A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink (PDF)

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New York Times Bestseller An exciting–and encouraging–exploration of creativity from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect TimingThe future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic “right-brain” thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t. Drawing on research from around the world, Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others) outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment–and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that’s already here.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “This book is a miracle . . . I was moved and disturbed and exhilarated all at once.”– Tom Peters”An audacious and powerful work.”– Miami Herald”Profound.”– Booklist”Thought-provoking.”– International Herald Tribune”For those wishing to give their own creative muscles a workout, the book is full of exercises and resources.”– Harvard Business Review About the Author Daniel H. Pink is the author of four best-selling books — including the long-running New York Times bestsellers A Whole New Mind and Drive. His books have been translated into 33 languages and have been used in high schools, universities, and MBA programs throughout the world. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. PRAISE FOR A Whole New Mind “This book is a miracle. On the one hand, it provides a completely original and profound analysis of the most pressing personal and economic issue of the days ahead—how the gargantuan changes wrought by technology and globalization are going to impact the way we live and work and imagine our world. Then, Dan Pink provides an equally original and profound and practical guidebook for survival—and joy—in this topsy-turvy environment. I was moved and disturbed and exhilarated all at once. A few years ago, Peter Drucker wondered whether the modern economy would ever find its Copernicus. With this remarkable book, we just may have discovered our Copernicus for the brave new age that’s accelerating into being.”—Tom Peters“[Pink’s] ideas and approaches are wise, compassionate, and supportive of a variety of personal and professional endeavors. It’s a pleasant and surprisingly entertaining little trip as he explores the workings of the brain, celebrates the proliferation and democratization of Target’s designer products, and learns to draw and play games, all as a means of illustrating ways we can think and live in a better, more meaningful and productive manner. What surprised me about this book is how Pink realized that to empower individuals, it’s necessary to really understand and act upon the powerful socioeconomic forces that shape the world economy. Unlike many of the recent xenophobic screeds that rail against the evils of outsourcing, Pink has figured out several paths that individuals and society can pursue that play to our strengths. So if Pink is correct, we’re almost there. All it may take is for individuals and institutions to recognize this reality by using the tools we already possess. And that may well require A Whole New Mind.”—The Miami Herald.“Since Pink’s…Free Agent Nation has become a cornerstone of employee-management relations, expect just as much buzz around his latest theory.”—Publishers Weekly“A breezy, good-humored read…For those wishing to give their own creative muscles a workout, the book is full of exercises and resources.”—Harvard Business Review“Former White House speechwriter Daniel H. Pink, an informed and insightful commentator on social, economic, and cultural trends, has questioned the conventional wisdom from which most Americans draw their thinking on the way the world works. The author of this well-researched and delightfully well-written treatise delivers that assertion after transporting the reader through a consciousness-awakening examination of how the information age, characterized predominantly by L-Directed (left brain) Thinking is being superseded by an age of high concept and touch, which brings R-Directed (right brain) Thinking more into play. The L-Directed Thinking is particularly in evidence in the guidance he provides to readers in what to read, where to go, and what to do to learn how to more fully engage their right hemispheres.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram“Will give you a new way to look at your work, your talent, your future.”—Worthwhile“Read this book. Even more important, give this book to your children.”—Alan Webber, founding editor of Fast Company“‘Abundance, Asia, and automation.’ Try saying that phrase five times quickly, because if you don’t take these words into serious consideration, there is a good chance that sooner or later your career will suffer because of one of those forces. Pink, bestselling author of Free Agent Nation and also former chief speechwriter for former vice president Al Gore, has crafted a profound read packed with an abundance of references to books, seminars, websites, and such to guide your adjustment to expanding your right brain if you plan to survive and prosper in the Western world.”—Booklist A WHOLE NEW MIND WHY RIGHT-BRAINERS WILL RULE THE FUTURE Daniel H. Pink RIVERHEAD BOOKS New York Introduction PART ONE The Conceptual Age One Right Brain Rising Two Abundance, Asia, and Automation Three High Concept, High Touch PART TWO The Six Senses Introducing the Six Senses Four Design Five Story Six Symphony Seven Empathy Eight Play Nine Meaning Afterword Notes Acknowledgments Index “I have known strong minds, with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like manners; but I have never met a great mind of this sort. The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous.”—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE INTRODUCTION The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.This book describes a seismic—though as yet undetected—shift now under way in much of the advanced world. We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age. A Whole New Mind is for anyone who wants to survive and thrive in this emerging world—people uneasy in their careers or dissatisfied with their lives, entrepreneurs and business leaders eager to stay ahead of the next wave, parents who want to equip their children for the future, and the legions of emotionally astute and creatively adroit people whose distinctive abilities the Information Age has often overlooked and undervalued.In this book, you will learn the six essential aptitudes—what I call “the six senses”—on which professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend. Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These are fundamentally human abilities that everyone can master—and helping you do that is my goal. A CHANGE of such magnitude is complex. But the argument at the heart of this book is simple. For nearly a century, Western society in general, and American society in particular, has been dominated by a form of thinking and an approach to life that is narrowly reductive and deeply analytical. Ours has been the age of the “knowledge worker,” the well-educated manipulator of information and deployer of expertise. But that is changing. Thanks to an array of forces—material abundance that is deepening our nonmaterial yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work overseas, and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether—we are entering a new age. It is an age animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life—one that prizes aptitudes that I call “high concept” and “high touch.”1 High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new. High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.As it happens, there’s something that encapsulates the change I’m describing—and it’s right inside your head. Our brains are divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is sequential, logical, and analytical. The right hemisphere is nonlinear, intuitive, and holistic. These distinctions have often been caricatured. And, of course, we enlist both halves of our brains for even the simplest tasks. But the well-established differences between the two hemispheres of the brain yield a powerful metaphor for interpreting our present and guiding our future. Today, the defining skills of the previous era—the “left brain” capabilities that powered the Information Age—are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous—the “right-brain” qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning—increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders. For individuals, families, and organizations, professional success and personal fulfillment now require a whole new mind. A FEW WORDS about the organization of this book. Perhaps not surprisingly, A Whole New Mind is itself high concept and high touch. Part One—the Conceptual Age—lays out the broad animating idea. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the key differences between our left and right hemispheres and explains why the structure of our brains offers such a powerful metaphor for the contours of our times. In Chapter 2, I make a resolutely hardheaded case, designed to appeal to the most left-brained among you, for why three huge social and economic forces—Abundance, Asia, and Automation—are nudging us into the Conceptual Age. Chapter 3 explains high concept and high touch and illustrates why people who master these abilities will set the tempo of modern life.Part Two—the Six Senses—is high touch. It covers the six essential abilities you’ll need to make your way across this emerging landscape. Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. I devote one chapter to each of these six senses, describing how it is being put to use in business and everyday life. Then, at the end of each of these chapters, marked off by shaded pages, is a Portfolio—a collection of tools, exercises, and further reading culled from my research and travels that can help you surface and sharpen that sense.In the course of the nine chapters of this book, we’ll cover a lot of ground. We’ll visit a laughter club in Bombay, tour an inner-city American high school devoted to design, and learn how to detect an insincere smile anywhere in the world. But we need to start our journey in the brain itself—to learn how it works before we learn how to work it. So the place to begin is the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where I’m strapped down, flat on my back, and stuffed inside a garage-size machine that is pulsing electromagnetic waves through my skull. PART ONE The Conceptual Age One RIGHT BRAIN RISING The first thing they do is attach electrodes to my fingers to see how much I sweat. If my mind attempts deception, my perspiration will rat me out. Then they lead me to the stretcher. It’s swaddled in crinkly blue paper, the kind that rustles under your legs when you climb onto a doctor’s examination table. I lie down, the back of my head resting in the recessed portion of the stretcher. Over my face, they swing a cagelike mask similar to the one used to muzzle Hannibal Lecter. I squirm. Big mistake. A technician reaches for a roll of thick adhesive. “You can’t move,” she says. “We’re going to need to tape your head down.”Outside this gargantuan government building, a light May rain is falling. Inside—smack in the center of a chilly room in the subbasement—I’m getting my brain scanned.I’ve lived with my brain for forty years now, but I’ve never actually seen it. I’ve looked at drawings and images of other people’s brains. But I don’t have a clue as to what my own brain looks like or how it works. Now’s my chance.For a while now, I’ve been wondering what direction our lives will take in these outsourced, automated, upside-down times—and I’ve begun to suspect that the clues might be found in the way the brain is organized. So I’ve volunteered to be part of the control group—what researchers call “healthy volunteers”—for a project at the National Institute of Mental Health, outside Washington, D.C. The study involves capturing images of brains at rest and at work, which means I’ll soon get to see the organ that’s been leading me around these past four decades—and, in the process, perhaps gain a clearer view of how all of us will navigate the future.The stretcher I’m on juts from the middle of a GE Signa 3T, one of the world’s most advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. This $2.5 million baby uses a powerful magnetic field to generate high-quality images of the inside of the human body. It’s a huge piece of equipment, spanning nearly eight feet on each side and weighing more than 35,000 pounds.At the center of the machine is a circular opening, about two feet in diameter. The technicians slide my stretcher through the opening and into the hollowed-out core that forms the belly of this beast. With my arms pinned by my side and the ceiling about two inches above my nose, I feel like I’ve been crammed into a torpedo tube and forgotten. TCHKK! TCHKK! TCHKK! goes the machine. TCHKK! TCHKK! TCHKK! It sounds and feels like I’m wearing a helmet that somebody is tapping from the outside. Then I hear a vibrating ZZZHHHH! followed by silence, followed by another ZZZHHHH! and then more silence.After a half hour, they’ve got a picture of my brain. To my slight dismay, it looks pretty much like every other brain I’ve seen in textbooks. Running down the center is a thin vertical ridge that cleaves the brain into two seemingly equal sections. This feature is so prominent that it’s the first thing a neurologist notes when he inspects the images of my oh-so-unexceptional brain. “[The] cerebral hemispheres,” he reports, “are grossly symmetric.” That is, the three-pound clump inside my skull, like the three-pound clump inside yours, is divided into two connected halves. One half is called the left hemisphere, the other the right hemisphere. The two halves look the same, but in form and function they are quite different, as the next phase of my stint as a neurological guinea pig was about to demonstrate.That initial brain scan was like sitting for a portrait. I reclined, my brain posed, and the machine painted the picture. While science can learn a great deal from these brain portraits, a newer technique—called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)—can capture pictures of the brain in action. Researchers ask subjects to do something inside the machine—hum a tune, listen to a joke, solve a puzzle—and then track the parts of the brain to which blood flows. What results is a picture of the brain spotted with colored blotches in the regions that were active—a satellite weather map showing where the brain clouds were gathering. This technique is revolutionizing science and medicine, yielding a deeper understanding of a range of human experience—from dyslexia in children to the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease to how parents respond to babies’ cries.The technicians slide me back inside the high-tech Pringles can. This time, they’ve set up a periscopelike contraption that allows me to see a slide screen outside the machine. In my right hand is a small clicker, its cord attached to their computers. They’re about to put my brain to work—and provide me with a metaphor for what it will take to thrive in the twenty-first century.My first task is simple. They display on the screen a black-and-white photo of a face fixed in an extreme expression. (A woman who looks as if Yao Ming just stepped on her toe. Or a fellow who apparently has just remembered that he left home without putting on pants.) Then they remove that face, and flash on the screen two photos of a different person. Using the buttons on my clicker, I’m supposed to indicate which of those two faces expresses the same emotion as the initial face.For example, the researchers show me this face: Then they remove it and show me these two faces: I click the button on the right because the face on the right expresses the same emotion as the earlier face. The task, if you’ll pardon the expression, is a no-brainer.When the facial matching exercise is over, we move to another test of perception. The researchers show me forty-eight color photos, one after another, in the manner of a slide show. I click the appropriate button to indicate whether the scene takes place indoors or outdoors. These photos occupy two extremes. Some are bizarre and disturbing; others are banal and inoffensive. The photos include a coffee mug sitting on a counter, several people brandishing guns, a toilet overflowing with waste, a lamp, and a few explosions.For instance, the researchers display an image like this:* So I click the button that indicates that this scene takes place inside. The task requires that I concentrate, but I don’t much strain. The exercise feels about the same as the previous one.What happens inside my brain, however, tells a different story. When the brain scans appear on the computers, they show that when I looked at the grim facial expressions, the right side of my brain sprang into action and enlisted other parts of that hemisphere. When I looked at the scary scenes, my brain instead called in greater support from the left hemisphere.1 Of course, parts of both sides worked on each task. And I felt precisely the same during each exercise. But the fMRI clearly showed that for faces, my right hemisphere responded more than my left—and for gun-wielding bad guys and similar predicaments, my left hemisphere took the lead.Why? The Right (and Left) Stuff Our brains are extraordinary. The typical brain consists of some 100 billion cells, each of which connects and communicates with up to 10,000 of its colleagues. Together they forge an elaborate network of some one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) connections that guides how we talk, eat, breathe, and move. James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for helping discover DNA, described the human brain as “the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.”2 (Woody Allen, meanwhile, called it “my second favorite organ.”)Yet for all the brain’s complexity, its broad topography is simple and symmetrical. Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon Line divides the brain into two regions. And until surprisingly recently, the scientific establishment considered the two regions separate but unequal. The left side, the theory went, was the crucial half, the half that made us human. The right side was subsidiary—the remnant, some argued, of an earlier stage of development. The left hemisphere was rational, analytic, and logical—everything we expect in a brain. The right hemisphere was mute, nonlinear, and instinctive—a vestige that nature had designed for a purpose that humans had outgrown.As far back as the age of Hippocrates, physicians believed that the left side, the same side that housed the heart, was the essential half. And by the 1800s, scientists began to accumulate evidence to support that view. In the 1860s, French neurologist Paul Broca discovered that a portion of the left hemisphere controlled the ability to speak language. A decade later, a German neurologist named Carl Wernicke made a similar discovery about the ability to understand language. These discoveries helped produce a convenient and compelling syllogism. Language is what separates man from beast. Language resides on the left side of the brain. Therefore the left side of the brain is what makes us human.This view prevailed for much of the next century—until a soft-spoken Caltech professor named Roger W. Sperry reshaped our understanding of our brains and ourselves. In the 1950s, Sperry studied patients who had epileptic seizures that had required removal of the corpus callosum, the thick bundle of some 300 million nerve fibers that connects the brain’s two hemispheres. In a set of experiments on these “split-brain” patients, Sperry discovered that the established view was flawed. Yes, our brains were divided into two halves. But as he put it, “The so-called subordinate or minor hemisphere, which we had formerly supposed to be illiterate and mentally retarded and thought by some authorities to not even be conscious, was found to be in fact the superior cerebral member when it came to performing certain kinds of mental tasks.” In other words, the right wasn’t inferior to the left. It was just different. “There appear to be two modes of thinking,” Sperry wrote, “represented rather separately in the left and right hemispheres, respectively.” The left hemisphere reasoned sequentially, excelled at analysis, and handled words. The right hemisphere reasoned holistically, recognized patterns, and interpreted emotions and nonverbal expressions. Human beings were literally of two minds.This research helped earn Sperry a Nobel Prize in medicine, and forever altered the fields of psychology and neuroscience. When Sperry died in 1994, The New York Times memorialized him as the man who “overturned the prevailing orthodoxy that the left hemisphere was the dominant part of the brain.” He was the rare scientist, said the Times, whose “experiments passed into folklore.”3Sperry, though, had some help transporting his ideas from the laboratory to the living room—in particular, a California State University art instructor named Betty Edwards. In 1979, Edwards published a wonderful book titled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Edwards rejected the notion that some people just aren’t artistic. “Drawing is not really very difficult,” she said. “Seeing is the problem.”4 And the secret to seeing—really seeing—was quieting the bossy know-it-all left brain so the mellower right brain could do its magic. Although some accused Edwards of oversimplifying the science, her book became a bestseller and a staple of art classes. (We’ll learn about Edwards’s techniques in Chapter 6.)Thanks to Sperry’s pioneering research, Edwards’s skillful popularization, and the advent of technologies like the fMRI that allow researchers to watch the brain in action, the right hemisphere today has achieved a measure of legitimacy. It’s real. It’s important. It helps make us human. No neuroscientist worth her PhD ever disputes that. Yet beyond the neuroscience labs and brain-imaging clinics, two misconceptions about the right side of the brain persist. The Wrong Stuff These two misconceptions are opposite in spirit but similar in silliness. The first considers the right brain a savior; the second considers it a saboteur.Adherents of the savior view have climbed aboard the scientific evidence on the right hemisphere and raced from legitimacy to reverence. They believe that the right brain is the repository of all that is good and just and noble in the human condition. As neuroscientist Robert Ornstein puts it in The Right Mind, one of the better books on this subject:Many popular writers have written that the right hemisphere is the key to expanding human thought, surviving trauma, healing autism, and more. It’s going to save us. It’s the seat of creativity, of the soul, and even great casserole ideas.5Oh, my. Over the years, peddlers of the savior theory have tried to convince us of the virtues of right-brain cooking and right-brain dieting, right-brain investing and right-brain accounting, right-brain jogging and right-brain horseback riding—not to mention right-brain numerology, right-brain astrology, and right-brain lovemaking, the last of which may well lead to babies who’ll eventually achieve greatness by eating right-brain breakfast cereal, playing with right-brain blocks, and watching right-brain videos. These books, products, and seminars often contain a valid nugget or two—but in general they are positively foolish. Even worse, this cascade of baseless, New Age gobbledygook has often served to degrade, rather than enhance, public understanding of the right hemisphere’s singular outlook.Partly in response to the tide of inane things that have been said about the right brain, a second, contrary bias has also taken hold. This view grudgingly acknowledges the right hemisphere’s legitimacy, but believes that emphasizing so-called right-brain thinking risks sabotaging the economic and social progress we’ve made by applying the force of logic to our lives. All that stuff that the right hemisphere does—interpreting emotional content, intuiting answers, perceiving things holistically—is lovely. But it’s a side dish to the main course of true intelligence. What distinguishes us from other animals is our ability to reason analytically. We are humans, hear us calculate. That’s what makes us unique. Anything else isn’t simply different; it’s less. And paying too much attention to those artsyfartsy, touchy-feely elements will eventually dumb us down and screw us up. “What it comes down to,” Sperry said shortly before he died, “is that modern society [still] discriminates against the right hemisphere.” Within the saboteur position is the residual belief that although the right side of our brains is real, it’s still somehow inferior.Alas, the right hemisphere will neither save us nor sabotage us. The reality, as is so often the case with reality, is more nuanced. The Real Stuff The two hemispheres of our brains don’t operate as on-off switches—one powering down as soon as the other starts lighting up. Both halves play a role in nearly everything we do. “We can say that certain regions of the brain are more active than others when it comes to certain functions,” explains one medical primer, “but we can’t say those functions are confined to particular areas.”6 Still, neuroscientists agree that the two hemispheres take significantly different approaches to guiding our actions, understanding the world, and reacting to events. (And those differences, it turns out, offer considerable guidance for piloting our personal and professional lives.) With more than three decades of research on the brain’s hemispheres, it’s possible to distill the findings to four key differences. 1. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body; the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. Read more

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⭐Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future” is probably one of the best non-fiction books that explains and clarifies the dramatic changes that the U.S. has recently witnessed in the 21st century and how these changes has an effect on our lives. He provides fascinating insights about how different parts of our brains are used for different types of tasks and he provides ideas of how to channel the usage of the various properties of our brain. He also discusses six innate senses which are of utmost importance in today’s modern society and which need to be enhanced in order for one to survive the revolutionary transformation of our day and age. Pink begins his book by describing a past experience when he participated as a volunteer in a research project at the National Institute of Mental Health. His contribution was volunteering to be part of a control group where his brain activity was scanned and observed by professionals through an MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging. While inside of the machine, Pink was asked to perform a few activities. In the first activity he was shown a picture of a woman with a face which displayed emotions of fear. Then, he was shown two pictures of a man displaying different emotions in each picture. He was assigned to compare the most similar picture to the previous one. With the second activity he was required to identify whether certain photographs were indoors or outdoors. After completing both tasks, he viewed the results of the scan with the neurologist, who showed him how the left hemisphere of his brain was more active while he was labeling a series of pictures as “indoors” or “outdoors” and how the right hemisphere of his brain was more active when he was asked to compare the faces which were most similar. The brain’s right and left hemispheres are dramatically different, perhaps even opposite, in their functions. The left side of the brain is, in a way, the computer-like section of our brains. It is analytical, rational and logical. When we read and write we are using the left side of our brains. This side involve dealing with the individual aspects or details of a whole in a manner of sequence. Thus, the “indoor/outdoor” task was accomplished through using the resources provided by the left hemisphere because concentrating on the details of the photo is of most importance in solving the problem. Sudoku puzzles and crisscross puzzles would mostly use the left side of the brain because they are solved by sequentially focussing on particular details, may they be numbers or words. The right side of our brains, however, is what differentiates humans from robots and computers. The right side of our brain recognizes patterns, detects the way details interconnect to make a full and entire whole, it observes the bigger picture. This allows for the right side to interpret emotions and nonverbal expressions in an instant, without the need for sequence or analysis. Pink summed up the right/left brain distinctions into four key points. The first is that “our brains are “contralateral”-each half of the brain controls the other half of the body” (Pink, 2005). This is true regarding which body part we move, such as turning the right foot uses the left hemisphere. However, it is also surprisingly true regarding the direction we are moving in, such as turning your head from right to left uses the right side. When you turn your head from right to left you are using you The second is that the sequential/simultaneous difference. The third point is the text/context difference and the fourth is the difference between seeing details and seeing the big picture. Pink makes it profoundly clear throughout the book that the two hemispheres are equally important in everyday activities, both at home and at work. To illustrate this point, Pink describes a scenario in the “text/context” section where a spouse forgot to buy an essential ingredient for that night’s dinner. “The other spouse grabs the car keys, curls a lip, glares at you, and hisses “I’m going to the store” (Pink, 2005). The left hemisphere interpreted the words in their literal meaning. This will merely teach you that your spouse has gone to the store. However, the right side of your brain will teach you that your spouse is pissed off at you. Both sides have equally contributed to your understanding of the situation. The importance of both text and context in languages such as Hebrew and Arabic also illustrate the equality of the right and left hemispheres. These languages do not consist of any vowels. The reader must consider the lettering of words and their surrounding concepts and ideas in order to find out which vowel to use. Reading these languages entails the collaboration of both hemispheres since they require the reader to make sense of text and context. Thus, the language reads appropriately from right to left. As mentioned earlier, movements from the right to the left require the right side of our brain. This is amazingly perfect because these languages also require the brain’s right-side understanding of context. English, on the other hand, mostly requires the analysis of text and is, therefore, appropriately read from left to right, using left-brain power. Pink describes the present 21st century as an age which is transforming from The Informational Age to The Conceptual Age. To illustrate the differences between these ages, consider what aspects of humanity were most important for succeeding in these times. In The Industrial Age, for example, physical strength was probably the most important trait one could have because it was in that point in time where factories and assembly lines were born and in full use. People who were fluently knowledgeable and analytical were most likely to succeed in The Informational Age because education became more widespread and attainable to all. The left side of the brain was the main source of the success in that age. Jobs which require a primary focus on left-brain thinking, or L-Directed thinking, include lawyers, doctors, accountants, and so on. Society was very L-directed in their thinking and almost disregarded R-directed thinking. It is for this reason that the previous generation expected their children to become doctors and lawyers. However, the question remains: why is it quite likely that these parents were disappointed by their children turning them down and heading in a career direction opposing that which was laid out and prepared for them? Why is R-directed thinking becoming equally important in our lives as L-directed thinking? Why is it that “more Americans today work in arts, entertainment, and design than work as lawyers, accountants, and auditors” (Pink, 2005, pg. 55)? What are the causes behind the transformation between The Informational and Conceptual ages? Pink’s theory is based on three factors which detract from L-directed thinking which had always been considered the most and, in turn, attracts R-directed thinking: Abundance, Asia, and Automation. It is important to note that his theory by no means insists that L-directed thinking is being replaced by R-directed and high-touch thinking; rather his theory suggests that L-directed thinking is necessary but not sufficient. High-sense skills are now needed more than any time in history because of the three factors. Asia refers to the fact that many L-directed jobs are now being transferred to people in other countries because of the salary pay is substantially cheaper. Forrester Research claims that “3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low-cost countries like India, China, and Russia” (Pink, 2005, pg. 39). The factor of Automation is similar to Asia in the sense that U.S. jobs are being replaced. Only, Automation refers to the fact that technology and computers are replacing many U.S. jobs. Modern technology has made many tasks faster and cheaper to accomplish, inevitably replacing many L-directed jobs. Pink describes six high-concept and high-touch senses which have become crucial in today’s day and age of conceptualization. The factor of Abundance is directly correlated to the first of these senses: Design. The abundance of goods and services has skyrocketed in the past decade or two immensely and has practically provided us with an unlimited amount of selection and variety. This creates a very fierce struggle between those who compete in a given market or field of expertise because they are playing a game in which the term “survival of the fittest” determines who will be victorious and who will plummet into failure. Companies cannot produce goods which are merely sufficient in meeting customer satisfaction. They need to design products which are beautiful and significant. Pink describes Design as “utility enhanced by significance” (2005, pg.70). Studies show that cell phone consumers spend just as much money on decorative faceplates and ringtones as much as they spend on the phones themselves. Georgetown University found that when “students, teachers, and educational approaches remained the same, improving schools’ physical environment could increase test scores as much as 11 percent” (Pink, 2005, pg.82). The second high-touch sense is Story. Personal narratives have become urgently prevalent as a way of finding a deeper understanding and deeper meaning within ourselves and others. Marketing techniques have increasingly incorporated story narratives behind their products or services in order to convey a sense of meaning and purpose to the costumer. Story delivers an emotional impact which enhances the mere context of the facts. People remember things better if they are sugar-coated with an elegant story because it enriches the product with emotion and causes it to stand out from the rest. This is essential in today’s age where there is a vast selection of practically anything on the market and people enjoy associating themselves with something that has meaning and significance, let alone sheer value. For example, wines have fancy narratives on their labels and major car insurance agencies compete with each other by trying to sell a better story in their advertisements (I personally love Gieko’s gecko). The third sense is called Symphony. This is the ability to put together the many pieces of a large picture and to gather seemingly unrelated details into a whole, rather than simply focusing on and analyzing the details which openly present themselves. A conductor of a symphony or a composer of a song collaborates many instruments, performers, notes, and musical ideas for the result of hearing a unified and harmonious sound. Managers and entrepreneurs highly rely on this ability because they are responsible for levels of productivity of systems which consist of and are based on many intricate relationships and interconnections. In fact, creativity is highly linked to this aptitude. As Pink puts it “sometimes the most powerful ideas come from simply combining two existing ideas nobody else ever thought to unite” (Pink, 2005, pg.137). Studies show that self-made millionaires are four times more likely to be dyslexic than the rest of the population. Dyslexic people have difficulty with L-directed thinking which allows people to reason and think with sequence and in a manner which focuses on details. The same way a blind person is forced to develop an increased sensitivity with hearing, the same is true with dyslexic people who lack L-directed thinking. They develop increases in their R-directed thinking in order to compensate for their dyslexia and, consequently, they become amazing pattern detectors and they begin seeing the intricate connections and relationships which many others cannot see. Pink quotes Sid Caesar who said “the guy who invented the wheel is an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius” (Pink, 2005, pg. 142). The fourth sense is called Empathy. Pink illustrates this skill by narrating a tiring and slow morning experience from the time he forced himself out of bed to the time he was at his desk at work drinking his third cup of coffee…and yawning. He describes how he yawns and then asks the reader “In the past minute, have you yawned?” It is said that yawning is contagious, however, this is true if the person has the capacity and aptitude of attuning oneself to another, to place oneself in the shoes of another, and feel what it is their feeling. This skill uses emotional intelligence and it allows us to read facial expressions through R-directed thinking, just as Pink discovered by analyzing which parts of his brain were most active after he had matched facial expressions in the MRI. The emotional and empathetic power of humans cannot be replicated by computers nor could they be handed to foreign employees in other countries. Clinton was criticized when he uttered the words “I feel your pain.” These were words of emotion and critics considered him as not being presidential and manly enough to keep emotions out. Pink describes this point in time as the birth of the revolution. The fifth sense is called Play. Pink describes this high-touch ability by contrasting Henry Ford’s work/play philosophy and Southwest Airlines’ mission statement. Henry Ford’s stated “When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two.” Ford lived in grim and serious times where R-directed was hardly relevant to succeeding. Southwest Airlines, one of the most stable and successful airline, stated that “People rarely succeed at anything unless they are having fun doing it.” Video games have recently been increasingly popular, more popular than the movie industry. The typical American devotes 75 hours a year playing video games and Nintendo’s Mario video game series has earned $7 billion over the course of their lifetime which is double the revenue of all the Star Wars movies combined. The sense of Play explains why Pop culture and entertainment has become an essential focus of today’s society. The sixth sense is called Meaning. The truth is that Pink uses Meaning as a way to summarize the motivation behind why the other senses have become integral to succeed in our lives. Many agencies and companies are incorporating a sense of spirit, spirituality and meaning into their everyday work. It is what motivates us into believing in a purpose greater than ourselves. This requires us to overlook our personal and monetary interests and, and focusing on our work for the sake of work itself and for the sake of its contribution to society. In the present day and age we are forced to focus on our high-touch senses in order to tap into a higher degree of meaningfulness and purpose. As my lengthy review testifies, this book was probably the most enjoyable non-fiction book I have ever read. I practically agreed to every concept and theory and I have even theorized similar ideas in the past. I also loved the fact that the book was written in a very “down-to-earth” style and I was able to relate to in a very practical manner. The book was very insightful in regard to my future because I am now more aware of skills that are truly important in a world of competitiveness and abundance. The book showed me a whole new light into the world and into my life.

⭐In Look Both Ways, her book of essays on the intersection of life and design, Debbie Millman writes of what she calls infinity, or what we could call lasting happiness. She says,”I believe some infinities are worthy challenges: the search for what is truly beautiful; laughing at the same time with someone you love; discovering a perfect piece of poetry; experiencing the deepest feelings of empathy.”Millman is a well-known author, graphic designer, brand manager, and radio host. According to Daniel H. Pink in A Whole New Mind, jobs like hers are becoming increasingly important as we transition from the Information Age into what he has dubbed the “Conceptual Age.”Pink opens the book by describing MRIs he underwent at the National Institutes of Health. He learns that the left hemisphere of the brain controls logic, sequence, and text, while the right hemisphere innovates and creates, seeing the big picture and interpreting metaphors. These right-brain-directed qualities will become more important as society places rapidly increasing value on “high concept” and “high touch” professions, Pink believes. High concept, he explains, is “the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty,” while high touch involves the ability to “find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian, in pursuit of purpose and meaning.”Dan Pink cites three reasons for the forthcoming rise of the right brain: “Abundance, Asia, and Automation.” If your work can be computerized, outsourced, or cast quickly away, you should rethink your field, Pink advises. Instead, he proposes, the jobs of the future will involve more creative activities, careers that focus on innovation and the human touch. In a very methodical, left-brained way, Pink breaks down the most important right-brain functions to six “senses”: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. He explains that developing these skills will aid in making your professional skills more unique and desirable–an important investment in this economic climate.Pink explains, “Design–that is, utility enhanced by significance–has become an essential aptitude for personal fulfillment and professional success.” However, good design does more than just please the eye; it can also carry enormous weight on individual and international scales. I’m not just talking about Project Runway; Pink hypothesizes that if Palm Beach County in Florida had incorporated a different design for their 2000 election ballots, perhaps presidential candidate Al Gore would have won that county–and the state, and the country. In downtown Philadelphia, Pink finds the Charter High School of Architecture and Design, a public high school that focuses upon art and design while also providing students with a more traditional education. Eighty percent of these inner-city students–one-third of which could read and do math at a third-grade level upon entering the school–will go on to enroll in two- and four-year schools, including some of the most prestigious art schools in the nation. If you don’t live in inner-city Philadelphia, you can still exercise your design abilities by visiting websites where you can design shoes or even a typeface based on your own handwriting. Next stop: Freelancing for the electoral board.Storytelling is another important tool for future personal and professional success. Story is “context enriched by emotion,” and, according to Pink, “the ability to encapsulate, contextualize, and emotionalize has become vastly more important in the Conceptual Age.” He describes the attempts of doctors and medical schools to incorporate narrative in modern medicine to establish more complete doctor-patient relations, and finds that they are as a rule successful. In the same way, stories are becoming increasingly important for businesses to convey their mission and to reach out to their audience. To exercise this “sense,” all you have to do is begin telling stories. Write a short story; if you are stymied, you could use photographs or a snippet from another work as your jumping-off point. Record the stories of friends and family on tape or video. People-watch, and create stories about these strangers.What do entrepreneurs, painters, inventors, and classical music conductors all have in common? They all exercise symphony. According to Pink, symphony “is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” This skill is all about enhancing relationships and seeing the big picture. To develop his sense of symphony, Pink takes a class in right-brained drawing. He explains, “Drawing is about seeing relationships–and then integrating these relationships into a whole.” Judging from the before and after shots of his self-portraits, the class was a rampant success; he progressed from drawing as he thought parts of his face should look, to simply penciling in the relationships between nose, eyes, and mouth–to great effect. Pink also encourages those who have trouble with this sense to listen to classical music, think of solutions to new problems, and simply brainstorm to see how the mind connects seemingly disparate ideas.Do you feel the urge to yawn when someone else does? Have you ever cried over the evening news? No, you are not a sissy; you are empathetic. Empathy is “a means of understanding other human beings,” and it is an important part of exercising the right brain. Empathy transcends culture and country; Pink cites studies showing that expressions and emotions have an inherent, universal meaning, explaining that across linguistic, geographic, and physical divides, we all have the same needs and desires. That is why “high-touch” professions such as teaching, counseling, and nursing are increasingly in demand; Pink writes, “Nursing consistently rates as the most honest and ethical profession in the United States . . . and its pay is rising faster than nearly every other job category.” To increase empathy, Pink suggests, you can enroll in an acting class, volunteer, or even just study others’ facial expressions in order to understand how they are feeling and why.Play is another overlooked but important trait in right-brainers. Pink journeys to Mumbai, India, to participate in a laughter club. The idea is that every morning before work, clubs congregate to laugh for half an hour–and such clubs are gaining in international popularity. Videogames are also becoming more eminent. Immersing oneself into the world of a game, learning its rules and interacting with other characters in order to reach goals, has real-life value. In the gaming industry, Pink notes, “companies resist segregating the disciplines of art, programming, math, and cognitive psychology and instead look for those who can piece together patches of many disciplines and weave them together into a larger tapestry.” Pink lists several popular videogames to increase your playfulness. You could also try your own version of the Rainbow Test, an alternative SAT discussed in the book, by cutting the captions out of cartoons and asking your friends to fill in their own. Such simple games work wonders for improving one’s humor and wit, and I for one would love to improve my friends’ senses of humor.Moreover, as our society becomes more abundant, we have the time and means to pursue deeper meaning. Introducing spirituality into the workplace has actually proven useful in terms of productivity; Pink reports that “companies that acknowledged spiritual values and aligned them with company goals outperformed those that did not.” Pink found that walking a labyrinth did more for his ADD-addled mind than yoga or meditation; however, focusing on your goals and intentions is what is important, not the means you choose of discovering them. In the search for joyfulness, Pink suggest, try displaying gratitude; you could write a letter thanking someone for something, anything, they have done to impact your life, or you could dedicate your work (silently or openly) to someone you admire. Another way to implement the search for meaning on a regular basis is to plan a certain day off, or even just a quiet moment or two, to enjoy yourself and to think about who you are, what you want to do, and the steps you can take to get there.Perhaps the most useful parts of the book are the end-of-chapter exercises Pink suggests to implement the practices he discusses. A good rule of thumb is to do as the professionals do: study industry magazines and books; visit conferences, museums, and festivals; keep a notebook recording good (and bad) examples of creative work; collect photographs and pictures, videos, pieces of colorful or textured cloth, trinkets–anything that inspires you. Immerse yourself in a more creative world, Pink advises, and you will carve out a niche for yourself in the ever-evolving job market.For every skill, he lists several online tests of these senses, such as empathy, humor, and spirituality and well-being–what left-brainer wouldn’t jump at the chance to quantify otherwise unquantifiable results? However, for the lower-tech among us, he also recommends books on relevant topics. Though he wrote this book before the current economic crisis, Daniel Pink’s advice has never been more useful. In stressing creativity and originality, Pink guides readers to become more complete, “whole-minded” individuals that succeed on both personal and professional levels.As Bennett Peji, an environmental designer, writes in The Essential Principles of Graphic Design,”Surround yourself with good people who tell good stories about other good people. . . . Purely by association, good things are bound to follow.”Daniel H. Pink is author of Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us; The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need; and Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself. The former speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore, Pink resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their three children.

⭐The point the author makes is solid, but this could have been an essay or a long article. I believe on some level that the author is absolutely right, to thrive and succeed today, we need to think differently about our career than our parents did and make a living producing work that can not be outsourced. The portfolio exercises are fun Edward de Bono derivatives, a couple of writing and drawing challenges were genuinely fun and surprising. However – in my view we will always need people who choose the “traditional” career paths, as they are often the ones who can build scalable businesses. We cant all work in service businesses, cutting each others hair, polishing each others shoes, doing each others advertising campaigns. Moreover, this kind of book will always be preaching to the choir. A programmer, doctor or solicitor is unlikely to prioritize time to read this book, and thus, this is a book for people already working in the creative right-brained field of business, giving themselves a self-congratulatory pat on the back for being smart enough to choose a right-brained career path. (Myself included. :)I would have given more stars, but the chapters kept losing me for lack of succinctness, the same points are made many times and from many angles. This is of course the mark of a well researched and intelligent piece of work, but I would have enjoyed a tighter edit more.

⭐In this beautifully written book, Daniel Pink points to a shift that we already knew was coming. We have already moved from the industrial age, where manufacturing jobs dominated our societies, to the information age, where the programmers, engineers and medical professionals commandeered our economies into prosperity. However, three things – abundance, asia and automation – is pushing us to the next shift. One that the author calls the Conceptual Age, where creative, synergistic skills, domain of our Right Brain in physiological term, are becoming increasingly important. This book examines what this means, what will the key skills be and how our social preferences, education systems, jobs and ideas need to change to account for this shift.I shall recommend this book as an essential read for business decision makers, educators and public policy professionals, or anyone wanting to make sense of the future without necessarily wanting to stand in the way of progress.

⭐Great book from one of my favourite journos. A great gift for the creative in your life….of a parting blow for an inattentive, but detail obsesseive soon to be ex-boyfriend.

⭐I originally bought the audio book and was so impressed I bought the book…I sound like Victor Kiam. The book highlights the changes in society and the business world towards right brain thinking. The global aspects of the changes to industry were enlightening. A good read and as a right brainer evidences that I’m in the right place

⭐Highly recommended by Oprah Winfrey’s in her interview with the author so I bought and the first chapter is great. I need to train the right side of my brain to

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