A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (original 2006; edition 2006)

I was given this book when I joined a group called Create Huntington. It was given as sort of a home-work assignment as we work toward building a more creative community in my small hometown of Huntington, WV.

Overall, I think Pink hits the nail on the head though, truth be told, I began reading the book with a bit of animosity considering he attacks my profession, Software Engineering, right off the bat. Fortunately I think he misses the mark in regards to that particular field in his failure to understand the amount of creativity that is needed within it.

Pink makes a simple but effective case, in general, for why manufacturing jobs and anything else that just takes people and time won't be the future of the US economy. We can't even begin to compete against nations such as India and China where they have millions of people training in the traditional "powerhouse fields" of medicine or programming as well as nearly endless supplies of lower wage laborers who can assemble things just as well as anyone in the states.

Instead our future is in providing creativity and generating value out of the leisure time can afford to apply to the products and services the rest of the world is creating.

Granted, I don't think that we will survive just be being creative; we need to become the producers of things as well but the only way we will be able to leverage our production is by making the end product stand out and the only way we can do that is by applying our creativity to the problems the products solve.

We don't own the market on creativity but, as a people, we have more time and freedom to pursue it so we need to lead the way before we find ourselves being left behind. ( )

I am not a self-help fan. I read this for MLA 2010. I like some of the points and stories from it, and I would personally like to feel like more of a synthetic thinker, since I mostly think of myself as analytic. He's a dynamic reader and speaker. ( )

Pink has a fundamentally decent, and possibly true, point--that in order to succeed, today's workers need to be more creative than ever before, because all of the logic-driven drone-work will be done by, well, drones--but his point gets buried in this pop-psych, new-agey rhetoric. His advice on what sorts of traits will be necessary seem obvious to me--they boil down to play nice with others, make connections between people and ideas, and have fun--but he did lose me at the end where he advocates for spiritual enlightenment and the search for meaning as a surefire tactic to get ahead in this new, conceptual age.

Each chapter is devoted to one of his six traits, and each chapter ends with a hippy-dippy "portfolio" (workbook) section. Readers are instructed to do things like keeping a journal of every metaphor you encounter, taking Emotional IQ tests online, and measuring yourself on the Spiritual Transcendence scale.

If the idea of professional development via Laughter Clubs isn't enough to turn you off this book, I warn anyone of Asian heritage: he's really pissed at you about the whole outsourcing thing. In fact, he believes you are one of the three reasons we're moving from the Information Age to this Conceptual Age: Abundance, Asia, and Automation. Seriously. Even after we're out of the early section on Why We're In This Mess, the text is peppered with lines like "before the Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something first must be imagined or invented" and "But the sort of emotionally intelligent care [nurses] often provide is precisely the sort of thing that's impossible to outsource or automate. Radiologists in Bangalore can read X-rays. But it's hard to deliver Empathy via fiber-optic cable." And yes, that's Empathy with a capital E.

Now I have to deconstruct why my boss gave this to me: does she think I'm too analytical? Does she think I'm too creative? or is this her subtle way of saying she's on to my plan to use my whole brain to take over my library? ( )

I liked this book. It presented a whole new way of thinking. The book has been planned and written very well, very systematically.

The concepts are really good, and what I like, is that you can go into sections and chapters independently. This makes it great for reading later. I was pleasantly surprised to read about The Laughter Clubs. I have seen them in Bombay - yes, I refuse to call the city Mumbai - and I have always been bemused by them. Yet, the Zen Masters do say that humour and laughter can unlock the brain and can make it open to mystical union.

The wealth of resources is fantastic, and allows one to go deeper into the subjects. To me, this is the greatest thing about the book.

Equally, this is an easy read, and is a great way to get into the subject without strain or fuss. There is no obvious right-left brain bias! ( )

A Whole New Mind audio book by Daniel H. Pink is entertaining and thought provoking, however I disagree with some of his arguments and conclusions. He suggests those who use their right-brain more will get the better jobs in the 21st century. This maybe true but his argument that left-brain activities are becoming less valuable due to abundance, Asia(low cost overseas workers) and automation are flawed. For example, while right-brain activities may keep us one step ahead of Asia what is to stop them from also engaging in more right-brain activities? His other two arguments have similar holes. That said the book is still worth reading for the right-brain exercises and his general discussion on left vs right brain thinking. This is one audio you should read amazon.com’s reviews. ( )