David Eagleman is a very smart person with an infectious enthusiasm for how the brain works. He does an excellent job describing how much of what happens in our brain is typically beyond our conscious awareness, like changing lanes on the highway, for example. In Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Eagleman spends a significant portion read more…
Why do we need science? Because even smart, skeptical people like me and you can be fooled pretty easily by circumstances. My health is generally great, but I’ve had issues with my skin (eczema) most of my life, and more recently was having some “gut troubles” that I’ll certainly spare you the details about! I read more…
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull is literally and figuratively an exceptional book. I made a rare exception to my steady diet of books about science to read Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Normally I prefer science to people’s opinions based on experience (including my own), but I made an read more…
Martin Seligman helped launch positive psychology. In Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, he redefines it. The book is important, and strongly recommended for anyone interested in deeply understanding positive psychology. That said, it is not a self-help book, and may not be terribly useful to the average person who wants to be flourishing more in life! read more…
Based on years of groundbreaking research, The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want is a comprehensive guide to understanding the fundamentals of happiness. It is data based, thorough, and practical — the best of the bunch on happiness. I truly love this book because it was my introduction to the science read more…
Enter Will Lewis, the Lead Community Organizer for the Portland Indie Game Squad (PIGSquad) and a co-director in Pixel Arts Game Education, reaching and teaching to so many game-interested minds in the Portland area. I’ve been working with Scott on his game-in-progress, codename: “Choose Happiness,” for the past few months, providing coaching and feedback on read more…
In the positive psychology world, Flow is a classic book, and for good reason. It was published in 1990 by one of the founding fathers of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, after he had already led decades of research on “optimal experience”. Csikszentmihalyi (he coaches us to say “chick-sent-me-high” to get close to the correct pronunciation) and read more…
Writing is like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.–E. L. Doctorow It turns out that writing a game is also like driving at night (E. L. Doctorow’s analogy I like so much). You don’t know how it’s going to turn read more…
Nudge is a book for people who want to help –but not force– others to make better decisions. I first learned of this book when Daniel Kahneman raved about it in Thinking Fast and Slow. I was looking forward to Nudge and was not disappointed. I recommend it to anyone who might be presenting choices to others, and therefore affecting read more…
A recent study showed that simply paying attention to what’s happening in your brain can change it. Research has found changes in learning and memory processes as well in emotional regulation in as little as 8 weeks. How can you practice focusing your attention to create changes in your own brain? While science has found that read more…