Reviews and revelations

I finished Mastermind by Maria Konnikova on the flight to Houston, so that left me without books or material to listen to until I landed.  I’ve been in Clearwater since Tuesday (it’s now Thursday) and I’ve been reading the next book on my list.  This one is Total Memory Workout by Cynthia R Green, Ph.D.

I’m going to throw this book in somewhere over by Mega Memory in that it deals in a lot of platitudes and “you can do this” mentality.  It’s not a bad book in and of itself, but so far it’s a pretty generic book.  I guess simplicity is the only real trouble.

Flying home I am listening to an audio book by Niall Ferguson called The Ascent of Money.  It is quite an interesting look at the history of money, and shows quite well how the growth of money and it’s expansion around the world has evolved and changed.  Quite a good book, if I don’t mind saying.  It’s interesting to find that the bond market was created at a side step of the Christian idea that usury is illegal. 

There’s all sorts of interesting things in the book, and I would recommend it highly. 

I’ve been thinking about Mastermind again.  The author talks about the concept of distance, in which a person separates or distracts themselves from the problem at hand through various methods.  The goal of distance is to mentally step back and let the brain work on a problem without being consciously aware of that work.  The goal is to let the brain process everything it needs to, and come up with an answer that wouldn’t normally be possible. 

Now, I also read an article on Forbes, and another from richhabits.net on exercise and the rich.  It seems to me that the idea is to create a distance to any problem you may be facing through exercise.  Regular exercise provides that distance and separation from a problem so you can come back to the problem later with better insights and ideas.  Perhaps the rich have learned the idea of distance without even being aware of it.