A Whole New Mind: Senses

In my last entry I said that we’d be talking about the skills needed to be successful in the Concept Age. Actually, in A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink refers to senses. This is an important distinction.

Normally, we can all see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Some of us have more heightened sensitivities than others, but we’ve been born with these abilities.

A sense can also be amplified. Think of someone with an affinity for wine. Through innate ability AND training they may become a connoisseur.

The six Concept Age senses (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning) are similar. We are all born with these abilities and through use (or lack thereof) we can alter our proficiency with them.

Like the five physical senses, no one sense is better than the other. They all provide our brains with information that we use to interpret a situation and decide how to act.

Dan covers each of theses aptitudes in a separate chapter of the book. Each chapter is broken into a section describing the sense and its application to the Concept Age and a section that gives us concrete things that we can do – exercises – to increase our sensitivity in each area.

I am going to follow his lead.

So – I have some homework to do! As soon as I finish a “design” sense exercise or two, I’ll tell you about design – the first Concept Age sense.