The Power of Not Thinking

NEW BOOK 9 JULY 2020

The Power of Not Thinking

How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them

By Simon Roberts

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Blue book cover featuring an icon of a person holding their own head

Have you ever held out your hand to try and remember your PIN?
Or acted out a golf stroke before going for it?
Or just listened to your gut on a big decision?

In this brilliant new book, leading business anthropologist Simon Roberts breaks down the revolutionary idea of embodied knowledge: the information that is unconsciously picked up by our body for use in almost every area of our lives.

Drawing on his own experience working with some of the world’s leading industry experts and looking at an incredible range of real-life examples and cutting-edge science, Roberts explains the various ways in which our body acquires, retains and employs information – and shows why we should learn to trust the instincts that inform the most crucial decisions and actions in our life.

In The Power of Not Thinking, Roberts shows why Big Data doesn’t have all the answers, why there are limits to what’s possible with AI and why humans are capable of far more than we are currently led to believe.

We just have to stop thinking and trust our bodies.

"At a time when business is dazzled by the idea of Big Data - and popular culture is rushing to embrace the disembodied world of cyberspace - Roberts offers a brilliantly powerful case for looking at the physical world we inhabit. Lively, provocative and informative, The Power of Not Thinking explains the root meaning of "embodied" knowledge in a way that has implications for business executives and policy makers working in any sphere. If you are handling Big Data, or hoping that technology can solve your problems, you should read this - and learn the power of anthropology to show how our entire ecosystem works, including our bodies."

Gillian Tett

/ Chair Editorial Board, Editor-at-large, US – The Financial Times

"This book is as timely as it is important. Bodies have always mattered but it takes a voice as clear as Simon Roberts' to remind us of just how very much, and why embodiment should be a critical part of all our conversations about the future."

Genevieve Bell

/ Director, 3a Institute, Australian National University

"In the social sciences, the idea that individuals act based on rational expectations has been dominant for decades. The natural sciences and engineering have a similar view: We are our brains, and we can describe our world as neural processes that we can scan and simulate in computers. Our world is in our heads. Not so, argues Simon Roberts in his new excellent and delightfully readable book. Knowledge can be visceral and works in ways we can't describe as rational and linear. If Roberts is right, we need to change our mind about who we are and how we find our way around in the world."

Christian Madsbjerg

/ Professor of Applied Humanities at The New School, Senior Fellow at The Berggruen Institute and Co-founder of Red Associates.

"It is easy to be dazzled by technology and feel that, these days, the human factor is merely a secondary consideration in our lives. We are doomed to be outgunned by Artificial Intelligence. But in this fascinating book Simon Roberts shows us that our bodies as well as our minds have a vital role to play in the contribution that human beings make. Homo sapiens is not redundant yet. And the physical is worth at least as much as the digital."

Stefan Stern

/ former FT columnist and author of "How To Be A Better Leader"

"Roberts, a business anthropologist, argues that if we only think with our minds, we are throwing away an invaluable resource, and denying how we truly learn and achieve experience"

Gianfranco Chicco

/ The Craftsman: Issue No. 023 — July 2020

"Without getting technical and without drawing too much on the philosophical concepts, The Power of Not Thinking discusses how information is unconsciously picked up by our body; then remembered, used and applied to future situations. He teaches us to trust these ‘educated’ decisions"

Rebecca Wu

/ Glam Adelaide

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The Power of Not Thinking How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them

Have you ever held out your hand to try and remember your PIN? Or acted out a golf stroke before going for it? Or just listened to your gut on a big decision?