Article archive / December 1, 2014
Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 16. Source pages: 11.
Everyone talks about the much clichéd “thinking outside the box”. The last thing needed is another popular book for this gullible market. Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain seemed like it is titled to fill just this niche. However, this third volume from these wildly lauded and internationally acclaimed bestselling authors is genuinely helpful in encouraging readers to radically reconceptualize routine problems.
The strategy is simple. Look at problems differently and you may find solutions. The steps, if they can be reduced to simple formulas, are not at all hard to implement. Free yourself from the rigidities of expectations. Let your attention occasionally wander. Be open to novel, often very novel solutions. Look for solutions when you are not expecting them. Keep trying. Don't ever discount insight.
While these findings are nothing new, their emphasis on nonlinear thinking is something we need to hear about- constantly.
This is the third in a series from these authors. Steven Levitt, is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Stephen Dubner is a multi talented author, who makes complex ideas sound simple and almost whimsical. Their chapters resonate together and across each others’ mutual strengths, the way the best Lennon and McCartney songs did back in their most productive period.
To me, the real question is why these authors’ message, which is about psychology, is coming from an economist and his associate. Why not from one of us? This seems to be another example of how psychologists have typically failed to realize that we have something unique to contribute. For whatever reason, it seems if it is “psychological,” we often feel it is mired in the murky areas of untrustworthy. It is not applicable outside the clinic, and barely there, either.
Maybe it's time our profession starts thinking like a freak.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.