Somewhat overlong manifesto to encourage us all to spend less time reading the various mass circulation products of journalism and social media, and more time focusing on our personal areas of interest and competence in greater depth. Part of this involves recognising the increasingly trivial way that the newspapers and other media treat major complex events, but also the importance of taking a longer term view of how society and knowledge develops. The best bit of the book was Dobelli's challenge for us all to recall major news events of the last decade - the key being that if you can't easily remember them, they can't have been that important. I found it interesting, albeit somewhat unconvincing. The key is surely to be more select in your sources of information, not to ignore them completely. Rather excessive repetition of some simple messages to fill the books 125 pages, which meant it could have been rather shorter. His point about not worrying about the things you cannot influence was however well made; my favourite quote was ... "There are things you can influence and things that you cannot. There is no point getting worked up about things you cannot change. For example, there is nothing I can do about my past or about a Trump tweet. So why let it make me anxious?"

Read on Kindle. Published January 2020.