Who is the author of The Art of Impossible?

The author of The Art of Impossible is Steven Kotler.

Personal Development

The Art of Impossible Book Summary - The Art of Impossible Book explained in key points

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Name: The Art of Impossible
Rating: 4.7 (548 reviews)
Author: Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler

A Peak Performance Primer

4.7 (548 ratings)

25 mins

Brief summary

"The Art of Impossible" by Steven Kotler is a guide to unlocking the full potential of the human brain and achieving peak performance. Through neuroscience, psychology, and his own experiences, Kotler offers concrete techniques and practices to help readers push past their limitations and achieve their goals.

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Learning Success Self-Help

Table of Contents

The Art of Impossible
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Reach your maximum potential and achieve the impossible.

There are two kinds of impossible. One is Impossible, with a capital I. These “Impossible” feats break paradigms and shatter expectations –⁠ think landing on the moon or running a four-minute mile.

Then, there’s impossible with a lowercase i. This sort of impossible still lies beyond your wildest dreams –⁠ but on a personal scale. It’s the stuff you think is impossible for you. It could be becoming an entrepreneur, building a musical career, or simply doing what you love for a living.

Fortunately, neither sort of “impossible” is actually impossible. There’s a formula to achieving the impossible, and it’s⁠ backed up by science. It consists of four skills: motivation, learning, creativity, and flow. Understanding and applying that formula is what these blinks are all about.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how to find your purpose;
what creativity actually is; and
how to be 500 percent more productive.

Intrinsic motivators drive us toward the impossible.

There are no two ways about it: your journey to impossible is going to be long and arduous. As with any long journey, you’ll need fuel to keep you going. That includes food and sleep, but you also need psychological fuel –⁠ in other words, drive.

Drive, or motivation, nudges us toward action. But what creates drive in the first place? From an evolutionary perspective, it’s all about surviving in a world where resources are scarce. Drive is evolution’s way of getting us to either fight each other to obtain the resources we need or to use creativity to make more resources.

But drive doesn’t consist of just one thing. There are various drivers, like fear, curiosity, and passion. All of these provide psychological fuel –⁠ and you can harness them to achieve the impossible.

The key message here is: Intrinsic motivators drive us toward the impossible.

All psychological drivers are divided into one of two categories: extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic drivers are things like money, fame, food, and sex. They’re external to ourselves, and we chase them to win the evolutionary survival game. Intrinsic drivers, on the other hand, are within us. They’re psychological and emotional concepts like curiosity, passion, meaning, and purpose.

Psychological research tells us that extrinsic drivers only motivate us to a certain extent. They get weaker once we have enough money to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. After we’ve met these basic needs, it’s the intrinsic motivators that take over. It’s those intrinsic drivers we’ll be focusing on in these blinks.

The five most powerful intrinsic motivators are curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery. You can stack them together so they feed off one another –⁠ and so you can achieve the impossible.

Let’s start with curiosity, the first element in the intrinsic motivator stack. You can start building it by making a list. Write down –⁠ by hand –⁠ 25 things you’re curious about. What might you read a book about or attend a lecture on? Be as specific as possible. For instance, don’t just write down football or food. Instead, write down: the specific mechanics and maneuvers necessary to play the left tackle position or the potential for grasshoppers to become a primary human food source.

Now that you have a list of things you’re curious about, it’s time to start hunting for overlap between the items on it. This will help you identify your passions, your next intrinsic motivator.

Find a niche that activates all your intrinsic motivators.

When you explore your curiosities, your brain rewards you with small amounts of a feel-good chemical known as dopamine. Dopamine is the key ingredient in drive – it makes you excited, engaged, and more likely to keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.⁠ But satisfying your curiosity only gets you small amounts of dopamine – not enough for you to achieve the impossible over the long-term.

What you need is passion, which provides a much greater dopamine boost. Often, you can find your passions by looking for intersections among your curiosities. Let’s say one of your curiosities is the left-tackle football position. Another is the potential for using grasshoppers as a sustainable food source. Putting these two together, your passion might be to find a way to use grasshoppers as a fuel for athletes.

Break up the impossible into large and small goals.

You’ve unearthed your passions and discovered your purpose. Now, how do you find the strength to act on them consistently over time?

The answer is: by having clear goals. In the late 1960s, psychologists Gary Latham and Edwin Locke conducted a study that showed just how powerful goals can be. In it, lumberjacks were divided into two groups. One group was told to gather as much wood as possible. The other group was asked to reach specific quotas. Neither group was offered any financial incentives whatsoever. The result? The lumberjacks that had the quotas gathered far more wood than the no-quota group.

Learning requires a growth mindset, a truth filter, and lots of reading.

Intrinsic motivators, goals, and grit –⁠ these three things will motivate you to achieve the impossible. But motivation alone is far from the end of the story.

Recall the fifth intrinsic motivator, mastery. To attain mastery, you need expertise. And to acquire expertise, you’ll need to learn – a lot. We even have a special term for it: lifelong learning.

Use the five-step process to learn almost anything.

Once you start learning about the area you’ve chosen to pursue, you’re likely to encounter a lot of unfamiliar terms and concepts. You won’t understand or be good at everything right away –⁠ and that can be pretty frustrating. Some people might take frustration as a sign that they’re doing something wrong. In fact, the opposite is true.

How so? Well, when you get frustrated, it increases the levels of norepinephrine in your brain. That chemical’s main function is to prepare your brain for learning. So, in fact, frustration is a sign that you’re taking in information.

Creativity requires activating three different networks in the brain.

In 2016, the company Adobe conducted a survey of over five thousand adults in five different countries. The aim was to determine how critical creativity is to society.

The research found that creatives outperform their noncreative counterparts in several respects. For starters, creatives tend to feel significantly more fulfilled than noncreatives, reporting 34 percent higher happiness levels. Creatives also make more money than noncreatives –⁠ 13 percent more, to be precise.

A positive mood boosts your creativity.

“Aha!” Everyone knows that feeling you get when you finally solve a difficult puzzle or understand a joke. We might call this a moment of insight.

Insight, it turns out, is core to creativity. And you don’t just have to wait for it to suddenly appear. Instead, you can cultivate it. How? By strengthening a particular part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, which is part of the salience network.

Flow is the ultimate condition for achieving the impossible.

For three years, the author struggled with Lyme disease, an illness that can cause flu-like symptoms and severe brain fog. The disease reduced him to a shadow of his former self, leaving him barely able to walk, and with reduced concentration and failing vision.

In the midst of his illness, a friend appeared at his door. She demanded that the two go surfing together –⁠ and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Eventually, despite how ridiculous the idea seemed, the author caved in.

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What is The Art of Impossible about?

The Art of Impossible (2021) is a science-driven guide to reaching your maximum potential. By developing four key skills –⁠ motivation, learning, creativity, and flow –⁠ you’ll gain the power to smash whatever goals you set. With enough time, you may even achieve the impossible.

The Art of Impossible Review

The Art of Impossible (2021) by Steven Kotler is a captivating exploration of the science behind peak performance and how to unlock our full potential. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Packed with actionable strategies and practical advice, it provides a roadmap for achieving extraordinary feats and overcoming obstacles.
By weaving in fascinating stories and cutting-edge research, the book offers valuable insights into the power of motivation, focus, and flow states.
With its emphasis on pushing the limits of what's possible, the book is far from boring, inspiring readers to dream big and strive for greatness.

Who should read The Art of Impossible?

Aspiring movers and shakers
Go-getters driven to achieve their maximum potential
Anyone who wants to boost their performance and be at their peak

About the Author

Steven Kotler is a journalist, entrepreneur, and author of both fiction and nonfiction books. He’s the cofounder and executive director of the Flow Research Collective, an organization that studies the science behind optimal human performance and trains its members in the techniques it uncovers. Kotler’s work has appeared in over 70 publications, and his book Abundance was a best seller.

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Personal Development Creativity Education Psychology

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