Thinking Better: The Art Of The Shortcut [2023]

Thinking Better is a celebration of the art of the short cut - and an encouragement to all of us, in our lives and maybe particularly in our business lives, to realise that thinking better is often more successful than working faster. Mathematics is full of shortcuts inspired by better ways of thinking. It is these that facilitate so much of human progress, whether in constructing the first cities round the Euphrates 5000 years ago, using calculus to solve engineering problems in the Renaissance, or today's algorithms that shortcut ways of finding a new life partner. It was the lure of the shortcut that first drew (Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science) Marcus du Sautoy to become a mathematician. And now he has interrogated his passion for and knowledge of shortcuts to write a dazzling guide to over 2000 years of clever thinking. We may not be able to rely on computers to solve all of our problems - whether personal, or business, or even on a planetary level - but Thinking Better explores how together we just might be able build a successful future together. In search of other shortcuts, Marcus delves into many other fields; the worlds of start-ups, the arts or economics and talks to many, including the nature/landscape writer Robert McFarlane, the expert on memory, cellist Naomi Clein and the psychologist Suzie Orbach. There are puzzles and conundrums throughout the book that illustrate the power of the shortcut to find solution. Marcus distils many clever strategies for attacking the complex problems we deal with every day. Laziness doesn't mean that you do nothing; often it means you prefer to play rather than work. But play is frequently the place to foster creativity and new ideas rather than the dull mechanistic world of work - it's one of the reasons that the offices of start-ups are often filled will pool tables and board games as much as desks and computers. This is your shortcut to the art of the shortcut. It will provide you with the algorithm to think smarter and free up your time for new thoughts and ways of thinking.