Steven Kotler’s new book, “The Art of Impossible,” shares territory with two of his previous books [“The Rise of Superman” and “Stealing Fire” (the latter co-authored with Jamie Wheal,)] but it also takes a step back to reveal a broader landscape than those previous books. And this brings us to our final question: Why would evolution create a state of consciousness that amplifies all of these particular skills? His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 50 languages, and has appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal, TIME, and Harvard Business Review.

The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer : Kotler The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer : Kotler

You want to spend a bit of time playing around at the intersections of curiosities before taking this public. Over time, this means more patterns, more dopamine, more motivation, and, eventually, a bit of expertise. Kotler has studied hundreds of high-performing people from different professions for the past three decades. Of course, Feynman decides to train this particular weakness by hanging out at strip clubs—but that’s a different story.There’s a powerful relationship between hand motion and memory, which means, for learning, pen and paper triumph over laptop and keyboard every time. Curiosity is another driver because it makes us wonder if there might be more resources across that ocean. It decreases the reactivity of the amygdala, decreases the volume of the medial temporal cortex, and increases the volume of the right insular cortex. The author may be aware that many of his readers will have fatigue from reading the same stories and examples. The medial temporal cortex is involved in many aspects of perception, suggesting that having a purpose alters the way the brain filters incoming information, while a larger right insular cortex has been shown to protect against depression and correlate with a significant number of well-being measures.

The Art of Impossible Free Summary by Steven Kotler - getAbstract The Art of Impossible Free Summary by Steven Kotler - getAbstract

They want to be in control of their own time (autonomy), they want to work on projects that interest them (curiosity/passion), and they want to work on projects that matter (meaning and purpose). They’re the feats that no one, including ourselves, at least for a while, ever imagined we’d be capable of accomplishing. These networks are ancient devices, found in all mammals, that correspond to the behavior they’re designed to produce. And we’ll use this information to significantly accelerate ourselves down the path toward impossible.

To make things more manageable, scientists split our psychological drivers into two categories: extrinsic and intrinsic. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. So much time, energy, and literature in the self-improvement domain have been spent on ideas around personality.

The Art of Impossible summary - Blinkist The Art of Impossible summary - Blinkist

In elementary faculty, in coordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject—but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us, it is only an inveterate habit—the habit of inferiority to our full self—that is bad. And the next day, those same friends would head into the mountains and do something that for all of recorded history had never been done and that nobody believed ever would be done.

Inspirational and aspirational, pragmatic and accessible, The Art of Impossible is a life-changing experience disguised as a how-to manual for peak performance that anyone can use to shoot for the stars . Drive, the subject of the next two chapters, refers to powerful emotional motivators such as curiosity, passion, and purpose. Then, we take what we’ve learned and use it to train a wide variety of people, from members of the US special forces to executives at Fortune 100 companies to the general public.