Book Report: The Scout Mindset

The Scout Mindset

Overview

The Scout Mindset is a book that tries to challenge your ways of thinking in an attempt to give the reader insight into their own thoughts. She breaks down two different mindsets that people have. The soldier mindset and then scouts mindset. The soldier's mindset is defensive and tries to protect preconceived ideas. There are biases that people naturally learn towards because of preconceived notions, and the author implements ideas that could help combat this. She gave an analogy of thinking about your mind like a map, and these “threats” to your thoughts can only help improve and build your map. The goal of this book is to give insight to the readers to achieve the scout mindset. With the scout mindset people will be able to realize when their beliefs are proved wrong and learn from it. The point that this book attempts to educate the reader on is that they could be wrong. There's nothing wrong with being wrong as long as you can recognize the mistake and learn from it. 

Favorite Part

I think my favorite part of the book is chapter 8. This chapter encompasses going about your life without these false illusions. The author wrote about gathering motivation without self deception. She explains that you should always try to have an accurate picture of the odds when you make a risky decision. This can also help someone adapt to their situation and make them more confident about it. Having a realistic point of view on things makes decisions happen in a more logical sense. I think this is a good idea to implement into my own life because it’ll help me make smarter decisions without fooling myself. 

Favorite Part Related to Class

I feel as though most of this book relates in a big way to our class and the lectures that have been provided. I think the biggest relation to the book would have to be in lecture 1. Lecture 1 talks about the different ways of thinking. There was mention of fast thinkers, often led by biases and assumptions, and slow thinkers. These slow thinkers take a more methodical approach and use critical thinking. This relates very well to the two ways of thinking that is described in the scout mindset. The soldier mindset is essentially fast thinking. They both fall into traps of bias and going off of preconceived ideas that are at the forefront of their minds. The scout mindset falls in line with slow thinking as they both try to reach the logical and correct decisions. 

Creative and Extension

The YouTube video linked below is an interview with the author of Thinking Fast and Slow, and they have a discussion on what this means and how it works. These two ways of thinking are broken down and explained for the listeners. I thought it was really interesting and it kept my attention throughout the video. There is a lot to learn from this video, and the goal should be to try to not use fast thinking wherever possible. It can lead to bias and error. It would be much better to use the slow thinking method at all times so decisions can be well thought out. This is something that should be implemented into all of our lives in order to avoid making mistakes. Adopting a slow way of thinking could be beneficial to all different areas in our lives whether that be occupation, investment decisions, and even decisions about our personal lives. 

Links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirFrDVRBo4