A Whole New Mind (Book Summary)

A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink

INTRODUCTION

• 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.
• Thanks to an array of forces — material abundance that is deepening our nonmaterial yearnings, globalization [Asia] that is shipping white-collar work overseas, and powerful technologies [Automation] that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether — we are entering a new age.
• 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

PART ONE The Conceptual Age

One RIGHT BRAIN RISING

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Two ABUNDANCE, ASIA, and AUTOMATION

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Three HIGH CONCEPT, HIGH TOUCH

• Now, as the forces of Abundance, Asia, and Automation deepen and intensify, the curtain is rising on Act III. Call this act the Conceptual Age. The main characters now are the creator and the empathizer, whose distinctive ability is mastery of R-Directed [Right-Directed] Thinking.
• In short, we’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we’re progressing yet again — to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.
• To survive in this age, individuals and organizations must examine what they’re doing to earn a living and ask themselves three questions:
  • 1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
  • 2. Can a computer do it faster?
  • 3. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?
• High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel invention.
• The high-concept abilities of an artist are often more valuable than the easily replicated L-Directed [left-directed] skills of an entry-level business graduate.
• High touch involves the ability to empathize, 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.
• According to the latest research, IQ accounts for what portion of career success? The answer: between 4 and 10 percent.
• Meaning is the new money.
• What exactly are we supposed to do? I’ve distilled the answer to six specific high-concept and high-touch aptitudes that have become essential in this new era. I call these aptitudes “the six senses.” Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning.

PART TWO The Six Senses

INTRODUCING THE SIX SENSES

1. Not just function but also DESIGN.
2. Not just argument but also STORY.
3. Not just focus but also SYMPHONY. Putting the pieces together.
4. Not just logic but also EMPATHY.
5. Not just seriousness but also PLAY.
6. Not just accumulation but also MEANING.

Four DESIGN

• “Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.”
• “Businesspeople don’t need to understand designers better. They need to be designers.”
• “At Sony, we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance, and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.”
• In an age of abundance, nobody will come knocking unless your better mousetrap also appeals to the right side of the brain.
• A study at Georgetown University found that even if the students, teachers, and educational approach remained the same, improving a school’s physical environment could increase test scores by as much as 11 percent.
• Buy a small notebook and begin carrying it with you wherever you go. When you see great design, make a note of it. Do the same for flawed design.
• Be sure to include the design of experiences as well — buying a cup of coffee, taking a trip on an airplane, going to an emergency room.
• Think extensively, not intensively.
• “The proliferation of mass customization of consumer products,” designer David Small told me, “will have a powerful and empowering effect on how ordinary people see design.”
• The four basics of effective graphic design:
  • Contrast.
  • Repetition.
  • Alignment.
  • Proximity. (Items relating to each other should be grouped close together.)

Five STORY

• When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.
• The hero’s journey has three main parts: Departure, Initiation, and Return.
  • The hero hears a call, refuses it at first, and then crosses the threshold into a new world.
  • During Initiation, he faces stiff challenges and stares into the abyss. But along the way — usually with the help of mentors who give the hero a divine gift — he transforms and becomes at one with his new self.
  • Then he returns, becoming the master of two worlds, committed to improving each.
• The hero’s journey is the underlying story of this book.
  • It begins with the knowledge worker, the master of L-Directed aptitudes. She faces a transformative crisis (wrought by Abundance, Asia, and Automation) and must answer the call (of a new way to work and live.) She resists the call at first (protesting outsourcing, denying that things need to change).
  • But eventually she crosses the threshold (into the Conceptual Age). She faces challenges and difficulties (mastering R-Directed aptitudes).
  • But she perseveres, acquires those capabilities, and returns as someone who can inhabit both worlds (she has a whole new mind).

Six SYMPHONY

• Symphony, as I call this aptitude, is the ability to put together the pieces. It 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.
• While detailed knowledge of a single area once guaranteed success, today the top rewards go to those who can operate with equal aplomb in starkly different realms. I call these people “boundary crossers.”
• “Creativity generally involves crossing the boundaries of domains.” Nicholas Negroponte of MIT. “This is because perspective is more important than IQ.
• Boundary crossers reject either/or choices and seek multiple options and blended solutions. They lead hyphenated lives filled with hyphenated jobs and enlivened by hyphenated identities.
• In his research, he found that “when tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.” This bestows unique advantages, according to Csikszentmihalyi. “A psychologically androgynous person in effect doubles his or her repertoire of responses and can interact with the world in terms of a much richer and varied spectrum of opportunities.”
• Sometimes the most powerful ideas come from simply combining two existing ideas nobody else ever thought to unite.
• Most inventions and breakthroughs come from reassembling existing ideas in new ways. Those willing to have a go at developing this symphonic ability will flourish in the Conceptual Age.
• What has become more valuable is what fast computers and low-paid overseas specialists cannot do nearly as well: integrating and imagining how the pieces fit together.
• Daniel Goleman writes about a study of executives at fifteen large companies: “Just one cognitive ability distinguished star performers from average: pattern recognition, the ‘big picture’ thinking that allows leaders to pick out the meaningful trends from a welter of information around them and to think strategically far into the future.”
• Improve your MQ (metaphor quotient) by writing down compelling and surprising metaphors you encounter.

Seven EMPATHY

• The work that remains will demand a much deeper understanding of the subtleties of human interaction than ever before.
• So which lawyers will remain? Those who can empathize with their clients and understand their true needs. Those who can sit in a negotiation and figure out the subtext of the discussion that’s coursing beneath the explicit words. And those who can look at a jury, read their expressions, and instantly know whether they’re making a persuasive case. These empathic abilities have always been important to lawyers — but now they’ve become the key point of differentiation in this and other professions.
• Ekman found that seven basic human emotions have clear facial signals: anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and happiness.
• Empathy is neither a deviation from intelligence nor the single route to it. Sometimes we need detachment; many other times we need attunement.
• “Many writers are notorious eavesdroppers,” Epel writes, citing, among others, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who kept a notebook in which he recorded “overheard conversations.”
• Seeing another human in distress — and thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I” — will hone your powers of empathy.

Eight PLAY

• Learning isn’t about memorizing isolated facts. It’s about connecting and manipulating them.
• An important 2003 study in the journal Nature found an array of benefits to playing video games. On tests of visual perception, game players scored 30 percent higher than nonplayers. Playing video games enhanced individuals’ ability to detect changes in the environment and their capacity to process information simultaneously.
• According to the research, the most effective executives deployed humor twice as often as middle-of-the-pack managers.
• “If you’re laughing, you cannot think. That is the objective we achieve in meditation.” The meditative mind is the route to joyfulness.

Nine MEANING

• Our fundamental drive, the motivational engine that powers human existence, is the pursuit of meaning.
• A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale.
• There are two practical, whole-minded ways for individuals, families, and businesses to begin the search for meaning: start taking spirituality seriously and start taking happiness seriously.
• “Happiness,” Viktor Frankl wrote, “cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
• Among the things that contribute to happiness, according to Seligman, are engaging in satisfying work, avoiding negative events and emotions, being married, and having a rich social network. Also important are gratitude, forgiveness, and optimism.
• Those who are thanked often then start to consider who in their lives they never thanked.
• The gratitude one-a-day is a way to weave thankfulness into your daily routine. Each day, at a certain moment, think of one thing for which you’re grateful.
• Select one day a week and remove yourself from the maw. Stop working. Don’t answer your email. Ignore your voice mail. Turn off your mobile phone.

AFTERWORD

• In this new era each of us must look carefully at what we do and ask ourselves:
  • Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
  • Can a computer do it faster?
  • Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age?