The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot's Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions

Hasard has written an amazing book with clear and easy to follow methods to improve the way you solve problems with great historical storytelling and insights from his own career and famous historical events. Starting with Page 1 we see how experienced airline pilots crashed a perfectly good aircraft killing all onboard due to a combination of poor decision making ( The infamous Air France 447 flight) From there Hasard shows us how this and other situations could have been better assessed and delivers a great chapter on power laws- why things increase exponentially and why our minds are programmed to think in linear terms. For example how increasing your speed from 40 to 65 MPH will save about 6 minutes every 10 miles but increasing your speed from 65 to 90 will only save half the time even though the MPH increase is the same.. He explains the why of this in the chapter and introduces us to non-linear thinking concepts and why thinking in non linear terms is so important to assessing and making decisions ( Power laws) He then goes on to give us simple fast forecasting tools to help improve our decision making. He uses a flying story here from his time in Afghanistan that was amazing to read. Throughout the decision making process of analysis, choosing and execution ( ACE as the pilot world calls it) He gives insightful examples from his own career and draws on some great historical stories from D-Day to how Google almost never came to be. In fact not since the 48 laws of Power or the 33 Strategies of War ( Robert Green) have I seen such concise and gripping story telling. Some of his flying stories increased my heart rate – which is pretty hard to do since I was an F16 pilot myself- Yet the way he retells his combat experience with lessons learned and how he arrived at his decisions was really thoughtful. Hasard drew on some of his own failures and shows us how he could have made better decisions in the cockpit and also why he made the decisions he did at that time ( most of them of course worked out but the point of his story was to show us how he did his risk analysis with lives on the line) From there we get a great chapter on creative thinking- And this uses some great story telling from the Gulf war on how they completely disregarded current military doctrine to come up with a new way to plan the invasion of Iraq. It was page turning storytelling, in fact I was so gripped that ( like most learning) it was not until the next morning that I realized I really gained some deep knowledge on creative thinking . Hasard points out that “creativity is one of the few resources that can provide an exponential advantage to those who are able to harness it. “ And introduces us to effects based approach that works on the battle field and in life. We then jump to some mental toughness skills – Many of these are about calming down the mind and positive self talk as well as visualization.. While you may think I have heard this before the author brings this alive with real examples from pilot training- Hasard brings this to life and shows the statistical benefits of doing all the above and more importantly the why behind it. Hasard also has more lessons on mental toughness and shows us how more experienced pilots then him did not make it through pilot training because they were not able to harness these and other skills he teaches. I have just hit the highlights of the book and it was so exciting that I found myself finishing it in 2 days. This is the best book on decision making I have ever read and I highly recommend this for everyone to help improve their ability to analyze and make decisions in daily life

This was a great read! Hasard is a brilliant storyteller from his time in the Air Force and he does a great job relating the skills he learned re. clear thinking (mental toughness, resilience, triage and preparation) to the modern world. It’s a quick and effective read, highly recommend!

Lee has written a book that is NOT a how to book. Though the use of history and his own memory, he illustrated for us, how to think clearly and critically. Some areas of the book do have a how to feel to it, others don't. I like the book.

I will say I really liked this book overall and I do recommend it. The author's stories are captivating and lessons learned are solid. While I love the war stories I didn't care so much for the length of them. I feel like this book could have been about 100 pages shorter and been just as impactful. Each chapter is about 30ish pages. 20 of which is a story and 5-10 is the meat and potatoes. The stories could have been about 10 pages each and 5-10 of the meat and potatoes and it would have been just as good. This is my opinion as some rando you will never meet on Amazon.

I’m not sure there is a better, more powerful book you could read about decision making under stress, how to prepare for it, execute it, and fight another day than what Hasard has written. Incredibly well written, engaging from the first page to the last, and filled with concepts immediately applicable to business and life. Could not recommend this book enough!

Amazing book. The author, who is a fighter pilot, tells military stories to teach decision making, especially when the stakes are high. Seems to be one of the few books I read again and again, besides the Bible. Teddy Roosevelt once said “What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice.” This book is cold as ice.

I thoroughly enjoyed the main thesis and all the stories. Despite not being a frequent reader, I managed to finish this book in just four days. I couldn’t put it down. As someone who writes software for air traffic controllers, the stories were particularly captivating. It was fascinating to gain insights into how pilots think during critical situations. This book effectively demonstrated the importance of clear and critical thinking in everyday life.

This is a superbly, intelligent book. The author is not not only an accomplished fighter pilot. He is also an instructor who’s teachings have been so profound that they’ve been implemented across the entire Air Force, as well as other government, organizations and private businesses. In a very basic description this book teaches how to make rapid decisions at times while under stress, how to prioritize your tasks, how to fast forecast, and many other mental capacities. The author draws on his own experience as a fighter pilot as well as that of others, to provide real life scenarios of how his teachings can applicable. However, as I pointed out earlier, in my review, his teachings can be extrapolated to all decision making processes in our lives. In my opinion, this book will become a future classic someone like Sun Tzu’s The Art War, and that it uses military examples that can be easily applied to a variety of life’s situation. Even if you’re not a fighter pilot aficionado, I would highly recommend this book as it will be informative and quite possibly change your life for the better.

If you don't particularly fancy fighter jet pilot stories, don't buy/read this book. Nothing new/groundbreaking on the decision framework side (power laws, heuristics for decision making, Eisenhower matrix...) and almost no actual example from the business world. Clearly not a must read in my opinion, even as interesting and successful the author is at applying great decision making.

When I started reading this book, after 10 minutes I knew that this was gonna be an amazing book. And I was right. Hasard Lee has done an amazing job. I would definitely recommend this.

A fantastic book for those students of life. So many great takeaways (EG power laws) and backed up with real world case studies and examples. Hansard has a great style of writing and it’s easy to understand the concepts. You can tell he’s a teacher and instructor as he’s written the book in a way that captures the different styles of learning. Definitely recommend reading this book with lessons that can be applied to investing, debt reduction, safety, project management and hacks for life.

Interessante ler o quanto histórias de um piloto que lutou durante guerras do Iraque e contra o Estado Islâmico pode nos trazer boas reflexões para o mundo dos negócios, do design e da gestão. Destaque para o primeiro capítulo que conta a história de um dos maiores acidentes da aviação mundial, ao qual o autor demonstra o quanto que a falta de ouvir as pessoas para entender os problemas, causou decisões que acarretaram a queda, na visão do autor. Recomendo como leitura paralela. Outro livro com temática valiosa é Leadership is Language ao qual recomendo fortemente para todas as pessoas em posição de liderança.

Excelente manera de enseñar a tomar decisiones.