Download New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change AudioBook Free
Follow a crawling baby around and you will see that right from the beginning, nothing excites us more than something new and different. Our unique human brains are biologically primed to engage with and even generate novelty, from our ancestors' first bow and arrow to the latest tablet computer. This "neophilia" has empowered us to thrive in a world of cataclysmic change, however now, we confront an unprecedented deluge of new things, from products to information, which includes quadrupled in the past 30 years and shows no indication of slowing. To prevent our great durability from learning to be a weakness in today's fast-paced world, we should reconnect with neophilia's grand evolutionary purpose: to help us learn, create, and adjust to new things which may have real value and dismiss the rest as interruptions. In New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change, Winifred Gallagher, acclaimed behavioral technology writer and writer of Rapt, needs us to the cutting-edge laboratories and old archeological sites where researchers explore our special affinity for novelty and change. Although no other kinds can rival our capacity to explore and experiment with the new, we individuals differ in how we balance the conflicting needs to avoid risk and approach rewards. Most of us are modest "neophiles", however, many 15 percent folks are diehard "neophiliacs", who've an innate interest for new encounters, and another 15 percent are mindful "neophobes", who make an effort to steer clear of them - a 1-5-1 proportion that benefits the group's well-being. Wherever you take a seat on the continuum, New demonstrates how to utilize this special human gift to navigate more skillfully through our quickly changing world by concentrating on the new things that basically matter.
