Longboater sets up matching deal for his self-help book

For his newest book, Gerald Zaltman took a different approach.

The author of 23 books, and a professor emeritus from the Harvard Business School, published his latest book “Unlocked: Keys to Improve Your Thinking” in June.

His other books discuss topics ranging from social change from an applied standpoint to marketing and customer behavior. With his latest book, though, he challenges the way readers think.

In this book, Zaltman uses “Think Keys” to delve into thought processes and help readers improve decisions and actions. His website said that each “Think Key” starts with a statement about how humans think, then an activity is presented to illustrate the process before the question “so what?” is answered. The “Think Keys” circulate around 11 topics, including context, memory, attention and curiosity.

“This is a book that I hope, in an engaging way, even a fun way, helps people pause and focus on how a particular thought was generated in the first place, what mechanisms of mind were going in to this decision,” Zaltman said. “So it’s much more a process-oriented book than a contest or what-you-think oriented book.”

Zaltman said his hope is that readers better understand certain factors that go into thinking. Whether it’s considering the social setting, a person’s physical state or how they are allocating their attention, Zaltman said he hopes readers think about the factors that go into a moment and how they process it.

The motivation for the book came from Zaltman’s concerns about the information environment his grandchildren are growing up in.

“[I am] just increasingly concerned not just for that generation, but for all of us, to let opinions determine what we accept as fact instead of the other way around, and I saw the problem being more of an emphasis on what we’re thinking as opposed to how we’re thinking,” Zaltman said.

And it’s not only his grandchildren he’s concerned about.

Zaltman has set up a book-matching program for “Unlocked.” Every time someone purchases a copy of the book, which can be found on Amazon, they can choose an educational program or a certain person to receive a copy of the book, too. The donor should then reach out to Zaltman by email and tell him how many copies need to be provided to match their donation at a one-for-one ratio.

“I’m eager to have people who might not otherwise have access to the book for whatever reason to have a chance to engage in the issues the book raises,” Zaltman said.

In addition to the book matching program, Zaltman and his wife, Ann, decided to allocate half the profits from “Unlocked” to charitable foundations. To do so, the Zaltmans have asked their six grandchildren, all between the ages of 15 and 24, to choose potential organizations to receive the funds.

“I think they’ll learn about their own values in some way,” Zaltman said. “Why they’re preferring this type of needy person over that type of category of problem, and I’m sure that they will discover they’ve cultivated certain values that they may not be aware of.”

Through this entire process, Zaltman has found that he has a lot to learn, too.

“I’ve learned first of all, that I’m no different than so many people that I’m trying to reach with a book, having arrived at decisions sort of automatically without reflecting, and I need to take a pause as well ...” he said.