David Brooks at the New York TImes (no link as it's now paywalled) says:
A few months ago, Steven Pinker of Harvard asked a smart question: What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?
The good folks at Edge.org organized a symposium, and 164 thinkers contributed suggestions.
The results of the symposium are at http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_index.html
Scroll down after the newspaper/blogger blurbs and you get (bite sized) contributions from each of the smart folks that start here
http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_1.html
Some of these ideas just point you in the right direction (e.g. Paulos' blurb on probability distributions doesn't tell you too much ... so use Wikipedia and Google to search for more.)
If you like that you might also like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
My favorite heuristic: if you are having a difficult time making a choice between several options just pick one at random. The reason you're having difficulty choosing is there is (obviously) little difference between the choices so a random choice is as good as any other choice. If you can't stick with a random choice is there a hidden reason not to? What is it? And how does that inform your revised choice?
I presume another Brockman book will be on the way based on this: "What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?" or something similar