WE KNOW LIKE NOTHING

That’s what a doctor said recently when I asked him about current knowledge on the human mind. He exaggerated of course. Like he always does when talking about diet and the amount one should safely drink.

Since I’ve started studying the subject prior to writing the book on thinking in business and how to think more effectively, I’ve realised this is true. If we knew as little about the body as we do about the human brain we would regard the heart as a no-go area  and the word bypass would be a term reserved exclusively in Transport circles.

US Journalist, Dan Hurley’s book “Smarter - The New Science of Building Brain Power” describes an attempt to discover whether we can and how we can improve our brain power. Perplexingly despite the number of professors and terribly clever people he talks to it is pretty well a journey into terra incognito.

That’s the bad news but here’s the good news.  It’s the top headline in everything but the tabloids. People are going on “good fats” as they seem to speed up the metabolism and make you smarter. Pundits like Brian Cox reflect there’s more going on in our head than there is in the Universe. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize-winning psychologist, at 80 years old bestrides the lecture circuit and does so to sell-out audiences.

Our knowledge about the way we think is improving, indeed compounding daily and people are beginning to realise you can neither judge a book by its cover nor a candidate by their A*s. We are looking for a complexity of intelligence and an ability to think fast, slow, empathetically, decisively, creatively and smartly. Understanding thinking has gone to the top of the business agenda. Get with it.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 7th 2014