In this book, Howard Gardner stresses on five minds that is fundamental for survival in the present digital era and century. As we live in a digital technological world and era, inculcating and cultivating the habits of using these minds are mandatory. The five minds in brief are:


  1. Disciplined Mind: For each one of us to successful in life, we need to focus on one or two disciplines to succeed. Or else we need to compromise doing menial tasks and to master discipline in one subject takes about 10 years. To develop this disciplined mind, one must consistently work on for long enough until he attains mastery in the discipline. In future, Gardner stresses that for each productive and successful individual, he must focus on one or two disciplines proficiently to thrive in the coming generation.
  2. Synthesizing Mind: is basically integrating one or more disciplines to take effective decisions and actions so as to succeed. Most leaders and presidents have to use this mind most of the time in their career.
  3. Creative Mind: involves thinking creatively and outside the box. This result in creative breakthrough, inventions, innovations etc. The author stresses that having creative mind alone helps you reach nowhere unless and until it is backed up by disciplined mind and synthesized mind. Or else creative mind is a total failure. Whatever one does creatively need to be practiced and mastered regularly and built into a skill in that particular discipline.
  4. Respectful Mind: is another word for tolerant mind. Cultivating respectful minds helps to celebrate the difference across opinions, view, judgments, religious views, castes, races etc. Here one needs to be respectful of each other across nations, groups and community
  5. Ethical Mind: is building of ethics, principles and moral values. Here religious values play a great role. Gardner also considers digital way of communicating especially the chat as unethical and stresses here one must be as ethical as possible with support of respectful mind.

This book is a book I would recommend to read not only for the educators but also for the people in all professions including management and leadership. The language is very easy to follow and Gardener had been very down to earth in putting his ideas across. This book is one of the best book I have ever read because I think most of us lack the five minds and we need to be sure to have these 5 minds as a means to live and thrive in the coming decades. I would personally give 5 stars to this book.

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