Think Smarter in a Digitally Enabled World: A 21st Century Life Manual for Amplifying Your Knowledge, Achieving Your Potential & Changing the World

by Jay Kshatri

Think Smarter in a Digitally Enabled World provides the reader with the tools and insight on how to lead a successful, meaningful, and world-changing life in the 21st century. We are still in the early phases of this new century and the pace and breadth of technological, societal, economic, and cultural change is staggering. We are experiencing forces that are upending almost every facet of our lives and challenging us to respond. For us as individuals, and as part of society at large, we will need to do things differently. We will need to think differently and we will need to raise the level of our consciousness.

Fortunately, we actually have all the tools necessary for our journey. Many of these concepts and ideas were created in the 20th century - the more technical and linear thinking approaches to mastering decision making and knowledge acquisition. But other insights - the one's that tap into our creative, intuitive, and spiritual sides have been around for thousand's of years. When we combine the logical with the creative, intuitive, and spiritual, we obtain a potent combination that can solve any problem and help us achieve our individual and collective potential. Our schools do not yet teach these skills in a formal way. Unfortunately, the model is instead set up to provide students 20th century professional and life skills.

But we can take matters into our own hands as technology is allowing us to access the world's collective knowledge and connect to our fellow citizens around the globe. We can teach ourselves and our children these skills. Our ability to positively leverage this access and to cultivate a capability for life long proactive critical thinking will allow us accelerate our ability to deal with all the challenges that the 21st century will throw at us.

We will also have to help reacquaint science and spirituality. Those two spheres were separated around 400 years ago as we went forward on a path of dramatic scientific and industrial advancement. Along the way, unfortunately, we forgot our true heritage and how we are connected to each other and everything on the planet. Fortunately, new scientific information from the fields of physics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology and other data points are allowing us to take a fresh look at spiritual teachings that have stood the test of time and see how we can integrate them back into our modern lives.

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 15, 2013

About the author

Jay Kshatri has spent the last 25 years at major multinational high-tech companies, start-ups, and other entrepreneurial-minded organizations in a variety of leadership positions. Over that time,
he has been involved with many computing, networking, and medical technologies that enhance our modern lives. His lifelong passion is understanding how to achieve our potential in all of its forms.
Jay holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Swarthmore College and an MBA from New York University and is an Eagle Scout. He is married with two children and lives with his family in Eastern Pennsylvania. He is an avid Jazz fan, and when not riding his bike or walking with his dog in parks and forests, he enjoys tennis, golf, traveling, and photography.

Reviews

[Saba Ehtesham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have nothing but praise for this book as it is an outstanding piece of literature. It draws from eclectic sources to provide guidelines that we can use to pursue our personal, professional, and spiritual endeavours. It is one of those rare, holistic books that anyone can relate to and benefit from. My favourite aspect is how every time a new concept was introduced, concrete and relatable examples were subsequently given, which helped me understand how to apply the tools right away. I also highly appreciated the generous amount of apps, publications, podcasts, and websites the author highlighted so that we could keep upgrading our knowledge about the topics discussed in the book.

I strongly feel that this book can be applicable as a mandatory textbook for any course. For example, Chapter 4 is gold mine for supplying strategies that can help students conduct research more efficiently and thereby learn more effectively. Organizations can also use this beneficial resource with regards to employee development in various areas (e.g. Systems Thinking to understand the big picture, Ladder of Inference for group collaboration and decision making, Iceberg Model to discover underlying causes, etc.)

This book also explores the issue of how we have a vast reserve of information at our fingertips through the Internet, although, our capacity to tap into the data and propel our potential remains heavily underutilized. Instead of being drained and distracted by the overindulgence of technology (e.g. e-mails, texts, social media, Internet surfing), we need to manage all this data in a strategic manner and discipline ourselves to be more successful in working towards our goals. We should not allow technology to disrupt our creativity and productivity but rather enhance it. I have no doubt that this book will equip its readers with useful tools to continually expand their knowledge, achieve their aspirations, and make a profound difference on this planet.

[Sher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a free digital copy from storycartel.com in exchange for a review.

I learned valulable information from this well-organized book. I appreciated the helpful diagrams and I loved the way the chapters begin indicating where I am in the book (this helped organize my mind). I enjoyed topics such as learning to be mindful, learning how Google works, and learning how to perfect an internet search. Information about Evernote, and a variety of platforms were helpful. The resources given were excellent and a great start.