Steve's Reviews > Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture

An excellent summary of strategies to improve one's mind -- building a better mind, as the author describes it. Most of the book is not new. What is fresh is Ryan Bush's use of the metaphor of a computer with software to catalogue and describe what has been shown, through experience and research, to help identifying and repairing cognitive, emotional, and behavioural issues we are challenged by -- or to fulfill our desires to improve our lives in these three domains. Bush has been clever in producing a coherent approach called psychitecture -- 'the practice of designing and optimizing the software of one's mind.
The strategies (Bush calls algorithms) are wide-ranging in scope, and they are all amenable to everyday use by everyday people like you and me. There are a lot of notes for each chapter allowing the reader to follow up the sources of the information.
One of the attractive aspects of the book is that the author displays significant intellectual humility and a willingness to continue exploring more into the future. He doesn't see himself as an expert; more of a collator of the wisdom of others and packaging them into a new and coherent framework.
My only question about the book is whether many may be put off by the metaphor of the brain as a computer (a metaphor that has had lots of criticism, although there are some parallels), and use of technical terms like "algorithms", "psychitecture", "software", etc. If one is willing to dig into the book, these terms are clearly not meant to be taken literally although the excellent diagrams throughout the book do depend on the metaphor being taken seriously.
I really enjoyed the book and there is a lot of valuable wisdom (theory applied to practical living) that will, if practiced, lead to a healthier life -- cognitively, emotionally, and behaviourally.
The author also offers ongoing online resources for those who are interested.

*I received a free review copy from the author, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.