The Six Senses
Chapter Analysis
Take notes on paper or annotations in your book to answer the following questions. At the conclusion of our reading you will have a brief assessment on the issues addressed below.
Chapter 4: Design
1. The author defines design as “utility enhanced by significance.” Explain what this means and provide one specific example from the reading.
2. Why might the aptitude of design be considered a fusion of both right and left brain?
Chapter 5: Story
3. Explain, according to the author, the importance of “story” in the conceptual age.
4. Provide one example of how story has become “an essential aptitude in business, medicine, and personal life. (One example for each.)
Chapter 6: Symphony
5. In describing the aptitude of symphony, the author concludes that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Explain specifically what is meant by this using either Pink’s experience in drawing his self-portrait or today’s entrepreneurs.
6. Explain briefly the significance of the boundary crosser, the inventor, and the metaphor maker as it relates to symphony. (Significance of each)
Chapter 7: Empathy
7. According to Pink, what is the difference between empathy and sympathy?
8. Explain empathy’s relation to design, story and symphony.
9. Pink describes “the toggle” between detachment and attunement as the ticket to the future. Explain what is meant by this.
Chapter 8: Play
10. Explain how games, humor and joyfulness are a growing factor in today’s marketplace. Provide one specific example for each and briefly explain its relation to the right hemisphere.
Chapter 9: Meaning
11. Summarize the three factors Pink cites as “the perfect storm of circumstances” that is making today’s search for meaning both more possible and necessary in the conceptual age.
12. According to Dr. Martin Seligman;
a. What main factors contribute to happiness?
b. What is the difference between the “Pleasant Life”, the “Good Life” and the “pursuit of meaning?”
Extra questions
Design
13. Pink states that design has been democratized in American culture. What does this mean?
14. According to Pink, how did bad ballot design ultimately decide the 2000 presidential election?
Empathy
8. Contrast computers with people concerning the aptitude of symphony.
9. Pink describes empathy as “more than a vocational skill. He describes it as a “ethic for living.” Explain this statement using one specific example discussed in the book.
10. Explain the gender difference in empathy attributed to differences in brain structure and “systematizing and empathizing.”