Genius Health

Kafka is one of 161 inspired-and inspiring-minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks.

What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

The Creative Cure is a call for a revolution, fostering change where all change must begin: within. This internal change will allow you to express your own creative gifts, cultivate happiness, and experience the unique feeling of fulfillment that only a creative practice can offer. Packed with powerful, transformative exercises, this book is the medicine you need to find and reinvigorate your creative soul.

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high.

We've all seen the happiness on the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play.

You are smarter than you think. In fact, your subconscious holds the same mental powers as some of the greatest minds in history. Mind development pioneer Dr. Win Wenger noticed a clear pattern. He found that geniuses are little more than ordinary people who have stumbled upon some knack or technique for widening their channels of attention. New research suggests that the superior achievements of famous thinkers may have been more the result of mental conditioning than genetic superiority. Now, with The Einstein Factor, you can learn to condition your mind in the same way.

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more. Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally.

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Tim Harford explains that the human qualities we value – creativity, responsiveness, resilience – are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them.

How can we create and market creative works that achieve longevity? Holiday explores this mystery by drawing on his extensive experience working with businesses and creators such as Google, American Apparel, and the author John Grisham as well as his interviews with the minds behind some of the greatest perennial sellers of our time.

This is an audio summary or Mindset, a book that discusses the differences between people with a fixed mindset versus those with a growth mindset. This book demonstrates how we can achieve our goals by changing our mindset.

In this audiobook, Ellen Langer uses her innovative theory of mindulness, introduced in her influential earlier book, to dramatically enhance the way we learn. Mindful learning takes place with an awareness of context and of the ever-changing nature of information. Learning without this awareness, has severely limited uses and often sets on up for failure. With stunning applications to skills as diverse as paying attention, CPR, investment analysis, psychotherapy, or playing a musical instrument, this audiobook is for all who are curious and intellectually adventurous.

Most people would like to be more creative, more persuasive and more attractive. For years gurus and life coaches have urged people to improve their lives by changing the way they think and behave, but scientific research has revealed that many of their techniques, from group brainstorming to visualization, are ineffective. Fortunately, in 59 Seconds, psychologist Richard Wiseman is on hand to provide fast-acting, myth-busting scientific answers to a huge range of everyday problems.

Do you often find yourself grappling with complex decisions, feeling overwhelmed by the barrage of information in today's world? Are you at a loss when faced with debates, unsure how to dissect arguments or counter misinformation? Perhaps you've realized that in your professional or personal life, clear and critical thinking is not just an asset, but a necessity. Today the ability to dissect, analyze, and reason effectively has never been more crucial. Yet, for many, these skills remain just out of reach. This audiobook offers a straightforward advice and practical tips.

Based on a far-reaching study of thousands of individuals, Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware of and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: During much of the day, we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, and during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

Award-winning author Michael Harris examines why our experience of solitude has become so impoverished and how we may grow to love it again in the frenzy of our digital landscape. Solitude is an optimistic and encouraging story about discovering true quiet inside the city, inside the crowd, inside our busy and urbane lives. Harris guides listeners away from a life of ceaseless pings toward a state of measured connectivity, one that balances solitude and companionship.

Creativity defines the human experience. It sparks achievement and innovation in art, science, technology, business, sports, and virtually every activity. It has fueled human progress on a global level, but it equally is the source of profound personal satisfaction for individual creators. And yet the origins of creative inspiration and the methods by which great creators tap into it have long been a source of mystery, spoken of in esoteric terms, our rational understanding shrouded in complex jargon. Until now.

We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook - or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google or Facebook or Uber. We see software coders becoming millionaires or billionaires before age 30 and feel we are failing if we are not one of them.

In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis and ascended to prominent, dangerous roles. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

In The Daemon: A Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self, Anthony Peake proposes that people consist of not one but two separate consciousnesses - everyday consciousness and that of The Daemon, a higher being that seems to possess knowledge of future events. Drawing upon phenomena such as déjà vu and near-death experiences, he explores the ways that our Daemon breaks through into our consciousness and can subconsciously impact upon our decisions.