The Art of Clear Thinking pulls you in like the G-forces of a fighter jet. Entertaining and profound, Hasard takes you on a heart-pounding journey through life-or-death stories woven with the critical, decision-making tips taught to elite fighter pilots. This book will sharpen your ability to stop, see clearly, and make the key choices that may change the entire course of your future." —Harvey, Karp, MD, FAAP, CEO, Happiest Baby, Inc., Author An important one is visualization. So as fighter pilots, we will visualize through an entire sortie, and it's important to bring in as many senses as possible. And you want to visualize it perfectly the first time. If for whatever reason, your brain goes off on a tangent and you think about something not going perfectly, keep re-visualizing it until you get it down perfectly. Everything from how you're feeling, thinking, what it smells like — everything to make it as realistic as possible. That will not only prep your brain for interweaving all these different concepts together, but it will also increase your confidence because you essentially are telling yourself you've done it before. In The Art of Clear Thinking , Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft. With gripping firsthand accounts from his time as a fighter pilot and fascinating turning points throughout history, Hasard reveals powerful decision-making principles that can be used in business and in life, Flesch was born in Vienna, Austria. He fled to the United States to avoid the imminent invasion of the Nazis, to avoid Jewish prosecution. Once in America, he met Elizabeth Terpenning, whom he married. They had six children: Anne, Hugo, Jillian, Katrina, Abigal, and Janet. Flesch lived the majority of his life with his wife and children in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small village in southern Westchester county. In air combat, the threats are continually changing as each side postures to protect their vulnerabilities while also exploiting their adversary’s. Decisions are continually tested and countered in the ultimate cat-and-mouse game. This continual evolution has led to a modern battlefield that is as diverse as it is dangerous.

Finally, I did find a numerical error in this book where Lee was demonstrating how a complex numerical problem can be mentally solved. I mention this because an error like this can undermine Lee's credibility. As well, I feel a book like this should have an index so the reader can easily access vital information. A glossary would have been beneficial. I also felt some of the true stories dragged on. To make an aircraft fly is a constant struggle against physics. An airliner traveling six hundred miles per hour at thirty thousand feet is not something that happens naturally. It’s not a fail-safe act, meaning the default is to crash—it’s up to our ingenuity and decision-making to prevent it from happening. It’s a unique environment that’s highly unforgiving. Whereas a loss of power in a car typically results in a few hours on the side of a road, a loss of power in the air is often disastrous. Even in business, bet-the-company decisions are rare, and when encountered, only a fraction of the employees take part in them. Aviation, however, relies on everyone performing at an optimum level just to keep the aircraft flying. It’s an unstable system where even a single person forgetting to do their job, or doing it improperly, can lead to catastrophic results. It was this unforgiving nature, however, that led to a deep focus on decision-making. Looking out of the canopy at fifty thousand feet, the sky was now noticeably darker—I was above most of the atmosphere and could see the deep shade of indigo above me slowly transition into the ice-blue horizon. The curvature of the earth was also clearly visible as it bowed across my field of view. To my right, I could see the entire Korean peninsula, green with a thin layer of haze over it. To my left, a few clouds over the Yellow Sea separated me from mainland China.In The Art of Clear Thinking, Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft. With gripping firsthand accounts from his time as a fighter pilot and fascinating turning points throughout history, Hasard reveals powerful decision-making principles that can be used in business and in life, including: In The Art of Clear Thinking (1951), Flesch consolidates research data and then-recent findings from the fields of psychology and education, and suggests how his readers can apply that information in their daily life. As he writes in his introduction, "It would be impudent to tell intelligent, grown up people how to think. All I have tried to do here is to assemble certain known facts about the human mind and put them in plain English." It's just how we're wired. But it doesn't have to stay that way. This book gives you the tools to clear the fog from your eyes and simply think smarter.

The second phase is choosing the correct course of action. One aspect of that is coming up with multiple solutions. In the Air Force, what we do to increase creativity — that's one thing that can give a high return for a little amount of effort — is come up with more solutions. A lot of people like to just jump to conclusions and start running towards a solution. But in the F-16, we have a thing that we teach new pilots: “There’s no problem so bad you can’t make it worse.” I try. And now that I think about it, being a fighter pilot's a lot like being a father. Its minimal sleep, a lot of chaos, a lot of incomplete information, and lives are on the line.

A First-of-Its-Kind Program

Introduces "Ace Helix" framework that offers a systematic approach to decision-making--stands for Assess, Choose, Execute, and Improve.