“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.”
This starts and sets the tone for the thought-provoking best-seller A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. In an easy-to-read way, Dan outlines the changes that are underway, as well as how to develop ourselves in order to thrive in this new era.
Half-a-Mind Is Not Enough
A Whole New Mind is based extensively on the classic left/right brain metaphor — and I must say it’s a very useful one in making the point of the book.
In the last few decades, most of the thriving professionals were those who excelled in “left-brain thinking” — information processing, sequential thinking, analysis, logic, organization, numeric ability and attention to detail.
Lately, however, information is getting easier and easier to acquire. Knowledge that was once locked behind hard-to-earn degrees is becoming widely and cheaply available. In this new world, a great deal of the information processing we performed can now be cheaply automated or assigned to high-qualified professionals overseas — for a fraction of the cost.
Although “left brain skills” continue to be useful, they’re not enough anymore. The rules of the game are changing.
Right Brain Rising
In order to thrive in this new era of abundance of cheap processing capabilities, we must acquire a new set of skills. These skills are usually associated with “right brain characteristics”, such as holistic thinking, synthesis, intuition, estimation and emotional literacy. This paragraph from the book sums it up well:
“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. 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.”
If this sounds a bit fluffy for you, that’s exactly the point. They only sound like that because we’re too much in the habit of using only our ’sharp’, left-brain mind. We’ve been using much less brainpower than we can. That’s a luxury we can’t afford anymore.
A Framework for Thriving in This New Era
The good news is that those “right brain skills” are already natural to humans — they only got atrophied.
In the book, Dan groups these skills in six aptitudes, exploring each one of them in detail. And this is what I most enjoy about the book: you can use the six aptitudes as a framework for developing and assessing how your skills measure up.
Here are the six aptitudes:
- Design (not just function). Create solutions that go beyond providing the desired utility, but that are enriched with significance and pleasantness.
- Story (not just argument). Create compelling narratives, enriching dry facts with emotion.
- Symphony (not just focus). Synthesize and put pieces together, combine seemingly unrelated ideas and be able to see the big picture.
- Empathy (not just logic). Be in the other guy’s shoes and learn to intuit feelings and read emotions.
- Play (not just seriousness). Blur the solid line between work and play and embrace well-being, lightheartedness, laughter, games and humor.
- Meaning (not just accumulation). Transcend the quest for material accumulation and pursue more significant desires. Find meaning in life and develop your intuition.
Contrary to what I initially thought, as ’soft’ as these aptitudes look, you can methodically develop them. At the end of each chapter, Dan proposes exercises and provides additional resources so you can further pursue each one of them.
Downloadable Book Summaries
As I usually do with great books, I summarized it using mind mapping. Mind mapping is, in itself, a ‘whole-brain activity’, so it was particularly fun creating one for this book. Enjoy!
Get the mind map for A Whole New Mind:
Hi Luciano,
I LOVED this book! I feel it explained things from a different perspective and have recommended it to others. I was surprised to find out that it was not the MBA degree students being sought after anymore, rather the Master of Fine Arts students! That in itself shows how things are shifting. Thanks Luciano! I’m going to check out your mind map now. Stumbled!
Love, Jenny
Hi Jenny,
I also loved that MFAs (Master of Fine Arts) are becoming increasingly more popular these days. That part of the book — together with other materials I’ve been reading — sparkled again the desire in me to draw and do other ‘useless things that don’t lead me anywhere’. No guilt.
Hey Luciano!
Nurturing your creativity spreads joy to other parts of life. Thanks again for featuring this book — it made me realize I would love to read it again!
I would NEVER think that drawing is useless. Anything that sparks creativity is so wonderful and is helpful in relaxing and building self esteem. I ALWAYS admired people that could draw and would stare open mouthed at school at classmates’ “doodles” that actually looked like something!
Love, Jenny
Luciano, this book is definitely on my must read list and your mind map only reinforces that!
I personally have gained so much from studying music and theater even though I don’t do those things professionally. I think people who can synthesize information and recognize patterns among disparate subjects have huge advantages in this information age.
Thanks for a great review.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have another one of Daniel Pink’s books ‘The Adventures of Johnny Bunko’ (about careers) on my desk which I’ve been meaning to read. I will do so this weekend and then get ‘A Whole New Mind’. Cheers.
Luciano,
I, too, just finished reading A Whole New Mind and found it interesting and a worthwhile read. I don’t think any of Pink’s individual ideas were new, but he did a great job of (using his right brain and) pulling all of those ideas into something new.
I, too, was planning to summarize it in MindManager this weekend, but now I don’t have to!! Thanks for the great map.
Dear Luciano:
Great blog post and map. Glad I discovered your blog. Where do you find the time?
Best wishes–Roger
How about *drawing* a little mindmap and put it here?
Another great mindmap summary! This looks like a really great book.
Thanks much for the pointer!
Regarding drawing…
@Jenny: I was one of those like your classmates!
I used to doodle and draw all the time during classes! And you know what? Contrary to what everybody used to tell me, I’m pretty sure that actually helped me a lot in learning! Whole-brain activation, I guess that what it was.
Lately, however, I somehow let it slide and I’m not drawing much anymore. My ‘return to drawing’ is long overdue, but now I finally feel like starting again!
@Fier: Yes, yes, I hear ya! See my response to Jenny above. Thanks for the extra push!
Thanks everybody, glad you enjoyed the post!
@Julian: I’m curious about ‘The Adventures of Johnny Bunko’, as it seems it’s not a regular book, but more like a comic book. Is that right? Please let me know your impressions of it when you’re done!
@Roger C Parker: Glad to have you here, Roger. I’ve watched one of your webinars recently and enjoyed it a lot. “Where do I find the time”? Well, I don’t post that often, so it’s not a huge achievement to post these every now and then. But thanks for the compliment!
Hi Luciano,
Good summary. Is the mindmap compatible with iMindmap?
@Musaed Abrahams: You can import the Freemind version into iMindmap and it works just fine (Menu File > Import).
Are you open to requests?
Do you intend to mindmap “Stumbling on Happiness”?
Well, I admit to not having read the book, but I’m afraid I’m going to put a damper on the whole thing. As a scientist (ok, I suspect that statement in and of itself probably invalidates my comments in many of your minds), I can state with some certainty that both Luciano and Mr. Pink have a stereotypical idea of the practice of science, technology etc. Anyone who believes that scientists, computer programmers, technologists etc are not creative (right brain) people whose ideas occur in sudden insights has scant knowledge of science. To use the paradigm in vogue, it’s a mixture of left and right brain thinking.
In everyone – except for a very few individuals with neurological problems – the brain has a natural tendency for pattern recognition and simplification; there’s simply too much information for the brain to process and store it all. This is a neurological fact, whether you accept it or not. Ones aptitude for logical and rational thought helps stop the brain make grave errors through this habit it has of pattern matching.
Before reading Mr. Pink’s book, I would suggest people read something about how the brain actually works. An excellent little read is “Your Brain, The Missing Manual” published by O’Reilly. This will give you a nice introduction to the topic.
The fact that we have increasing amounts of information is NOT, I repeat NOT an argument to forgo rigor. The fact that the brain so easily fools itself makes it imperative that rigorous mathematical (yes, left brain) statistical techniques are used to correctly seek out, detect and analyze patterns. This was a lesson learned the hard way by cosmologists 20-30 years ago, and one that lawyers still exploit today.
Adrian
@fier: Glad you asked, I do intend to mind map that book at some point, yes — It’s one of the best I recently read!
The problem, however, is that I don’t own the book. I listened to the audio version and didn’t take notes (something that I regret now). In fact, it’s exactly because of this book that I decided not to listen to long audio books anymore. Since then, I’m keeping my listening to short podcasts only.
@Adrian Burd: Thanks for sharing your opinion!
I have an enormous respect for people such as scientists and computer programmers: as a computer programmer myself, it would be hard not to! I also don’t regard right-brain thinking as being superior to left-brain thinking — far from it!
The fact is that computer programming, if done properly, is a highly-creative endeavor — no doubt about that. Top software companies recognize that and pay creative programmers their weight in gold. I am confident that the same is true for science and other similar pursuits.
But it’s also my experience that computer programming can be performed in a cold, ‘left-brain-only’ way. It’s not the most effective or inventive manner, but it’s doable. And, unfortunately, people that manage to survive in their jobs without being that creative are still somewhat common. And those are the ones that won’t be able to thrive anymore according to the book.
The point of the book is not that we should drop left-brain thinking, but that we should complement it with right-brain thinking.
As an example, I abominate things such as pseudoscience. As I see it, in pseudoscience, the ‘right-brain thinking’ replaces left-brain thinking and rigor, and that’s where things go wrong.
And thanks for the book recommendation — will definitely check it out!
Hi Luciano, about The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, it’s a manga style book covering some keys to your future in terms of careers. It’s an easy read, only takes an hour or so but quite enjoyable. Puts some good ideas forward.
Luciano,
I love that you publish your book mindmaps. I have been doing this for awhile now and will consider publishing some of mine as well.
Well done and great example.
Cecilia
http://www.getinpower.com
Hey Luciano,
I’ve been wanting to read this book. I’m tight on cash now because I’m looking for a job and blogging at the same time, but maybe I’ll just sit at the bookstore and read it
. I love the fact that you use mindmaps. I did a post on Bizskoolblog on how to use mindmaps to find your dream job, and it seems to get more page views than any other post I have. Anyways, great stuff.