- \n
- Fitness<\/a><\/li>\n
- Productivity<\/a><\/li>\n
- Money<\/a><\/li>\n
- Food<\/a><\/li>\n
- Reading<\/a><\/li>\n
- Outreach<\/a><\/li>\n
- Sleep<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
1-Minute Summary of What I Learned<\/h2>\n
Our quality of life is largely a function of the quality of our thinking, both in the long-term (good thinking means good decisions and better coping) and in the short-term (you are what you pay attention to). This makes reflection one of our most important foundations.<\/p>\n
But changing habits of thought is hard. Imploring yourself to \u201ctry not to think of a white elephant!\u201d leads immediately to picturing an albino pachyderm. Telling yourself to think and feel a certain way often backfires, and we get stuck in cycles of depression, anxiety, anger or subclinical (but still significant) patterns of maladaptive thinking.<\/p>\n
Despite these difficulties, it is possible to think better. By now, we have good evidence for two different avenues of changing our thinking:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Cognitive therapy<\/strong> – Which works by teaching us to try to catch our thoughts and, instead of contradicting them, open them up to doubt and self-experimentation.<\/li>\n
- Mindfulness<\/strong> – Instead of doubting or experimenting, mindfulness teaches us not to get wrapped up in thoughts and feelings at all, instead observing them as sensations detached from specific judgements and reactions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Writing things down, although not a panacea, is one way to create a space for improving how we think.<\/p>\n
The Eight Books I Read on Reflection<\/h2>\n
1. Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/a> by Daniel Kahneman<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/61fdrEuPJwL._SL1500_-684x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nKahneman considers two different systems that rule our lives:<\/p>\n
- \n
- System One<\/strong> is fast, effortless and intuitive. It\u2019s good at pattern-matching and stereotyping, but also likes to swap hard questions, such as \u201cHow happy am I in life?\u201d, with easier ones, like \u201cHow do I feel right now?\u201d<\/li>\n
- System Two<\/strong> is effortful and calculating. It allows us to apply abstract rules and integrate information. System One is our default\u2014we only switch to System Two when intuition conspicuously fails.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This was my second read of this book. I first read Thinking<\/em> when it came out. Reading it for a second time was enhanced considerably by some of my adjacent reading in cognitive psychology, especially Philip Johnson-Laird<\/a>\u2019s work on mental models<\/a>, ACT-R<\/a> and other developments in cognitive psychology.<\/p>\n
In this book, Kahneman illustrates the mistakes in our reasoning, but his greatest contribution here is sussing out what those mistakes tell us about how our mind actually works. Just as visual illusions teach us more about how vision works than when we see things \u201ccorrectly,\u201d cognitive illusions teach us more about our mental machinery than when people typically get the right answer.<\/p>\n
2. The Scout Mindset<\/a> by Julia Galef<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/715J6S2zY1L._SL1500_-679x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nGalef compares two styles of thinking:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Soldiers, who try to defend and win arguments.<\/strong><\/li>\n
- Scouts, who try to understand the objective terrain.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Most of us default to being soldiers\u2014trying to prove why we\u2019re right and they\u2019re wrong\u2014rather than scouts who simply want to survey the terrain.<\/p>\n
I enjoyed Galef\u2019s book, and she does a good job of handling basic objections to the ideal of being more rational, such as the spurious belief that self-deception is necessary for politics, success or happiness.\u2028\u2028 Still, I couldn\u2019t help notice the meta self-contradiction of a soldierly book carefully defending a scout mindset against attacks from those predisposed to various forms of self-deception.<\/p>\n
3. Altered Traits<\/a> by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/71KswlYpyAL._SL1500_-683x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nDoes long-term meditation practice have an enduring impact on how your mind works?<\/p>\n
This is the question Goleman and Davidson hope to answer in the affirmative, while trying to be mindful of the biases and poor study designs that impact a lot of ardent mindfulness research.<\/p>\n
In the end, they find that it does, with some of the most compelling evidence coming from brain scans of expert meditators. Enlightenment doesn\u2019t come cheap, however, with far more than 10,000 hours of meditation needed to see the most dramatic effects.<\/p>\n
I doubt this book would do much to persuade mindfulness fans or skeptics either way, but I did find it to be a useful overview of what research has been conducted (albeit, presented by two advocates of greater mindfulness). My own experience with meditation is that mindfulness is valuable, but it is far from clear that the benefits of daily meditation reach the evidence bar to suggest it as a universal prescription.<\/p>\n
4. The Artist\u2019s Way<\/a> by Julia Cameron<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/81Ej0QqRpcL._SL1500_-839x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nUnleash your God-given creativity by allowing divine energy to flow through you and unlock a creative life.<\/p>\n
Normally, books with this kind of framing put me off. But I found myself enjoying this classic in spite of the woo.<\/p>\n
Cameron\u2019s advice is essentially about how you can overcome your own fears and internal blocks by being more spontaneous and less inhibited. In many ways, it\u2019s the opposite mindset of Galef\u2019s\u2014allowing for more System One thinking with less System Two supervision and monitoring. However, for domains of creativity\u2014or any domain that relies more on fluency than control\u2014this is probably good advice.<\/p>\n
\u2028I particularly enjoyed her advice of free, spontaneous writing and an \u201cartist\u2019s date\u201d where you go by yourself on a small outing for inspiration.<\/p>\n
5. The New Diary<\/a> by Tristine Rainer<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/81w-JLjGqL._SL1500_-683x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nI\u2019ve always preferred the term \u201cjournal\u201d to \u201cdiary,\u201d possibly because of the latter\u2019s feminine connotations, but also because I associate \u201cdiaries\u201d with my grandmother\u2019s long-standing practice of dutifully recording the day\u2019s mundane events. Keeping a journal, for me, has never been about documenting but about getting my thinking out to solve problems.<\/p>\n
I found Rainer\u2019s book to be very much in the spirit of my original journaling efforts, although she opened me up to many more functions that keeping a journal can provide, ranging from emotional catharsis to role-playing, creative free-association, and exploration of thoughts and drives that may not be acceptable to share publicly.<\/p>\n
6. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy<\/a> by Jason M. Satterfield<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/51UiDusGGmL._SL300_.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nLast year, I did a deep dive into CBT which I shared in this article<\/a>. Rather than re-read Judith Beck\u2019s book<\/a>, which I enjoyed, I chose to listen to this course by Jason Satterfield instead.<\/p>\n
While the material and concepts were quite familiar, I found the included snippets of therapy sessions to be helpful for contextualizing what CBT actually looks like in practice, much more so than the transcripts I\u2019ve seen elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u2028Given the impressive evidence base supporting CBT, I think it\u2019s a shame that the basic theory and methodology aren\u2019t more widely taught and understood.<\/p>\n
7. What You Can Change and What You Can\u2019t<\/a> by Martin Seligman<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/71eRWncEiVL._SL1500_-664x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nI remember reading this book in paperback decades ago, but I decided to listen to the abridged audiobook version for a refresher. Seligman covers a number of well-studied areas, ranking them in terms of their ease of modifiability.<\/p>\n
Mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are largely changeable. Sexual performance is changeable, but sexual and gender identity is much more rigid. Diets don\u2019t work, and hence sustained weight-loss is largely a pipe dream.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
8. Meditations<\/a> by Marcus Aurelius<\/h3>\n
- Scouts, who try to understand the objective terrain.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
- System Two<\/strong> is effortful and calculating. It allows us to apply abstract rules and integrate information. System One is our default\u2014we only switch to System Two when intuition conspicuously fails.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Mindfulness<\/strong> – Instead of doubting or experimenting, mindfulness teaches us not to get wrapped up in thoughts and feelings at all, instead observing them as sensations detached from specific judgements and reactions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Productivity<\/a><\/li>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/81DFDGzHZqL._SL1500_-667x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n