The Decisive Moment:

The Decisive Moment:This is an easy to read, entertaining and informative book. It slowly addressed many of the self-doubts that we carry with us, particularly in a world where 'being decisive' seems to mean 'be quick and logical' or 'agree with me'. This addressed the issues of 'emotional decisions' in a way that meant more than just 'follow your gut-feeling'. It also surprises in a number of key conclusions, and most of all helps us understand the latest research into the most fascinating of subjects. This will be recommended reading for many of the senior executives that I coach, as well as enjoyable reading for anyone who wants to understand themselves better.

I originally purchased this book under recommendation from a friend, and believe me, I will listen to them more from now on!A really interesting book, with a great deal of interesting stories and anecdotes explaining some interesting theories. (I won't spoil the specifics for you!) But really made me think. The depth the book went into, using research from all sorts of fields really kept me involved and I can't wait for Jonah to release a new book!I have since read that it suffered heavy negative critical reviews due to the scientific process it went through and that many of the anecdotes are just that. However, as with most popular psychology based books of this type, I find it's the ideas that are lasting, not essentially the facts that are provided.I would highly recommend this book to any amateur psychologists like myself!

I had this book on my list for while and I'm glad I finally succumbed - really fascinating insights you'll find yourself discussing frequently.

Some of the material in this book will be familiar to those interested in the field, but it is still well worth reading. Some great examples from different walks of life really help make Lehrer's case clear. The science is not as detailed as in some other books, but that is not Lehrer's aim. He brings the field to life, and has a great personal style. As others have noted, his clear prose is also a joy to read. The final chapter of recommendations is excellent and helps summarize all the material, which at first glance can appear contradictory. By the way, this is the same book which is published in the US as "How we Decide". This is a fun read, and also a great resource for coaches.

Captain Al Haynes had not been trained to deal with an exploding engine and a total loss of control. The manual contained nothing and the engineers on the ground were stumped. Whether he lived or died and the fate of his passengers depended on the decisions he and his crew made or failed to make in those few minutes before the DC-10 fell out of the sky. In such a situation, inventing a new method of flight control would seem a tall order. Haynes, however, kept a lid on his panic, "used his prefrontal cortex to manage his emotions" and saved the lives of 184 passengers. Decisions matter, and advances in neuroscience are helping elucidate "one of the oldest mysteries of the mind" - how our brains make those decisions.Johan Lehrer is an engaging guide. His easy style is direct and rarely laboured, even when using jargon, and you're never far away from a real-life story that fits perfectly within the neuroscientific narrative. The kinds of behaviours that in the past were put down to instinct or bad luck or breeding are now beginning to be understood in terms of what's going on inside your skull, in structures such as the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens.According to Plato, "what separates us from animals is the godly gift of rationality." If only the rational brain were in complete control, then everything would be tickety-boo. Such an emotionless life is a repulsive ideal to most people (precisely because of those pesky emotions, Plato would no doubt argue), but now we know that sidelining our emotions would actually be entirely counterproductive. If we are cut off from our feelings, perhaps as a result of brain injury or disease, "the most banal decisions become impossible." The Platonic view of decision-making is utterly mistaken. The newer parts of our brain - capable of language and logic and self-awareness - "have lots of design flaws and software bugs" and are like an operating system that was rushed to market. In contrast, the emotional brain "has been exquisitely refined by evolution over the last several hundred million years. Its software code has been subjected to endless tests, so that it can make fast decisions based on very little information."William James realized that humans have a greater variety of instincts than any other animal, and that these aren't necessarily bad influences. Not just rational, we are "the most emotional animal of all." Reason is on its pedestal in part because the "conscious brain is ignorant of its own underpinnings, blind to all that neural activity taking place outside the prefrontal cortex." This is why, says Lehrer, people have emotions: "they are windows into the unconscious". Plato disparaged emotions as "irrational and untrustworthy" but they actually reflect an enormous amount of invisible analysis. Our emotions are deeply empirical and "rooted in the predictions of highly flexible brain cells, which are constantly adjusting their connections to reflect reality." This is why seasickness is usually temporary: after a few horrible hours, "the dopamine neurons fix their predictions and learn to expect the gentle rocking of the high seas."The neurotransmitter dopamine is a key character in this story. The idea that our feelings of happiness, the first stirrings of love and the most visceral forms of disgust can in any way be explained in terms of (or, pejoratively, reduced to the level of) a single molecule that brain cells use to communicate with one another will provoke outrage in some and awe in others. Dopamine helps to regulate all of our emotions, and it enables the brain to learn from its mistakes. Dopamine neurons are working beneath our conscious gaze, coming up with predictions about the world and translating these predictions into emotions. Maintaining their predictive accuracy requires continual retraining: "intelligent intuition is the result of deliberate practice".Although dopamine neurons are immensely useful, "they can also lead us astray, especially when we are confronted with randomness." In an elegant experiment involving a T-shaped maze and a food reward, rats settled for the inherent uncertainty of the situation and outsmarted Yale undergraduates, who were stubbornly searching for a pattern that wasn't there. We can think too much in other ways. A highly trained opera singer who analyses her performance can forget how to sing. A pro golfer who focuses on the details of his stroke can end up playing like a beginner. Contrary to "one of the basic tenets of Western thought", there is such a thing as too much analysis: when you overthink at the wrong moment, "you cut yourself off from the wisdom of your emotions".And what of the roles of reason and emotion in our ethical lives? We should remember that moral behaviour is not simply about following rules and that our moral emotions - "writ into the primate brain" - "existed long before Moses". Evolution, not the world's religions, has educated us to care about one another. Religions and ideologies tend to encourage our natural tendency to assimilate only those facts that confirm what we already believe, to "silence the cognitive dissonance through self-imposed ignorance." For a true believer, rationality "actually becomes a liability, since it allows us to justify practically any belief." Science - resolutely unreligious and non-ideological - systematically resists this temptation. As the physicist Robert Park says, "uncovering flaws in scientific observations or reasoning is the everyday work of scientists." The aviation industry took this and the experience of Captain Haynes to heart when it made "a science of pilot error", and the result has been many lives saved. We too can become students of error, and use our flexible brains to learn from our mistakes. After all, our dopamine system does it all the time. If you want to improve your decision-making, read this book. It's one decision you won't regret.

I bought this for my daughter to try and help her moderate her pre-exam nerves.She's a text book example of the 'over-analysing' described in the book and she's said she's found it helpful.For my part, I read it in Kindle form and found it a fascinating book that helped me understand how my thought processes work and when to trust (or disregard) my 'gut feeling'.