The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

Our efforts at education and training, as well as management and leadership, are aimed almost exclusively at promoting brainbound thinking. Beginning in elementary school, we are taught to sit still, work quietly, think hard—a model for mental activity that will prevail during all the years that follow, through high school and college and into the workplace. The skills we develop and the techniques we are taught are those that involve using our heads: committing information to memory, engaging in internal reasoning and deliberation, endeavoring to self-discipline and self-motivate. Meanwhile, there is no corresponding cultivation of our ability to think outside the brain—no instruction, for instance, in how to tune in to the body’s internal signals, sensations that can profitably guide our choices and decisions. We’re not trained to use bodily movements and gestures to understand highly conceptual subjects like science and mathematics, or to come up with novel and original ideas. Schools don’t teach students how to restore their depleted attention with exposure to nature and the outdoors, or how to arrange their study spaces so that they extend intelligent thought. Teachers and managers don’t demonstrate how abstract ideas can be turned into physical objects that can be manipulated and transformed in order to achieve insights and solve problems. Employees aren’t shown how the social practices of imitation and vicarious learning can shortcut the process of acquiring experti...