“The two hemispheres of our brain don’t operate as on-off switches— one powering down as soon as the other starts lighting up. Both halves play a role in nearly everything we do.”—Daniel Pink. You are better informed while making decisions that matter in your trading practice when you resource both your logical AND intuitive brains.
Not the newest publication to hit the bookstores and Amazon, but one we believe you’ll find very thought provoking. This book focuses on the power of whole brain thinking and how the right brain will play an important role in the future in one’s success. Instead of summarizing or reviewing the entire book, we will limit the overview to several of the key points made in Chapter 6, ‘Symphony’ because it provides insight to Pink’s thinking.
Chapter 6 – Symphony – In this chapter, Pink demonstrates how there is far more than just focusing on the identifiable, mostly left hemisphere, facts. He discusses the importance of invention and conceptual big picture thinking.
If we were to relate Pink’s chapter entitled ‘Symphony’ to trading we might look to increasing and expanding our ability to . . .
create something new and/or different such as a new type of chart, or a way to display or interpret volume, or understand a new shape nuance in a Market Profile or Volume Profile graphic
design, create, and implement effective and relevant mind maps and checklists to assist us in our pre-session workups, session performance, and post-session debriefings or recaps
organize and assimilate similar and disparate types of information and displays into something that quantifiably helps us understand relationships between different markets, different timeframes, and different types of market activity such as a trending market versus a balancing market
understand how our behavior is key to our performance and what we need to do to elevate the level of our performance.
Today, as you know, we live in the age of information overload. Facts are at our fingertips via search engines, the media, and dialup information services actually make information less valuable while making its relevance, interpretation and understanding more valuable. In other words, it is our ability to think with our whole brain—not just left or right—that makes us unique and capable of achieving the level of performance we pursue or desire to achieve.
This book, A Whole New Mind, strongly challenges the reader to go beyond their conventional and structured ways of thinking that were developed by both upbringing and environment. Again, we believe this book is a valuable addition to any traders or investors library because it offers a helpful insight into our brains and our thinking.
Until next time . . .
