Shane Parrish has spent years running Farnam Street, the site that became required reading for anyone serious about how they think. Clear Thinking is the distillation of that work: a structured argument that most bad outcomes aren’t caused by ignorance, but by failing to think clearly in the moments that matter most.
The core idea is that we have default behaviours - biological, social, ego-driven - that hijack our reasoning when we’re not paying attention. Parrish maps these patterns, then offers practical tools for interrupting them: how to create space between stimulus and response, how to avoid the defaults that feel like clear thinking but aren’t, how to set yourself up for good decisions before you’re in the middle of a hard one.
The writing is direct and example-driven, built around the same kind of mental models that built Buffett’s fortune and Munger’s reputation. It is not a book about being smarter. It is a book about removing the habits that make smart people act stupidly. That is a meaningfully different thing, and it is done well here.
At under £20, this is the kind of book you hand to someone who thinks they already know how to think - which is exactly the person who most needs to read it.