The Intuition Toolkit (Joel Pearson, S&S)

Forget the idea of intuition as a sixth sense or any of the other mysterious connotations that many gurus and self-help books have been portraying for decades. Instead, in The Intuition Toolkit: The new science of knowing what without knowing why, professor and neuroscientist Joel Pearson defines and explores intuition in a strictly scientific manner. In his first book, the author—who was the first to develop a scientific test to measure intuition—shares 10 years of research. By demystifying intuition while providing a practical guide for safer decision-making, Pearson helps businesspeople, parents, high-risk professionals, or anyone willing to trust their gut to make better choices by using information stored in the unconscious. The book explores five considerations to avoid what Pearson calls ‘misintuition’: self-awareness, mastery, impulses and addiction, low probability, and environment. He backs up these principles with case studies, including a life-or-death situation in which a mountain climber had to trust his body signals to abort a Mount Everest climb in 1984. The book also contains a flowchart to guide the reader in using intuition safely and explores emotional intelligence (EI) and artificial intelligence (AI). The author warns, however, against the trend of completely outsourcing decision-making to AI, asking: If we don’t protect our biological intuition, could we end up losing it? The Intuition Toolkit will appeal to fans of Malcolm Gladwell and those who were fascinated by the movie Inception, much like the author.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Nadia Heisler is an emerging writer with a background in journalism and human resources management. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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