[book-review] Pragmatic Thinking and learning

March 25, 2009 – 1:21 am by Stefano MAESTRI

Some weeks ago I’ve been at my usual book store looking for some new book to read. I couldn’t resist when I see this catchy title: “Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. Refactor your wetware”…I had to buy it!

In fact the book have been even better than my expectations, giving me a lot of hint and idea around the day by day improvement and refactor of my brain.

As usual I wouldn’t bother you making just another complete book review (BTW you can find a great one here), but I would prefer to spot just 5 point that totally catch my attention and I’m applying (every day a bit more) in my work and life, hoping to add something to the discussion and stimulate your curiosity for the book:

A greater awareness of R-mode to L-mode flow. Ok it’s not the first time I’ve heard about right vs left brain. In a nutshell (please keep in mind it is a terrible reduction to keep the post brief!!) R-mode is responsible of intuition and creativity, L-mode of verbal and logic. But Hunt’s explanation and hint to favour R-mode to L-mode flow are really great. There are some of his hint I’ve been already doing because they are natural for me (i.e. large use of metaphor and humor during explanatio ; step away from my keyboard when thinking to hard problem or pattern matching; describe problems to someone to get the solution). But now I have a more precise awareness that I’m working with these habit on R-mode to L-mode flow, and it make easier to understand what is happening into my brain and eventually try to drive this process.
Mind map. I already know them. Perhaps because I’m italian: it’s quite impressive how much infos about you can find in italian language about on internet, much more than in english (if you undertsand italian just try this wikipedia page and follow external link). What Hunt’s book have added is the fantastic idea that simply make decoration on them expose in some way your R-mode thought. I’ve tried that and it’s quite impressive which results I’m getting.
personal wiki to keep track and organize idea. Of course I already known wiki, but I’m trying to use it extensively to write down idea and knowledge of various kind. One more time I’m getting quite impressive results, getting much more ideas than ever and having a single place to correlate and link them. BTW I’m using zim desktop wiki…really a cool software for this purpose
meditation to increase focus and attention. Well I’ve been already curious about. It just give the hint to try vipassana meditation. I like it, try to leave your prejudice (it’s nothing about religion!) and give it a try the results is tangible.
keep the focus, avoid distraction in your environment. Hunt give some hints on how to avoid distraction starting from desktop workspace organization, email frequency and so on. The reason to avoid distraction is that our brain would spend a lot of energy and time (about 20 mins!) to change context and get back i.e to move away from IDE to answer an email and then switch back to programming activities. At a first look it seems impossible to limit the frequency of email check or just use a script to put a todo in your todo list without review the whole list before, but if you try that you will notice productivity will definitively increase.

They aren’t the only good points in the book, and I’m applying more hints, but for sure these 5 are the most effective for me. Moreover the second chapter of the book (you can read it here) is influencing a lot how I’m managing my team and considering expertise of people working with me and expertise of myself too.

The book of course contain much more than these, perhaps something that work better for you (no one of us have the same brain…luckily). Take a look to the linked book review, or much better leave your chair right now for few minutes, walk to your book store and pick up the book. Walking will re-activate your Rigth Brain, and the book will do much more for it