[Book] The Power of Not Thinking

The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them
by Simon Roberts
535 publishers
April 2020, 336 pages

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.

Simon Roberts is one the world’s leading anthropologists in business. He advises some of the largest global organisations, including Intel, Facebook, Spotify, Google and many other Fortune 500 companies, through his London-based consultancy, Stripe Partners. His work has been covered by the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and BBC Radio 4. This is his first book. He lives with his wife and three children in East Sussex.