and an argument, not research. (Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Manson describes what he calls the feedback loop from hell: we feel bad, then feel bad about feeling bad, and social media makes it worse by showing everyone else apparently fine. He borrows what the philosopher Alan Watts called the backwards law: chasing a positive feeling is itself a negative experience, and accepting a negative feeling is itself a positive one. His advice is to stop caring that you feel bad, which cuts the loop. Likely to trip me up: Manson says the culture treats any negative feeling as a problem to be fixed, so accepting one feels like failing. Note: this matches acceptance-based therapies, which have good research support. Manson's own account is informal. (Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duckworth says most of the high achievers she interviewed spent years exploring several interests before one took hold. She describes three stages: discovery, which is playful and often unnoticed at the time; development, through repeated exposure and the support of others; and a lifetime of deepening. She says interests are not found by looking inward. They are triggered by contact with the world. Likely to trip me up: Duckworth says people expect love at first sight and quit too early, and that parents and teachers often push discipline before play. Note: based on interviews and on earlier research into how interests develop. See the note on grit research in the 'Effort Counts Twice' row. (Source: Grit, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Hofstadter and Sander argue that analogy-making is the core of cognition. Each time we recognise a thing, choose a word or face a new situation, the mind retrieves something similar from memory and treats the new case as one of those. They say this happens many times a second and mostly unseen, from calling an object a cup to a physicist's leap between fields. Likely to trip me up: the authors say most analogies are invisible to the person making them, so noticing my own will take practice. Note: this is a book-length theoretical argument built from examples. Many cognitive scientists agree analogy matters a great deal. The claim that it is the core of all thought is the authors' position, not a settled finding. (Source: Surfaces and Essences, Prologue.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Grant reports experiments by a doctoral student in which people who were led to put off a creative task for a while, after learning what it was, produced ideas rated more creative than people who started at once. He explains it with the finding that unfinished tasks stay active in memory. He describes great speeches and paintings that were left open until late. He also reports research that the first company into a market fails more often than those who follow. Likely to trip me up: Grant is clear that this only helps if you have started and you care about the task. Putting off a task you have not begun, or a routine one, just makes you late. Note: the experiments were small, and part of the work was unpublished when the book came out. Chronic procrastination is linked with worse results and more stress. (Source: Originals, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Dweck says mindsets change the meaning of failure. In the fixed mindset, failure moves from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). She describes students with a fixed mindset who, after a poor grade, said they would study less next time or consider cheating, while students with a growth mindset planned to study harder. She also reports that people with a fixed mindset felt worse after setbacks and did less to fix their problems. Likely to trip me up: Dweck says everyone has some fixed mindset, and it is triggered by exactly these moments. Note: independent studies find mindset effects are real but modest. (Source: Mindset, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Dweck describes two fixed-mindset beliefs about love: that if you have to work at it, it was not meant to be, and that partners should know each other's needs without being told. She says problems then get blamed on fixed flaws in the partner, who becomes the enemy. In the growth mindset, people believe that they, their partner and the relationship can all develop, so problems are things to talk about. She applies the same thinking to friendship and shyness. Likely to trip me up: Dweck says the belief in effortless love is romantic and widely shared, so effort feels like a bad sign. Note: this chapter rests mostly on her own lab's studies and on case stories. (Source: Mindset, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Sander's research area is how naive analogies shape learning. The authors show that students, and adults, treat division as sharing, so they struggle to accept that dividing can give a bigger number, and treat the equals sign as 'gives the result'. They say such analogies are never deleted. Even experts fall back on them under pressure. Good teaching works with them and extends them. Likely to trip me up: the authors say a naive analogy feels like understanding, which is why it goes unquestioned. Note: this chapter rests on classroom research in maths education, more than the rest of the book does. (Source: Surfaces and Essences, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Grant draws on the psychologist Dean Simonton, who found that the most celebrated creators simply produced more work than their peers, and that their hit rate was no higher. Famous composers and inventors turned out huge volumes, much of it forgotten. Grant adds that creators are poor judges of their own ideas, that managers are too cautious, and that fellow creators are the best judges. Likely to trip me up: Grant says people fall in love with their first ideas, which tend to be the most conventional ones. Note: this rests on historical records of output, which show a link and not a cause. (Source: Originals, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duckworth pictures goals as a pyramid. At the bottom are concrete tasks, which are means to ends. At the top is one goal that is an end in itself, a compass for the rest. Gritty people keep the top goal for a very long time and are flexible about the lower ones: if one route is blocked, they swap it for another that serves the same end. She also passes on a three-step exercise credited to a famous investor: list twenty-five goals, circle the top five, and avoid the other twenty. Likely to trip me up: Duckworth says many people have a top goal with no lower goals to reach it, which she calls positive fantasising, or many mid-level goals with nothing uniting them. Note: the investor story is widely repeated and its origin is unverified. See also the note on grit research in the 'Effort Counts Twice' row. (Source: Grit, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors trace how a child's word for one person, Mommy, extends to other children's mothers, then to animals, then to abstractions such as a motherland. Each step is an analogy. They say every category works this way, with a core of clear cases and a blurry halo of looser ones that keeps expanding through life. Expertise, in their view, is having many finely tuned categories. Likely to trip me up: the authors note that language hides this. One word makes the category feel like one fixed thing. Note: consistent with well-known research on prototypes and fuzzy categories from the 1970s onward. (Source: Surfaces and Essences, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Manson says people with weak boundaries come in two types: those who take responsibility for other people's problems and feelings, and those who expect others to take responsibility for theirs. He calls them the saver and the victim, and says they are drawn to each other. With healthy boundaries, you support your partner without owning their problem, and you can hear and say no. He adds that commitment, saying no to other options, is what gives depth, and that honest disagreement builds trust. Likely to trip me up: Manson says saving and being saved both feel like love at the start. Note: drawn from his earlier writing on relationships and from common therapy ideas, not from studies of his own. (Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Ch. 8.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors show how unchosen analogies manipulate us. They discuss how political leaders reasoned about a war by analogy with earlier ones, and how each analogy pointed to a different policy. In daily life, a new person reminds us of someone and inherits our feelings about them. They distinguish a surface resemblance from sharing a deep essence, which gives the book its title. Likely to trip me up: the authors say the first analogy arrives by itself and feels like perception, not like a choice. Note: the political example draws on published historical research. The general claim is an argument from cases. (Source: Surfaces and Essences, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Manson says the point is not indifference. It is being comfortable with being different, and caring about something more important than the adversity in the way. He says people who care about everything feel entitled to be comfortable all the time, and that with age we naturally become more selective. His starting image is a poet who wrote for decades in obscurity and had 'Don't try' carved on his gravestone. Likely to trip me up: Manson says we are surrounded by messages that more is always better, which makes us care about too much. Note: a blogger's philosophy that borrows from Stoic and Buddhist ideas. It rests on stories and argument, not on studies. (Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Manson calls it the responsibility/fault fallacy. His example: if a baby were left on your doorstep, it would not be your fault, and it would now be your responsibility. We do not always control what happens to us. We always control how we interpret it and how we respond. He says taking responsibility for our problems is where real learning and improvement begin. Likely to trip me up: Manson says blaming others gives a quick high and a sense of moral rightness, which he thinks online outrage feeds. Note: an old idea from Stoic and existential writers in plain modern words. Some harm does need others to be held to account, and this model does not replace that. (Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duckworth retells the parable of three bricklayers: one is laying bricks, one is building a church, one is building the house of God. She reports research by Amy Wrzesniewski showing that people in the same occupation split roughly evenly between seeing it as a job, a career or a calling, and that those with a calling are more satisfied and miss less work. Wrzesniewski's idea of job crafting is to adjust your tasks, your relationships and your view of the work so that it connects to your values. Duckworth also reports that gritty people are more motivated by purpose, meaning benefit to others. Likely to trip me up: Duckworth says a calling is not found fully formed. It takes years to develop, which is frustrating when the job feels wrong now. Note: the calling research is survey-based. Crafting has limits when a job is truly a bad fit. (Source: Grit, Ch. 8.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: King tells how his uncle carried a huge handmade toolbox all the way round the house to fix one screen, in case he found something else to do once he was there. King says writers should build their own toolbox and the muscle to carry it. On the top shelf he puts vocabulary and grammar, and below them elements of style such as the paragraph. His advice is plain: use the first word that comes to mind if it is right, avoid the passive voice, and cut adverbs. Likely to trip me up: King says people dress up their vocabulary out of shame at plain words, and that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Note: a novelist's craft advice from experience, not research. (Source: On Writing, 'Toolbox'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Grant reports a study that followed thousands of American entrepreneurs for over a decade. Those who kept their day jobs while starting a company were about a third less likely to fail than those who quit. He gives examples of founders and artists who held on to regular jobs for years after their first success. His explanation is that security in one area frees us to be original in another, without pressure to rush out half-done work. Likely to trip me up: Grant says our picture of the entrepreneur is the bold gambler, so caution feels like a lack of commitment. Note: one large observational study plus examples. Cautious founders may differ from those who quit in other ways too. (Source: Originals, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: King describes his years of heavy drinking and drug use, during which he wrote at a massive desk in the middle of his study. His family confronted him, and he got sober. Afterwards he replaced the desk with a smaller one in a corner, and made the rest of the room a place where his children came to watch films and eat pizza. He tells writers to put their desk in the corner and to remember why: life is not a support system for art, it is the other way round. He also rejects the idea that creative work needs drink or drugs. Likely to trip me up: King says he feared he could not write sober, and found the fear was false. Note: one man's story, told in a memoir. (Source: On Writing, 'C.V.'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: King got the rule from his first newspaper editor: write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. The first draft is for working out the story, fast, with no outside opinions to stall it. Then he lets it rest for about six weeks, reads it fresh, and rewrites for readers, with one ideal reader in mind. Only then does he show it to a few trusted people. Likely to trip me up: King says the urge to show people early is a wish for praise, and that praise or doubt at that stage lets the pressure out of the work. Note: one novelist's method. Studios such as Pixar do the reverse and show work daily, which may suit teams better than solo drafts. (Source: On Writing, 'C.V.' and 'On Writing'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duckworth describes the rule her family follows. First, everyone, parents included, must do a hard thing that takes regular deliberate practice. Second, you can quit, but not until the season is over or the tuition runs out, never on a bad day. Third, you pick your own hard thing, since nobody sticks with something they have no interest in. She cites research that young people who stayed with an activity for more than a year did better later in life. Likely to trip me up: Duckworth says the urge to quit peaks right after a bad practice or a harsh comment, which is the one moment the rule forbids it. Note: the follow-through research is correlational. Young people who stick with things may differ in other ways. (Source: Grit, Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: the authors describe how we constantly shift between levels of abstraction, and how the same object belongs to many categories at once. Moving up a level lets you see that two different-looking situations are the same kind of thing. Moving down lets you see the differences that matter. They say experts differ from novices in how fluidly they do this, and that creative leaps often come from recategorising something at a new level. Likely to trip me up: the authors say we tend to lock on to the first category that comes to mind. Note: a theoretical argument with many examples, not an experimental result. (Source: Surfaces and Essences, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: King says he was a putter-in by nature until a rejection slip came back with a handwritten note: not bad, but puffy, and a formula: second draft equals first draft minus ten percent. He says he has followed it ever since. He pairs it with the old advice to cut the parts you love when they do not serve the story. Likely to trip me up: King says the hardest cuts are the lines you are proudest of. Note: a rule of thumb from one writer. (Source: On Writing, 'On Writing'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Catmull says mistakes are an inevitable consequence of doing something new, so a team with no failures is making a worse error: it is being driven by the wish to avoid them. He quotes a director's mottos: fail early and fail fast, and be wrong as fast as you can. He says over-planners take just as long to be wrong, and feel more crushed when it happens. He also says the cost of preventing every error is often far higher than the cost of fixing them. Likely to trip me up: Catmull says people were punished for failing at school, so the fear is deep, and leaders have to show their own mistakes before others feel safe. Note: a manager's account of one studio. Failing fast suits work where a mistake is cheap to undo, and not where one could be dangerous. (Source: Creativity, Inc., Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rubin describes two temperaments. Experimenters are dreamers who enjoy play and find it hard to complete and release work. Finishers move quickly to the end point with little interest in other possibilities. He says each can learn from the other: experimenters can practise finishing one small part to build momentum, and finishers can give more time to the early phases before they commit. Likely to trip me up: Rubin's point implies that my natural mode feels like the right way to work, so the other one will feel wrong at first. Note: a short reflection from a music producer, not a tested typology. (Source: The Creative Act, 'The Experimenter and the Finisher'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon takes the test from a story about a sculptor who sorted people this way: if you feel worn out after being with someone, that person is a vampire, and if you feel full of energy, they are not. Kleon says the test also works for jobs, hobbies and places. In the same chapter he says that if you want good people around you, be a fan first and be worth following, and meet online friends in person. Likely to trip me up: Kleon says vampires cannot be cured, so the only fix is to see less of them, which is awkward with old friends and colleagues. Note: a rule of thumb from an artist's manifesto. Someone can drain you today for reasons that are not about them, such as your own tiredness. (Source: Show Your Work!, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Johnson borrows the term from the biologist Stuart Kauffman. He pictures a house that grows with every door you open: each new room has doors to rooms you could not reach before. He shows that the same inventions often appear in several places at once, since the needed parts have just become available. Ideas that jump too far ahead, such as a nineteenth-century design for a programmable computer, fail for lack of parts. His advice is to collect more spare parts and look for new ways to combine them. Likely to trip me up: Johnson's point is humbling. Some of what I want is not reachable yet, however hard I push. Note: Johnson is a science writer arguing from historical cases. It is pattern-spotting, not experiment. (Source: Where Good Ideas Come From, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Gilbert says telling people to follow their passion can be cruel, since in low times passion is exactly what is missing. Curiosity asks a smaller question: is there anything you are interested in, even a little? She tells how a mild interest in gardening led her to the history of plants, then to botanical explorers, and in the end to a novel. She calls it a scavenger hunt, one clue at a time. Likely to trip me up: Gilbert says curiosity is quiet and easy to dismiss as trivial, and that following it may lead nowhere, which has to be acceptable. Note: one writer's experience. It matches David Epstein's case in Range for sampling widely, and cuts against advice to find a single calling. (Source: Big Magic, Part V: Trust.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Gilbert calls perfectionism a high-end version of fear: fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when it is just terrified. She says it stops people completing work and, worse, stops them beginning it, since they decide in advance it will never be good enough. Her rule, learned from her mother, is that done is better than good. She describes herself as disciplined about finishing, not about being perfect. Likely to trip me up: Gilbert says perfectionism is hard to give up since it feels like a virtue and gets praised as one. Note: a novelist's view. Research does link perfectionism with procrastination and distress, though it separates high standards from harsh self-criticism. (Source: Big Magic, Part IV: Persistence.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Gilbert says you do not need anybody's permission to live a creative life. She argues that making things is an ordinary human activity, not the preserve of a chosen few. She says your work does not have to be original, since most things have been done, only authentic. It does not have to be important or help anyone. She also advises against going into heavy debt for an arts degree in order to feel legitimate. Likely to trip me up: Gilbert says the inner voice asking 'who do you think you are?' never fully goes away, and must be answered each time. Note: encouragement from a successful novelist. It is a stance, not a finding. (Source: Big Magic, Part III: Permission.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Johnson says a good idea is a network, both of cells in the brain and of people. He uses the states of matter: in a solid nothing moves, in a gas things fly apart, and in a liquid new links form and hold. Cities and coffeehouses work this way. He reports a study of research labs which found that most breakthroughs came not alone at the microscope but at the regular lab meeting, as people talked through problems and results. Likely to trip me up: Johnson notes that group brainstorming sessions often disappoint. What helps is steady, informal contact over time, which takes effort to set up. Note: historical cases plus one observational study of labs. (Source: Where Good Ideas Come From, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Catmull, a founder of the animation studio Pixar, tells how an early sequel was failing under one team and was remade in nine months by another. His lesson is that a mediocre team will spoil a good idea, and a great team will fix a mediocre one or replace it with something better. He says ideas come from people, so people matter more, and what counts most is how they work together, not only how talented each one is. Likely to trip me up: Catmull says simple slogans such as 'trust the process' can become a substitute for thinking. The process is only the people. Note: this is a company president's account of his own company, first published in 2014. An expanded edition with later reflections came out in 2023. (Source: Creativity, Inc., Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Johnson says sudden flashes are rare. Most important ideas start as a partial hunch that needs time, and another hunch, to complete it. He shows from Darwin's notebooks that the theory of natural selection took shape over many months, though Darwin later remembered it as a single moment. He describes the old practice of the commonplace book, where readers copied passages and notes, indexed them, and reread them, so that old hunches could meet new ones. Likely to trip me up: Johnson says hunches are fragile and get lost among daily tasks. Writing them down is easy. Going back to read them is the part people skip. Note: historical cases, not experiment. (Source: Where Good Ideas Come From, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rubin pictures a river of material flowing through us. When we share our work, it is replenished. When we hold it in, the river cannot run and new ideas are slow to appear. He says living in scarcity leads to hoarding ideas and to treating each work as the one that defines us for ever, which makes it impossible to finish. In abundance, each work is only a snapshot of who you are at that moment. Likely to trip me up: Rubin says the fear is that the well will run dry. That fear feels most real just after a success. Note: a belief drawn from one producer's career, stated in spiritual terms. It cannot be tested directly. (Source: The Creative Act, 'The Abundant Mindset'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rubin draws a line between doubting the work and doubting yourself. His example of the first is wondering if a song is as good as it could be. His example of the second is believing you cannot write a good song. He says the first kind can lead to better work, and the second leads to hopelessness. He adds that insecurity is common among the great artists he has worked with, and that flaws are often what make a work loved. Likely to trip me up: Rubin says sensitive people, who make good artists, are also the ones most hurt by criticism, so the slide from the work to the self is fast. Note: a producer's reflection. It agrees with research that praise and criticism aimed at the process work better than those aimed at the person. (Source: The Creative Act, 'Self-Doubt'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Gilbert describes a novel she planned, neglected for two years, and lost her feel for. Later she found that a friend, another novelist, was writing a book with a strikingly similar plot, begun around the time Gilbert's had faded. She takes from this that ideas are a kind of living thing that visit people, and move on when ignored. Her practical advice is to say a clear yes or no to an idea and, if yes, to show up for it. Likely to trip me up: Gilbert says inspiration owes us nothing, and that losing an idea to someone else is no reason for bitterness. Note: Gilbert says openly that this is magical thinking and that she believes it. There is no evidence that ideas have a will. There is a well-documented plain version: many inventions and discoveries have been made by several people at once, since the same ingredients were available to all of them. (Source: Big Magic, Part II: Enchantment.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon borrows the word scenius from the musician Brian Eno. Eno's point is that many people we call lone geniuses were part of a whole scene of people who supported each other, looked at each other's work, copied and contributed ideas. Kleon says being valuable in a scene is about what you contribute, not how talented you are. He also praises the amateur, who works for love, is willing to look foolish, and learns in public. Likely to trip me up: Kleon says we stay silent until we feel like experts, but the only way to find your voice is to use it. Note: a short manifesto by a working artist, built on quotes and experience, not research. (Source: Show Your Work!, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says the people who get what they are after are very often the ones who stick around long enough, so do not quit your show. To keep momentum he says not to stop between projects: ask what you missed or could have done better, and jump straight into the next. He balances this with going away so you can come back, citing a designer who closes his studio for a year every seven years. For the rest of us he suggests small daily breaks: the commute, exercise, time in nature. Likely to trip me up: Kleon says you cannot count on success, only leave open the possibility for it. That is thin comfort after a flop. Note: advice from one artist's experience. We do not hear from those who stuck around and still failed. (Source: Show Your Work!, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rubin says success is a private matter. It happens at the moment you judge the work ready and let it go, before anyone else has reacted. Everything after that is outside your control, and popularity is a poor measure of quality. On competition, he says art is not a contest, since each work reflects its maker and cannot be ranked against another. He welcomes rivalry only as inspiration, the way great bands of the 1960s pushed each other to do better work, and suggests competing only with your own past work. Likely to trip me up: Rubin accepts that artists need to earn a living, and the outside scoreboard is loud and always on. Note: a producer's philosophy, not research. (Source: The Creative Act, 'Success' and 'Non-Competition'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Catmull says that early on, all of Pixar's films were bad, and the job was to get them from bad to good. The tool was the Braintrust: a group of experienced storytellers who watch a film in progress every few months and say candidly what is not working. Two features matter. The members are peers who know the craft. And they have no authority: the director does not have to follow any note. He says a good note says what is wrong or unclear, is specific and timely, makes no demands, and is aimed at the problem, not the person. Likely to trip me up: Catmull says candour fades as people seek approval or fear looking foolish, so it has to be protected all the time. Note: one company's practice, described by its president. (Source: Creativity, Inc., Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Johnson takes the word from biology: feathers first evolved for warmth and were later put to use for flight. He tells how the printing press borrowed its key part from the screw press used for making wine. He reports a study of business founders which found that those with wide and varied social circles were about three times more innovative than those who knew only people like themselves. He notes that many great innovators kept several hobbies going at once. Likely to trip me up: Johnson says the ties that help most are the loose ones to people unlike me, and those are the first to go when I am busy. Note: historical cases plus one survey study. (Source: Where Good Ideas Come From, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Johnson says a happy accident only helps if it completes a hunch you already hold, so serendipity needs a prepared mind. He lists ways to invite it: go for a walk, since ideas link up when the mind is off task; read widely; and take what he calls a reading sabbatical, reading many books in a short burst so their ideas can collide while all are fresh. He describes keeping his own notes in a searchable system that throws up forgotten links. Likely to trip me up: Johnson says reading a little each evening spreads ideas too thinly over time, so they never meet. Finding a block of days is hard. Note: a science writer's advice, drawn from cases and his own practice. (Source: Where Good Ideas Come From, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Catmull calls early versions of films ugly babies: awkward, unformed and in need of protection. Against them stands the Hungry Beast, his name for the part of any organisation that needs a steady flow of finished product to survive. The Beast favours what is proven and efficient. He says both are needed, and that the job is to keep a balance in which the new is sheltered long enough to grow. Likely to trip me up: Catmull warns that protection is for the new, not for ever. At some point the idea has to face the Beast and earn its place. Note: a metaphor from one company's management. (Source: Creativity, Inc., Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rubin, a music producer, describes four phases. In the seed phase you gather starting points without judging them, since you cannot tell which will grow. In experimentation you play with the seeds and follow whichever creates the most excitement. Crafting is the labour of building it out. Completion is the final refining, and then letting go so the next work can start. He says you may move back and forth between them. Likely to trip me up: Rubin says deadlines help in the last phases and harm in the first ones, and that many people stall at completion, since releasing the work means it can be judged. Note: reflections from one producer's career, written in a spiritual tone. It is not research. (Source: The Creative Act, 'Seeds', 'Experimentation', 'Crafting' and 'Completion'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says to become a documentarian of what you do, since people want to see how work is made. His routine is one small share a day, run past a 'so what?' test so it helps or entertains someone. He borrows the idea of stock and flow: flow is the daily stream of posts that keeps you present, and stock is the durable work that lasts. He says the trick is to keep up the flow while you build stock in the background, and to turn the best of the flow into stock. Likely to trip me up: Kleon warns against oversharing, and says to post as though everyone who reads it has the power to fire you. He also says to own your own site, so the work does not vanish with a platform. (Source: Show Your Work!, Ch. 2 and Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Gilbert says fear and creativity are like conjoined twins: creativity always steps into uncertain outcomes, and fear hates uncertain outcomes. She says people who try to kill their fear often kill their creativity with it. So before each project she gives fear a welcoming speech. It is allowed in the car and allowed a voice, but it may not touch the maps, choose the music or drive. She also calls fear boring, since it only ever says one word: stop. Likely to trip me up: Gilbert says fear is ancient and useful for real danger, so it will never leave, and it shows up strongest when the work matters most. Note: this is a novelist's personal method. It sits close to acceptance-based therapy, where the aim is to act with the feeling present. (Source: Big Magic, Part I: Courage.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Catmull describes dailies, a morning meeting where animators show incomplete work to the director and their peers. He says people arrive ashamed of showing anything unfinished. Once they see that everyone does it and that anyone may make suggestions, the embarrassment goes, and he says people become more creative when it does. It also saves time, since a wrong direction is caught in a day, not a month. He lists it with other habits, such as postmortems after each film. Likely to trip me up: Catmull says the urge is to show work only when it is impressive, and that this urge has to be unlearned. Note: one studio's practice. It needs a group that is kind about rough work. (Source: Creativity, Inc., Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon tells of a famous barbecue cook who shares his exact methods in public. It costs him nothing, since knowing the technique is not the same as years of practising it, and it makes people feel closer to his work. Kleon says teaching adds value to what you do, and that when you share your knowledge you get an education back from the people who respond. Likely to trip me up: Kleon says the fear is that giving away secrets gives away the business. Note: one artist's view, backed by stories, not data. (Source: Show Your Work!, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: The authors say reading is active to the degree that you ask questions and try to answer them yourself. The four questions are: what is the book about as a whole, what is being said in detail and how, is it true in whole or in part, and what of it. They add that you must make the book your own by marking it, and that the questions work for anything you read. Likely to trip me up: The authors say knowing the questions is not enough. It takes the habit of asking them, and a habit only forms by doing it many times. (Source: How to Read a Book, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Greene says the goal of an apprenticeship is not money or a title. It is the transformation of your mind and character. He names three steps: deep observation, the passive mode, where you learn the rules and the power relationships; skills acquisition, the practice mode, where repetition makes the skill automatic; and experimentation, the active mode, where you take on real work and criticism before you feel ready. He advises choosing the position that offers the most learning over the one that pays most. Likely to trip me up: Greene says impatience and the wish for attention pull people out of this phase early. Note: Greene also repeats the ten-thousand-hour figure for expertise, which researchers consider oversimplified. (Source: Mastery, Part II.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: The authors give rules of intellectual etiquette. Finish understanding before you judge. Do not disagree just to win. Give reasons, so that a disagreement is more than an opinion. They then list the only grounds for disagreement: the author is uninformed, misinformed, illogical, or the analysis is incomplete. If you can show none of these, they say you are obliged to agree, at least in part. Likely to trip me up: The authors say people treat disagreement as a contest and confuse disliking a conclusion with finding a fault in it. (Source: How to Read a Book, Ch. 10 and Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Waitzkin noticed in chess that one error seldom lost the game. A player would make a small mistake, cling emotionally to how good the position used to be, and then make worse moves from that false picture. He tells of a woman who stepped into the street, was nearly hit by a cyclist, stood there shouting at him, and was then struck by a taxi. His advice is to regain presence right after an error, with a breath or a short break. Likely to trip me up: Waitzkin says the pull to stay in the past moment is strong, and pride makes it worse. Note: this is one performer's account. It matches what researchers call the what-the-hell effect, where a single lapse leads to giving up. (Source: The Art of Learning, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Foer describes the experiment. Two people see the same face. One is told the man is a baker, the other that his name is Baker. Days later, the one who learned the job remembers it far better. The job links to a web of things already in memory, such as bread, ovens and a white hat, and the bare name links to nothing. He says the trick of memory is to turn Bakers into bakers. Likely to trip me up: Foer says making the image takes a moment of real attention, and that most forgetting happens because we never paid attention in the first place. Note: Foer is a journalist reporting on memory research and on his own year of training. (Source: Moonwalking with Einstein, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: The authors set out five steps: find the relevant passages, bring the authors to terms by making them use your vocabulary, get the questions clear, define the issues where the authors disagree, and analyse the discussion. They say that at this level the reader's question comes first and the books serve it. Likely to trip me up: The authors warn that you need inspectional reading first to find the right books, and that it is hard to stay neutral and not force the authors to fit your own view. (Source: How to Read a Book, Ch. 20.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Greene tells how Michael Faraday attached himself to the chemist Humphry Davy, learned his methods at close range, and later surpassed him. He says a mentor saves you from wasted effort because their feedback is direct and fitted to you. His advice is to choose a mentor for what you need, offer them something in return, take in their knowledge, and then break away so you do not stay in their shadow. When no mentor is available, he says books and the lives of past masters can serve. Likely to trip me up: Greene says pride stops people from admitting they need a teacher, and that some mentors will try to keep you dependent. Note: this rests on biographies, not on studies of mentoring. (Source: Mastery, Part III.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says nobody is born with a style. We learn by copying, the way we learned to write by copying letters. He advises copying many heroes, not one, and copying the thinking behind the work and not only the surface. Since nobody can copy perfectly, the gap between you and your heroes is where your own voice is found. He says feeling like a fraud is normal, and that you should pretend to be what you want to be until you are. Likely to trip me up: Kleon warns that imitation is a stage. Staying there is flattery. The aim is to move from copying to making something your heroes would not have made. (Source: Steal Like an Artist, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says that in an age of too much information, the people who get ahead are those who work out what to leave out. He says nothing is more paralysing than limitless possibility, and that the way past a creative block is to place constraints on yourself. His examples include a famous children's book written using only fifty different words, after a bet. Likely to trip me up: Kleon says we make excuses out of what we lack: not enough time, money or gear. He argues the lack is the constraint to work with, which is an uncomfortable idea. Note: one artist's manifesto, not research. It agrees with Barry Schwartz's findings on too much choice, which have their own caveats. (Source: Steal Like an Artist, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Greene borrows the term from the poet John Keats, who used it for the capacity to remain in uncertainties and doubts without reaching irritably after fact and reason. Greene says the mind hates not knowing and rushes to judge, which shuts out better ideas. He advises suspending judgement, exposing yourself to views that unsettle you, and treating your current opinions as temporary. Likely to trip me up: Greene says uncertainty feels like weakness, and that our pride pushes us to have an opinion at once. He adds that it is a tool for the creative phase. In the end you still have to decide and ship. (Source: Mastery, Part V.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Greene opens with the young Benjamin Franklin, who was repeatedly let down by people until he trained himself to observe them coolly. Greene calls our default the Naive Perspective: we project our hopes onto others, as children do with parents. He says social intelligence means reading each person closely and also accepting common traits, which he lists as envy, conformism, rigidity, self-obsession, laziness, flightiness and passive aggression. Likely to trip me up: Greene says we like to think we already see people clearly, and that our own emotional reactions are what cloud the view. Note: this is Greene's reading of historical lives. It can tip into cynicism if treated as the whole truth about people. (Source: Mastery, Part IV.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Waitzkin describes helping a man who could focus only when playing catch with his son. They built a routine before that activity: a light snack, a short meditation, stretching, and one song. After a month of repetition, the routine itself produced the state, so he could use it before meetings. Then they shortened it step by step, until a few breaths or the memory of the song was enough. Likely to trip me up: Waitzkin says the routine must be shortened gradually. Cut too fast and the link breaks. It also needs a starting activity that truly absorbs you. Note: one performer's method, not a tested programme. It fits what habit research says about cues. (Source: The Art of Learning, Ch. 17.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Foer stalled in his memory training and turned to the psychologist Anders Ericsson. He explains the three stages of learning a skill. In the last, the autonomous stage, we stop paying attention and stop improving. He calls this the OK plateau. Experts get past it by staying out of autopilot: they set goals just beyond their level, seek immediate feedback and study their failures. Foer sped up a metronome so that he made errors, then worked on those. Likely to trip me up: Foer says the plateau feels like a natural limit, and practising at the edge of failure is unpleasant. Note: years of experience alone do predict little about skill in many fields. How far deliberate practice explains the rest is debated. (Source: Moonwalking with Einstein, Ch. 8.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says all creative work builds on what came before, so the artist is a collector, not a hoarder: you gather only what you really love. He advises climbing your own family tree. Study one thinker you admire, then the three people who shaped them, and keep going up. He separates good theft from bad: good theft honours, studies, takes from many, credits and transforms. Bad theft skims, takes from one, and imitates. Likely to trip me up: Kleon says you are only as good as what you let in, so a feed full of junk gives junk ideas. Note: this is a short manifesto by a working artist, built on quotes and experience, not research. (Source: Steal Like an Artist, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Waitzkin took the phrase from his Tai Chi teacher. As a beginner he let stronger partners throw him around for months without tensing up or fighting back with old habits, so that he could learn the new way. He says those who cannot bear to lose keep using what already works and stop growing. He links this to research on children who see ability as something you build, who take on harder problems and recover better from failure. Likely to trip me up: Waitzkin says it is hardest when you already have a reputation, since every loss is public. Note: one performer's account. The research he mentions is Carol Dweck's, and its effects are smaller in practice than popular accounts claim. (Source: The Art of Learning, Ch. 3 and Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Waitzkin, a former chess champion, describes two kinds of concentration. In the hard zone you are tense and need the world to cooperate, so any disturbance snaps you. In the soft zone you are relaxed and alert, and you flow with whatever happens. He trained it by practising with loud music on and by learning to use a song stuck in his head as a rhythm for his thinking. He uses an old parable: to walk across thorny ground you can pave the whole road or make sandals. Likely to trip me up: Waitzkin says the first instinct is to get angry at the distraction, and the anger does more damage than the noise. Note: this is the account of one elite performer, not a study. (Source: The Art of Learning, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Waitzkin says the top performers he met were not using secret techniques. They had a deeper feel for the basics. In Tai Chi he practised a single straight punch for months, first large and slow, then gradually smaller, until a tiny movement kept the full force. He says learning a small thing deeply teaches you what quality feels like, and you can then carry that feeling to other skills. Likely to trip me up: Waitzkin says people are drawn to collecting more material, since it feels like progress and the basics feel boring. Note: one performer's account, in line with research on deliberate practice. (Source: The Art of Learning, Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Foer describes a researcher who lived alone in a cave for two months with no clock. With nothing to mark the days, his memory and his sense of time collapsed. Foer's memory coach draws the lesson that monotony collapses time and novelty unfolds it, and says he tries to fill his life with memorable events so that it feels longer. Foer adds that this is why childhood summers seem endless and adult years fly. Likely to trip me up: Foer's point cuts against good habits. The same routine that makes me productive also makes my days impossible to tell apart, so I need both. Note: this is an idea from the book's characters, supported by research on how we judge time in memory. It has not been tested as advice. (Source: Moonwalking with Einstein, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: The authors give two steps. Systematic skimming: read the title page and preface, study the table of contents, check the index, read the publisher's summary, look at the chapters that seem central, and dip in here and there, always reading the last few pages. Superficial reading: on a first pass through a difficult book, read it through without stopping to look things up. They say understanding half of it is better than stalling on page ten. Likely to trip me up: The authors say many readers feel that skimming is cheating, so they read slowly from the start and waste time on books that did not deserve it. (Source: How to Read a Book, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Adler and Van Doren describe four levels. Elementary reading asks what the sentence says. Inspectional reading gets the most out of a book in a limited time. Analytical reading is thorough reading for understanding. Syntopical reading compares many books on one subject. They say the levels are cumulative, and that reading for understanding is different from reading for information. Likely to trip me up: The authors say most readers never get past the first level and do not know the others exist, so reading everything the same way feels normal. Note: this is a classic guide by two educators, first published in 1940 and revised in 1972. It rests on teaching experience, not on experiments. (Source: How to Read a Book, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Foer argues that memory and understanding are not rivals. He compares memory to a spider's web that catches new information: the more it catches, the bigger it grows, and the more it can catch. A person who knows a lot about a subject notices more and remembers more of what they read. He visits a teacher who uses memory techniques so that his students have facts to reason with. Likely to trip me up: Foer describes how writing, print and now phones have moved memory outside our heads, so memorising feels pointless. Note: research supports the link between background knowledge and reading comprehension. Foer does not claim memory tricks make anyone wiser. (Source: Moonwalking with Einstein, Ch. 7 and Ch. 9.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says it takes a lot of energy to be creative, so look after yourself, stay out of debt and keep your day job. He says a job gives you money, a connection to the world and a routine, and that a fixed routine matters more than having lots of time. He recommends a wall calendar with a cross for each day's work, so the chain of crosses keeps you going, and a logbook listing what you did each day. Likely to trip me up: Kleon admits the hard part is doing the work when you come home tired, and that the romantic idea of the artist makes a steady life look like selling out. Note: advice from one artist's life. The calendar method is widely credited to a comedian who has said it was not his idea. (Source: Steal Like an Artist, Ch. 9.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Greene opens with Leonardo da Vinci and argues that masters follow an inclination that showed in childhood. He offers strategies: return to your origins, find a niche where your interests meet, avoid the false path chosen to please others, and treat a wrong turn as something you can learn from. Likely to trip me up: Greene says the voice of your own inclination gets drowned out by parents, peers and the need for money, so by adulthood it is hard to hear. Note: Greene builds his case from the lives of famous people, not from research. We do not hear about those who followed a calling and failed. Range, by David Epstein, argues that most people find a fit by trying things, not by looking inward. (Source: Mastery, Part I.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Foer learns the technique that memory champions use, which goes back to ancient Rome. We remember places and striking images well and abstract lists badly. So each item becomes an image that is funny, rude or bizarre, set in a familiar building and visited in order. Using it, Foer went from an ordinary memory to winning the United States memory championship within a year. Likely to trip me up: Foer is frank about the limits. The method is for ordered lists and takes effort to set up. Soon after his win he took the train home from a dinner and only then remembered he had driven there. Note: the method of loci is well supported for memorising lists. It does not improve everyday memory in general. (Source: Moonwalking with Einstein, Ch. 5 and Epilogue.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Kleon says work that comes only from the head is no good, and that we need to feel we are making something with our bodies. He says the computer pushes us to edit before we have anything, since the delete key is always there. He keeps two desks: an analogue one with only paper, pens and cards, where work is born, and a digital one where it is edited and published. Likely to trip me up: Kleon admits the screen is where everything else lives too, so the pull back to it is constant. Note: this is one artist's working method. It is not a research finding. (Source: Steal Like an Artist, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Nestor, a journalist, had his nose plugged for ten days in an experiment at a university clinic. His snoring and blood pressure rose sharply and he felt terrible. They fell back when he returned to nose breathing. He explains that the nose filters and conditions air and releases nitric oxide, which widens blood vessels and helps oxygen uptake. Likely to trip me up: Nestor says many people have blocked or narrow noses and breathe through the mouth without knowing. Note: the experiment involved two people, so it is a story, not a study. The basic physiology of the nose is well accepted. Some of the book's larger claims are disputed, and a constantly blocked nose is a reason to see a doctor. (Source: Breath, Ch. 2 and Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ratey reports studies in which a short bout of exercise, as little as five to ten minutes, reduced cravings in smokers and in people recovering from alcohol dependence, and describes recovery programmes built around running. He explains that addiction hijacks the brain's reward system, and that exercise gives that system a healthy source of dopamine, lowers the stress that triggers relapse, and builds a sense of control. Likely to trip me up: Ratey is clear that exercise is a tool inside a recovery plan, not a cure, and that stress is the most common trigger for relapse. Note: studies of short exercise bouts and cigarette cravings have held up well. Evidence for long-term quit rates is weaker. (Source: Spark, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Nestor reports research in which people reciting a Buddhist mantra or the Catholic rosary were all found to breathe at about the same slow rate, roughly five and a half breaths a minute, and that at this rate heart rate, blood pressure and breathing fell into step. He explains that slow breathing with long exhales shifts the body towards its rest-and-digest state, and fast breathing does the reverse. Likely to trip me up: Nestor says the benefits come from regular practice, and it is easy to forget the tool at the moment it is needed. Note: trials support slow breathing for lowering stress and blood pressure, with modest effects. The book also covers extreme breathing methods, which carry risks and which I am leaving out. (Source: Breath, Ch. 5 and Ch. 8.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Walker explains that REM sleep is the one time the brain is free of noradrenaline, its stress chemical, while emotion and memory areas are active. In his lab, people who slept between two viewings of upsetting images reacted less strongly the second time, and those who stayed awake did not. He also describes a drug that lowers noradrenaline at night and eased nightmares in war veterans. Likely to trip me up: Walker notes that the late-morning hours are richest in REM sleep, so an early alarm cuts exactly this part. Alcohol suppresses it too. Note: this is Walker's own theory. The studies support it, but it is not settled science, and it is no substitute for help with trauma. (Source: Why We Sleep, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ferriss defines the minimum effective dose as the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome, a concept he credits to the exercise pioneer Arthur Jones. His picture is boiling water: it boils at 100 degrees, and more heat does not make it more boiled. Extra effort uses up resources that recovery, or something else, needs. Likely to trip me up: Ferriss says doing more feels virtuous, so people add work that slows their results. Note: the book is built on the author's self-experiments and interviews, not controlled research. I am using its thinking tools and leaving out its diet, supplement and drug advice. (Source: The 4-Hour Body, 'The Minimum Effective Dose'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Walker says evening light, and blue LED light most of all, delays the release of melatonin. He reports a study in which reading on a tablet before bed pushed melatonin back by hours compared with a printed book. He says the body must drop about one degree Celsius to start sleep, so a cool room of roughly 18 degrees helps. He explains that alcohol sedates without giving natural sleep: it breaks sleep into fragments and suppresses REM. Likely to trip me up: Walker says a nightcap feels like it helps, because sedation comes fast and the broken sleep is not remembered. Note: alcohol's effect on sleep is well supported. Later studies suggest the effect of screens on falling asleep is smaller than the book implies. (Source: Why We Sleep, Ch. 13.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Medina reports research by the psychologist Richard Mayer showing that people learn more from words and pictures together than from words alone, and more when the two appear close together in time and space. He says that senses work as a team, so information taken in through several senses is recalled better, and that smell is unusually good at bringing back memories. Likely to trip me up: Medina passes on Mayer's finding that extra material hurts: adding decoration, music or text that is not needed lowers learning. More senses helps only if each one carries the message. Note: this is not the idea of 'learning styles', which has not held up in research. The finding is that everyone learns better with combined channels. (Source: Brain Rules, Sensory Integration chapter.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Medina, a molecular biologist, says he saw his students' attention sink at around ten minutes, so he rebuilt his lectures in ten-minute blocks. Each block covers one core concept, explained in a minute, with the details after. Between blocks he uses a hook that triggers an emotion and is relevant to the material. He explains that the brain attends to emotion and meaning before detail. Likely to trip me up: Medina says a hook that is not relevant feels like a trick and loses the audience. Note: the ten-minute figure comes from his own teaching and a small literature. A later review found little solid evidence for a fixed attention span in lectures, so treat ten minutes as a rule of thumb. (Source: Brain Rules, Attention chapter.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Attia, a physician, contrasts what he calls Medicine 2.0, which treats disease once it appears, with Medicine 3.0, which works on prevention decades earlier. He says heart disease, cancer, dementia and type 2 diabetes develop slowly and are far advanced by the time they are diagnosed. His aim is healthspan, the years lived in good health, not only lifespan. Likely to trip me up: Attia says prevention has no immediate feedback. Nothing hurts, so it is always easy to put off. Note: this is one doctor's framework. Some of his specific recommendations, such as very early and aggressive testing and treatment, are debated among doctors. Medical decisions belong with your own doctor. (Source: Outlive, Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Medina explains that the stress system evolved for threats lasting seconds. When stress lasts months, the stress hormone damages the brain's memory centre, and people do worse at learning, memory and problem solving. He says the worst kind is a severe problem the person feels unable to control, and describes the classic experiments on learned helplessness. He also says stress at home shows up as poor performance at school and work. Likely to trip me up: Medina says people differ a lot in what they find stressful, so comparing my load with someone else's tells me little. (Source: Brain Rules, Stress chapter.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ratey reports a university trial in which people with depression were given exercise, an antidepressant, or both. After sixteen weeks all three groups had improved about equally, and months later the exercise group had relapsed less. For anxiety, he explains that exercise lets people feel a racing heart and fast breathing in a safe setting, so those sensations stop signalling danger. Likely to trip me up: Ratey says low mood removes the drive to start, which is the hardest part. Note: later reviews agree that exercise helps depression, though with smaller effects in the best-run trials. It is not a replacement for medical care, and anyone with serious symptoms should see a doctor. (Source: Spark, Ch. 4 and Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ratey, a psychiatrist who specialises in attention problems, explains that exercise raises dopamine and norepinephrine, the chemicals that attention medicines target. He says the lift in focus lasts roughly an hour or more after a session, and that activities needing coordination, like martial arts or climbing, engage attention more than steady jogging. Likely to trip me up: Ratey says the effect is temporary, so it has to be timed just before the work that needs it, and repeated daily. Note: he presents exercise as a complement to treatment for attention disorders, not a replacement. (Source: Spark, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ferriss gives four principles. Make it conscious: he reports research in which people who photographed their meals ate better, since they had to look before eating. Make it a game: measure something, and get through the first five sessions. He cites a running app whose users were far more likely to keep going once they had logged five runs. Make it competitive: use bets and peers, since fear of loss and of looking bad motivates. Make it small and temporary: he cites the behaviour researcher BJ Fogg on shrinking the first step. Likely to trip me up: Ferriss says people rely on self-discipline and skip these props because they seem childish. Note: these are the author's rules of thumb, drawn from a few small studies and his own trials. (Source: The 4-Hour Body, 'From Photos to Fear'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Attia says most people go straight to tactics, such as which diet or which supplement, without a strategy, so they jump from one to the next. He borrows the order from military thinking and the old saying that tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. His own objective is to delay death and to improve the last decade of life. His strategy is to delay the main chronic diseases, and his tactics fall into exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health and medicines. Likely to trip me up: Attia says tactics are appealing because they are concrete and promise quick results. Strategy is slow, abstract work. (Source: Outlive, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Attia says the real problem is the standard modern diet of too much processed food, and that there are three ways to move away from it: restricting calories, restricting particular foods, or restricting the hours you eat. He says any of them can work and each has a cost: counting is tedious, cutting the wrong food achieves little, and narrow eating windows can lead to too little protein and loss of muscle. Likely to trip me up: Attia says people defend diets like religions. He argues that most nutrition research is too weak to settle the arguments, so the honest test is what works for my body and what I can keep doing. Note: Attia's own views on fasting have changed over time, and his protein targets are higher than standard guidelines. (Source: Outlive, Ch. 14 and Ch. 15.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ferriss tells the story of a programmer who had been overweight for years. While shopping in Tokyo's Harajuku district he heard himself say that it did not matter what he wore, since he would not look good anyway. Shocked at how helpless he sounded, he treated his body like a system to debug, began tracking simple data, and lost over thirty kilograms. Ferriss's point is that people rarely lack information. They lack the moment that turns it into a must. Likely to trip me up: Ferriss notes you cannot schedule an epiphany. What I can do is look honestly at the facts, and the story suggests that even imperfect tracking makes the facts hard to ignore. Note: this is one person's story, not research. (Source: The 4-Hour Body, 'The Harajuku Moment'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Medina reports that people recall only about ten percent of information three days after hearing it, and about sixty-five percent if a picture is added. He says vision takes up about half of the brain's resources, and that reading is slow because the brain treats each letter as a tiny picture. His advice is to use fewer words and more images. Likely to trip me up: Medina says text is the default in schools and offices, so making a picture takes extra effort. Note: the advantage of pictures for memory has been found many times. The exact percentages are his summary and should not be treated as precise. (Source: Brain Rules, Vision chapter.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Attia asks patients to list the ten most important physical tasks they want to manage in their final decade, such as lifting a grandchild or carrying groceries. He then works backwards. Because strength and aerobic fitness decline steadily with age, he says you need to be well above the required level in midlife to still clear it at ninety. Likely to trip me up: Attia says people underestimate how steep the decline is, so a level that feels fine today will not be enough later. Training for an event decades away has no deadline. Note: this is Attia's own framework from his practice, not a tested programme. (Source: Outlive, Ch. 11 and Ch. 12.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Attia calls exercise the most powerful longevity drug. He cites large studies in which people with low aerobic fitness died at several times the rate of the fittest, a gap bigger than the one linked to smoking, and others linking low muscle strength to higher death rates. He says the largest benefit comes from moving out of the least-fit group, so going from zero to a little matters most. Likely to trip me up: Attia says people argue about the perfect programme and never start. Note: these are observational studies. Fit people differ from unfit people in many ways, so the size of the effect is uncertain, though trials also support the benefits of exercise. (Source: Outlive, Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Medina explains that two opposing drives, one keeping us awake and one pushing us to sleep, reach a standoff in the mid-afternoon, which he calls the nap zone. He reports a NASA study in which a nap of about twenty-six minutes improved pilots' performance by over a third. He also describes early types, late types and those in between, and suggests matching work schedules to them. Likely to trip me up: Medina says workplaces are not built for naps or for different body clocks, so I may only be able to move tasks, not rest. Note: a long or late nap can make it harder to sleep at night. (Source: Brain Rules, Sleep chapter.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ratey describes a school district near Chicago where students did vigorous exercise before class. The school reported better reading scores for those students, and the district scored near the top of the world on an international science test. He explains that exercise raises a protein he calls Miracle-Gro for the brain, and reports a study in which people learned vocabulary faster right after hard exercise. Likely to trip me up: Ratey says the brain cannot learn difficult material during very intense exercise, since blood is directed away from the thinking areas. The benefit comes just after. Note: the school story is a case study, not a controlled trial. The general link between fitness and thinking is well supported, but effect sizes in later reviews are modest. (Source: Spark, Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Ratey describes exercise as a mild stress that the body and brain overcompensate for, leaving cells sturdier than before. He calls this stress inoculation. He contrasts it with chronic stress, where the stress hormone stays high and damages the brain's memory centre. Regular exercise, he says, raises the threshold at which the stress response fires. Likely to trip me up: Ratey says the dose matters. Too much, with no recovery, turns the same process harmful, and a stressed person is the least likely to feel like moving. (Source: Spark, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Galef tells how Intel's leaders, stuck in a failing memory chip business, asked what a new chief executive would do if the board replaced them. The answer was obvious: get out of memory chips. They did it themselves. She offers this alongside other thought experiments for spotting bias, such as the double standard test and the status quo bias test. Likely to trip me up: Galef says these tests only work if I actually picture the other situation and do not just say the words. It is easy to run the test and hear the answer I wanted. (Source: The Scout Mindset, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Galef opens with a man stranded alone at sea who survived by staying accurate about his odds while keeping calm. She lists honest ways to cope: make a plan, notice silver linings, focus on a different goal, and remember that things could be worse. Her point is that self-deception is only one of many ways to cope, and the others do not damage your judgement. Likely to trip me up: Galef says the comforting lie comes to mind first and works at once. The honest option takes a moment longer to find. (Source: The Scout Mindset, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Galef says most big changes of mind come from many small anomalies that pile up until the old view cannot hold them. She suggests assuming that behaviour which looks irrational may make sense from a position I have not understood yet. Likely to trip me up: Galef says it is always possible to make an odd fact fit my current theory with a little effort, and each time feels reasonable. Resisting that pull is the skill. (Source: The Scout Mindset, Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rosling shows that on many measures, such as extreme poverty, child deaths and life expectancy, the world has improved greatly, while most people he surveyed believed the opposite. He says three things feed the instinct: we misremember the past as better, reporting selects for bad events, and it feels heartless to say things are improving. His picture is a premature baby in an incubator: bad and better at once. Likely to trip me up: Rosling says good news and gradual change are almost never reported, so my daily feed will always lean dark. Note: some critics say the book plays down problems that are getting worse, such as climate risk. Rosling himself calls it being a 'possibilist', not an optimist. (Source: Factfulness, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rosling says fear of violence, captivity and contamination is hard-wired, and that the media reach for exactly these to get our attention. He points out that the things which frighten us most, like plane crashes, account for a tiny share of deaths. His rule is that risk equals danger multiplied by exposure. Likely to trip me up: Rosling tells how, as a young doctor, fear once made him misread an emergency badly. He says the rule is to make as few decisions as possible while afraid, which is hard because fear demands action now. (Source: Factfulness, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duke describes the group of poker players who made her better by refusing to listen to bad-luck stories and asking about her decisions instead. She says such a group needs an agreement: a focus on accuracy over confirmation, accountability, and openness to a range of ideas. Likely to trip me up: Duke says most social groups run on the opposite rule, comfort and agreement, and that not everyone wants this. She advises asking permission before offering this kind of truth, and not expecting it from everybody. (Source: Thinking in Bets, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Parrish credits the phrase to the mathematician Alfred Korzybski. He says maps are reductions, which is what makes them useful, and gives three cautions: reality is the final judge, consider who drew the map, and remember that maps can shape the territory. Likely to trip me up: Parrish says we forget a map has limits once we are used to it, and keep using it after the ground has changed. Note: this book is an explainer of ideas from many fields by the founder of the Farnam Street site. It is a guide to the models, not their original source. (Source: The Great Mental Models Vol. 1, 'The Map Is Not the Territory'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Parrish traces the idea to Aristotle and offers two tools: Socratic questioning, which tests where a belief comes from and what follows from it, and the Five Whys. He tells the story of the two researchers who showed that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria, against the settled view that stress and acid were to blame. Likely to trip me up: Parrish says reasoning from first principles is slow and tiring, which is why most people reason by analogy and copy what exists. (Source: The Great Mental Models Vol. 1, 'First Principles Thinking'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rosling says the call to act now makes us stressed, blocks careful thought and pushes us to drastic moves. His advice: take a breath, insist on data that is relevant and accurate, be wary of predictions that show only the worst case, and prefer small steps whose results can be checked. Likely to trip me up: Rosling tells how, as a young district doctor facing an outbreak, he backed a hasty roadblock that led to deaths. He says urgency is one of the worst distorters, and that a sincere cause makes it harder to resist. (Source: Factfulness, Ch. 10.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Schwartz and colleagues built a scale to measure maximizing, and found that people who scored high were less happy, less optimistic and more prone to regret and depression than satisficers. In one study of job seekers, maximizers got higher starting salaries and still felt worse about the result. He stresses that satisficers can have high standards. They just stop when the standards are met. Likely to trip me up: Schwartz says maximizers tend to believe that settling for good enough is lazy. It will feel like lowering myself. Note: these are correlations from questionnaires. They do not prove that maximizing causes unhappiness. (Source: The Paradox of Choice, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Parrish says almost everyone can see the first effect of an action, and that the advantage goes to those who think further. He gives the example of feeding antibiotics to livestock to make them grow, which helped breed resistant bacteria. He suggests it is useful both for avoiding problems and for making a case to others. Likely to trip me up: Parrish warns against the other extreme. Following every possible chain of effects leads to paralysis, so the aim is to look at the most likely effects, not all of them. (Source: The Great Mental Models Vol. 1, 'Second-Order Thinking'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duke says every outcome has to be sorted into the skill bucket or the luck bucket, and that self-serving bias does the sorting for us: our wins go to skill and our losses to luck, while other people's wins go to luck and their losses to skill. She says the fix is to treat the sorting as a bet, which makes us ask how sure we really are. Likely to trip me up: Duke says this protects our self-image, which is why it is so sticky. Owning a mistake feels bad now, and the payoff from learning comes later. (Source: Thinking in Bets, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duke borrows the tool from the writer Suzy Welch. She says that in the moment we zoom in on the present and lose all sense of scale, the way a tiny stock move looks huge on a ticker. Asking about the future, or how the past version of me would see this, pulls the longer view back in. Likely to trip me up: Duke calls the emotional state 'tilt', a poker word for when a bad beat wrecks your judgement. She says the first job is just to notice I am on tilt, and that is exactly when I am least likely to notice. (Source: Thinking in Bets, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duke describes backcasting, working backwards from an imagined success, and the premortem, a term from the psychologist Gary Klein, working backwards from an imagined failure. She cites research showing that imagining an outcome as already having happened helps people come up with more reasons for it, and work by Gabriele Oettingen showing that people who picture obstacles do better than those who only picture success. Likely to trip me up: Duke says positive visualisation feels good and negative feels disloyal, so teams and individuals skip the second half. (Source: Thinking in Bets, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Parrish says people make mistakes far more often than they plot, so assuming malice is usually wrong and it makes us the centre of everyone else's story. He links this to the way a vivid, detailed story feels more likely than a plain one, though it is less likely. He tells of the Soviet submarine officer Vasili Arkhipov, who in the Cuban missile crisis refused to assume an attack and blocked the launch of a nuclear torpedo. Likely to trip me up: Parrish notes that malice does exist, so this is a first guess, not a blindfold. The habit of taking offence is quick and feels justified. (Source: The Great Mental Models Vol. 1, 'Hanlon's Razor'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Galef lists signs that a belief has become an identity, such as feeling proud or attacked over it, using 'we', and enjoying it when the other side looks bad. She suggests holding identity lightly and offers the ideological Turing test: can you explain a view so that its holders think you are one of them? Likely to trip me up: Galef does not say to have no identity. She says identities are useful and give belonging, which is exactly why loosening the grip is uncomfortable. (Source: The Scout Mindset, Ch. 14.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Schwartz separates regret after a decision from regret we anticipate before it. He reports research showing that we regret bad outcomes more when we feel responsible, when the result was a near miss, and when it is easy to imagine a better alternative. More options make all three worse. Likely to trip me up: Schwartz says that in the short run people regret actions more than failures to act, which pushes us towards doing nothing. Over the long run it reverses, and what people regret most is what they did not do. (Source: The Paradox of Choice, Ch. 7.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Duke, a former professional poker player, opens with a Super Bowl coach who was called an idiot for a play that failed, though the numbers say it was a reasonable call. Poker players call this mistake resulting. She asks people for their best and worst decisions of the year, and they almost always name their best and worst outcomes. Likely to trip me up: Duke says life is like poker, not chess. Hidden information and luck sit between the decision and the result, and hindsight makes every result look inevitable. Note: Duke studied cognitive psychology, but the book rests on her experience and other people's research, not her own studies. (Source: Thinking in Bets, Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Parrish names it after the medieval thinker William of Ockham. He explains that an explanation with more moving parts has more ways to be wrong, and gives medical diagnosis as an example, where common conditions should be checked before rare ones. Likely to trip me up: Parrish is clear that the razor is a guide, not a law. Some things really are complicated, and the simple answer still has to fit all the facts. Used lazily, it becomes an excuse to stop looking. (Source: The Great Mental Models Vol. 1, 'Occam's Razor'.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rosling gives two tools. Compare: a number on its own means nothing, so set it against another. Divide: turn totals into rates per person. He adds the 80/20 rule, saying that in any list a few items usually account for most of the total, so look at those first. He describes how, as a doctor in Mozambique, the children dying in front of him in hospital were a small fraction of those dying unseen in the district. Likely to trip me up: Rosling says the single vivid case in front of us feels far more important than the larger number we cannot see. (Source: Factfulness, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Schwartz argues that past a certain point, added options bring more effort, more mistakes and higher expectations, so people end up less satisfied even when they choose well. He describes a study in which shoppers shown 24 jams were far less likely to buy than those shown 6. Likely to trip me up: Schwartz says we are taught that more choice is always better, so cutting options feels like a loss of freedom. Note: later attempts to repeat the jam study had mixed results, and a large review found the average effect of choice overload close to zero. It seems to appear under some conditions, such as hard comparisons and unclear preferences, and not others. (Source: The Paradox of Choice, Prologue and Ch. 1.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Schwartz cites research in which people allowed to swap their choice later were less satisfied with it than people whose choice was final. When a decision is final, the mind does the work of making peace with it. When it can be undone, that work never starts. Likely to trip me up: Schwartz says almost everyone prefers reversible decisions when asked, and does not realise that the option itself lowers their satisfaction. (Source: The Paradox of Choice, Ch. 7 and Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Schwartz's first piece of advice is to choose when to choose. He describes second-order decisions: rules, presumptions, standards and routines that settle whole classes of choices in advance, such as always wearing a seat belt or only visiting two shops. He says constraints like these are freeing. Likely to trip me up: Schwartz says each decision looks worth a little care on its own. The cost only shows when I add them all up, so I have to review them as a set. (Source: The Paradox of Choice, Ch. 11.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Galef draws on research into motivated reasoning, including the psychologist Tom Gilovich's description of the two questions we ask depending on what we want to be true. She says scout mindset is the motivation to see things as they are, and that it is a set of habits, not a matter of intelligence. Likely to trip me up: Galef says soldier mindset does not feel like bias from the inside. It feels like being objective. She also explains what it protects: comfort, self-esteem, morale, image and belonging, so giving it up has real costs. (Source: The Scout Mindset, Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Rosling says the blame instinct makes us overrate the role of individuals, and that once we have a culprit we stop thinking. He applies it in reverse too: when things go well, we credit a hero and overlook institutions and technology. His advice is to look for causes, not villains, and for systems, not heroes. Likely to trip me up: Rosling says blaming feels good because it gives a simple story and someone to be angry at. It also fits whatever I already believed about that person or group. (Source: Factfulness, Ch. 9.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Munger lists some twenty-five psychological tendencies and says the most important point is what happens when several act together in the same direction. He calls the result a lollapalooza effect, and uses it to explain things like open-outcry auctions and the success of certain sales systems. He says the same stacking can be used for good. Likely to trip me up: Munger says textbooks study one tendency at a time, so we are trained to look for a single cause. In the moment, each pull on its own feels small. Note: Munger is an investor summarising psychology he read. His list is a practitioner's checklist, not a tested theory. (Source: Poor Charlie's Almanack, Talk Eleven.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Taleb defines a Black Swan by three things: it lies outside normal expectations, it carries extreme impact, and people make up explanations afterwards that make it look predictable. He says a small number of such events explain most of history and most of a life, and that they can be good as well as bad. Likely to trip me up: Taleb says the after-the-fact explanation is the dangerous part, because it makes me believe I will see the next one coming. Note: Taleb is a former trader and essayist. The book is an argument, not a study, and statisticians have criticised parts of it as overstated. (Source: The Black Swan, Prologue.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: The book describes how Munger and Warren Buffett stick to areas they understand, sorting ideas into 'in', 'out' and 'too tough', and how Munger says knowing what you do not know is more useful than being brilliant. Likely to trip me up: Munger warns that people constantly stray outside their circle without noticing, led by envy or excitement about what others are doing. The border is hard to see from the inside. Note: this is an investor's working rule, not a research finding. General education, not personal investment advice. (Source: Poor Charlie's Almanack, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Dobelli cites a study of football penalty kicks. Goalkeepers dive left or right almost every time, though staying in the centre would stop about as many shots, because standing still and watching the ball go past looks worse. He applies the same point to investors, doctors and new managers. Likely to trip me up: Dobelli says society rewards visible action and rarely praises the person who waited. Waiting feels like neglect, even when it is the wiser course. (Source: The Art of Thinking Clearly, Ch. 43.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Thaler and Sunstein explain that money is fungible, but people do not treat it that way. They note this can help: labelled jars and budgets are a self-control tool. They also describe gamblers who treat winnings as 'house money' and take risks with it that they would never take with their wages. Likely to trip me up: They say the labels feel real, so breaking a savings jar to clear an expensive debt feels like a loss even when the sums say it is a gain. Note: this is general education from the book, not personal financial advice. (Source: Nudge, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Taleb says in Mediocristan, things like height, weight or a dentist's income, no single observation changes the total much. In Extremistan, things like wealth, book sales or fame, one observation can dwarf all the rest. He separates scalable work, where income is not tied to hours, from non-scalable work. Likely to trip me up: Taleb warns that scalable careers produce a few giants and many who earn almost nothing, and that the winners are more visible than the odds. He says he would advise a non-scalable profession to most people. (Source: The Black Swan, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Taleb adapts a story from the philosopher Bertrand Russell. A turkey is fed every day, and each feeding strengthens its belief that the farmer cares for it. Its confidence is highest on the day before it is killed. Taleb says the same data that looks like safety can come from a process that ends in disaster. Likely to trip me up: Taleb says no amount of confirming evidence can prove a rule, while one event can break it, and that calm periods make us feel most secure right when we should be careful. (Source: The Black Swan, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Thaler and Sunstein describe self-control as a contest between a Planner and a Doer, and draw on research showing that people in a calm state badly underestimate how they will act when aroused, hungry or tempted. Their examples of Planner strategies include an alarm clock that runs away and savings accounts that lock your money. Likely to trip me up: They say the calm self does not believe how strong the urge will be, so it skips the precaution. I will feel I do not need the rule, right up to the moment I do. (Source: Nudge, Ch. 2.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Thaler and Sunstein list the conditions where people most need help: benefits now and costs later, or the reverse; decisions that are difficult; decisions made rarely, like choosing a home or a pension; poor feedback; and cases where you cannot picture what you will like. Likely to trip me up: They point out that the big choices of life are exactly the ones we make too rarely to get good at, and we bring to them the confidence we earned on small daily ones. (Source: Nudge, Ch. 4.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Taleb calls this negative empiricism. Seeing a thousand white swans does not prove that all swans are white, but one black swan disproves it. He describes experiments in which people tested a rule only with examples that fitted their guess, and so never found out they were wrong. Likely to trip me up: Taleb says the habit of confirming is built in, and that even people who know about it keep doing it. Searching against myself feels like sabotage. (Source: The Black Swan, Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Munger told business students that you cannot know anything by remembering isolated facts. You need models from all the big disciplines, arranged on a latticework in your head, and you need to use them routinely. He guesses that eighty or ninety important models carry most of the load. Likely to trip me up: Munger warns that a person with only a few models will bend reality to fit them. He also says the models have to be used constantly, or they fade. Collecting is not the same as using. Note: these are talks by an investor, based on his experience and reading, not research findings. (Source: Poor Charlie's Almanack, Talk Two.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Cialdini starts with Stanley Milgram's experiments, in which ordinary people gave what they believed were painful shocks because a researcher in a lab coat told them to. He shows that titles, clothes and trappings alone can trigger the response. His defence is two questions: is this authority truly an expert, and how truthful can I expect them to be here? Likely to trip me up: Cialdini says deferring to authority usually serves us well, which is why we do it without thinking. The symbols are easy to fake. Note: Milgram's studies are real and have been partly repeated, but historians dispute some of his methods and how the results were reported. (Source: Influence, Ch. 6.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Thaler and Sunstein open with a school canteen where simply changing the order of the food changes what children eat. They say anyone who arranges options is a choice architect, and that defaults are the strongest tool because most people stay with what is pre-selected. Likely to trip me up: They say people assume their choices are their own and underestimate how much the setup steers them. Note: later reviews suggest that average nudge effects are smaller than first reported once unpublished studies are counted. Defaults remain the best supported. (Source: Nudge, Introduction and Ch. 5.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Dobelli retells a story he takes from Charlie Munger. The physicist Max Planck gave the same lecture so often that his chauffeur learned it by heart and delivered it one evening. When a hard question came, the chauffeur said it was so simple he would let his driver answer. Dobelli says real experts know the limits of what they know and say 'I do not know' easily. Likely to trip me up: Dobelli says chauffeurs are often better presenters than the real experts, which is why they are hard to spot, including in the mirror. Note: the Planck story is a parable, not a documented event. (Source: The Art of Thinking Clearly, Ch. 16.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Taleb describes the writer Umberto Eco's personal library of some thirty thousand books. Visitors ask how many he has read. Taleb says the point of such a library is research, not display: read books are far less valuable than unread ones, and the unread shelf should grow as you learn more. He calls it an antilibrary. Likely to trip me up: Taleb says we treat knowledge as a possession to show off and protect, so we count what we know and ignore what we do not. (Source: The Black Swan, opening of Part One.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Cialdini reports that commitments bind most when they are active, public, effortful and freely chosen. He describes homeowners who agreed to a tiny sign in a window, and two weeks later were far more willing to put a huge billboard on their lawn. A small first step had changed how they saw themselves. Likely to trip me up: Cialdini warns that the same drive keeps people defending a bad decision, and that salespeople use a small yes to get a big one. He says to notice the feeling in the stomach when I am being pushed to stay consistent with something I no longer want. (Source: Influence, Ch. 3.)

Not tried yet. Likely to work: Cialdini says we view a behaviour as correct to the degree we see others doing it, especially under uncertainty and especially when the others are similar to us. He describes canned laughter, tip jars seeded with notes, and bystanders who fail to help because nobody else is moving. Likely to trip me up: Cialdini says the evidence can be faked, as with staged queues and planted reviews, and that a whole crowd can be wrong when everyone is looking at everyone else. (Source: Influence, Ch. 4.)