Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 159 ratings

Price: 13.12

Last update: 01-05-2025


About this item

"Every day of our lives, we make judgments—and we don’t always do a very good job of it. Thinking 101 is an invaluable resource to anyone who wants to think better. In remarkably clear language, and with engaging and often funny examples, Woo-kyoung Ahn uses cutting-edge research to explain the mistakes we often make—and how to avoid them.”—Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and The Four Tendencies

"Thinking 101 is a must-read—a smart and compellingly readable guide to cutting-edge research into how people think. Building from her popular Yale course, Professor Woo-kyoung Ahn shows how a better understanding of how our minds work can help us become smarter and wiser—and even kinder."—Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto, Brooks and Suzanne Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, and the author of The Sweet Spot

"With an engaging and fresh narration, Lessa presents each fascinating chapter in a fun and easy way that helps listeners understand how to think more clearly and constructively."—AudioFile

Psychologist Woo-kyoung Ahn devised a course at Yale called “Thinking” to help students examine the biases that cause so many problems in their daily lives. It quickly became one of the university’s most popular courses. Now, for the first time, Ahn presents key insights from her years of teaching and research in a book for everyone.

She shows how “thinking problems” stand behind a wide range of challenges, from common, self-inflicted daily aggravations to our most pressing societal issues and inequities. Throughout, Ahn draws on decades of research from other cognitive psychologists, as well as from her own groundbreaking studies. And she presents it all in a compellingly accessible style that uses fun examples from pop culture, anecdotes from her own life, and illuminating stories from history and the headlines.

Thinking 101 is an audiobook that goes far beyond other resources on thinking, showing how we can improve not just our own daily lives through better awareness of our biases but also the lives of everyone around us. It is, quite simply, required listening for everyone who wants to think—and live—better.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.


Top reviews from the United States

  • R. Sanders
    5.0 out of 5 stars I wish I had taken this class
    Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2022
    This book is a distillation of a class Professor Ahn teaches to undergraduates at Yale University. It is well-written, readable, and a joy to experience. I think the concepts in this book apply to us all, regardless of age.
  • Audrey Kast
    4.0 out of 5 stars Informative, with a liberal bias
    Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2023
    Informative, easy to read, very good suggestions, with a liberal bias. Narrator was overly expressive. Good for anyone interested in learning how to correct distortions in processing information.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Yep. Get it
    Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2022
    Heard about this book on Dax podcast- great read
  • Philip Vassallo
    5.0 out of 5 stars Thinking About It
    Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2023
    The mantra over the past decade for most of us sounds something like: "I can't believe he just did that ... Did she really just say that? ... What were the thinking when they ...?" The shock value never seems to subside when we hear the words said or see the actions taken by politicians, pundits, other so-called celebrities, and those closer to us: our teachers, managers, coworkers, teammates, friends, and family members. In her first book, Thinking 101, Yale professor Woo-kyoung Ahn dissects not only the flawed thinking of such pronouncements and positions but the reasons behind them.

    Ahn observes with detailed personal, professional, and historical examples that faulty causal attribution often leads to rash judgments. She asserts that we can avoid irrational judgments by adhering to three concepts: the law of large numbers ("in most cases"), regression toward the mean ("forget the outliers"), and Baye's theorem ("experience tells me"). She deliberates on each of these principles in depth to underscore their usefulness in critical thinking.

    Ahn devotes a good part of the book to confirmation bias, a reflexive tendency of judgment that has contributed to many deaths, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. and negativity bias, our natural inclination to skew our thinking away from positive outcomes. She explains the value of these propensities when quick-thinking under pressure is essential, yet she does not stray from their often-disastrous consequences. Ahn insists that delayed gratification, while hard to achieve, is vital to cultivating advanced thinking and career development.

    Readers looking for theories and applications of critical thinking may ask for more from Thinking 101, but this book serves as a useful guide to why so many of us these days ignore facts underlying contemporary issues and, worse, distort them.
  • AndreaRomance
    5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging
    Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2022
    This book explains how inherent cognitive biases affect our decision making. It’s informative, engaging, and easy to read.

    Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
  • Juan P Espana
    3.0 out of 5 stars Great, medium and then good
    Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2023
    At the beggining was great...well, it is still, but then the book start to turn a little bored. I guess after the 55% the book got back its essence... to think, and the awful way of thinking in a manner of bias. The way it describes biases is good enough. It really makes you think about understanding to unlearn bad things we thought were good.
  • Mary E. Fields
    2.0 out of 5 stars Thinking 101 written by a professor at Yale
    Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2023
    Sigh. I was in my favorite bookstore in California and needed a book for my trip home to Washington, D.C. The title grabbed me, biases, perceptions, group think are all topics I find fascinating in terms of how I think and how others do - consciously and unconsciously. The writing is simplistic. For example she talks about the family going to Washington, D.C. her husband is getting an award and her 7 year old daughter says - "HOW COME THERE ARE MORE BOYS THAN GIRLS ?" hmmmm . . Seriously?

    A waste of my time and money.
  • Alec Sullivan
    1.0 out of 5 stars Total Piece of Garbage
    Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2022
    I tried to read with an open mind and attempted to look past several of the instances where the author inserts her political agenda. I am sure it was relevant at the time, but I do not want to read a book where every point is underscored by a reference to the covid19 pandemic. Despite the fact that many of her assertions have been proven incorrect, it also makes for an incredibly dry read. I stopped reading around page 75.

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