Book Review: A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

I am logical.  No, I am creative.  No, I am logical.  No, I am creative.  Do you ever feel like you are pulled between these two sides of your brain?  Some days, you feel a little more logical – spreadsheets and word docs make you happy, while the thought of having to draw a happy face makes you frown.

Well, Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, invites you to re-think the sides of the brain.  He takes you on a journey through research and brain MRI’s that show how you respond to certain stimuli.  The book is a fascinating look at the way our brain functions, responds to events, triggers memories and pulls the pieces of situations into a coherent picture that we understand.

The design industry uses the right brain to help create new art pieces, new furniture and who knows what else.  The left brain is our logic side – calculations and critical thinking are found here.  However, Daniel identifies and stipulates, that the best individual is one who can pull the right information from the appropriate side of the brain and put it together to fit the situation.  Sometimes we need more logic and less creativity and vice versa.

He explains that when someone has a stroke on the right side of the brain it affects their left side and vice versa.  Sometimes we encounter people who appear to not understand what we are saying – that might actually be because that person doesn’t have full use of that particular part of the brain.  I could be jesting about something and the person may take me literally.

Daniel suggests that we need to develop “a whole new mind” to evaluate situations and events that utilize both sides of the brain in equal amounts.  This book focuses on the idea that right brain thinking will be depended on heavily in the future as we grow and change the way we interact.

This book was fantastic!  If you are a research junkie, you will not be disappointed.  If you work in a logical business (engineering for example), I would highly suggest that you challenge your staff or leaders to read this book and begin implementing an alternative way of thinking.  Pick it up today.

Other books by Daniel Pink – Drive, Free Agent Nation and The Adventures of Johnny Bunko