Introduction

This book presents seven principles to help you process high-caliber knowledge with macOS technology in a way that makes you a more effective person.¹ It seems fitting, then, to start this book by acknowledging some of the previous work upon which you can build a foundation of self-improvement. This entire book can be read as a modernization of the mental aspect of the late Steven Covey’s seventh habit of highly effective people. (If you haven’t read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People yet, start by reading the dynamic summary on its website). That part of the seventh principle basically says: regularly read and learn.

Covey’s book, however, dedicates only one page to the essential and complex topic of self-regulated learning. It was written before the world wide web. It does not tell you how to read with information technology. And it is not informed by cognitive science.

Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book remains one of the most popular and helpful books to teach adults how to read better. However, that book was published in the early 1970s. It doesn’t deal with information technology nor the world wide web. And it certainly wasn’t based on cognitive science, a term that wasn’t even coined when the book was written. (Compare my blog post, A Review of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book — 42 years later.)

The current book is based on a broad cognitive science-based analysis of self-regulated learning: Cognitive Productivity: Using Knowledge to Become Profoundly Effective. Part three of the original Cognitive Productivity book provides many practical recommendations. However, those are conveyed with text and images.

The current book is unique in that it is the first extensive screencast-rich book to help knowledge workers use macOS and knowledge resources to become smarter. It extrapolates from cognitive science without presenting the science itself.