A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink

postcard that was different. I nearly threw it out at first. On one side it had the usual photo—a house a few blocks away that the realtor had just sold. But on the other side, instead of the sales price in 72-point type followed by a row of exclamation points, it had the following:
Florence Skretowicz and her husband bought this delightful home in 1955. They paid $20,000 in cash for it and loved the many special details like solid oak floors, large windows including many with leaded glass, oak millwork around the doors, . . . an Old English fireplace mantle, and a garden pond. At age 91, Florence moved to Brighton Gardens, a retirement community in Friendship Heights, and the Fernandez sisters, neighbors and old family friends, asked me to sell this jewel. I was honored. Florence let us clear out the house, paint it inside and out, refinish the floors, and wash the windows.
Now please take a minute to welcome Scott Dresser and Christie Constantine, the new residents who love the house just as much and plan to be in it forever and ever.
    The postcard didn’t mention the sale price of the home. That seemed like an oversight at first, but it was actually a deft bit of Conceptual Age marketing. The price the house sold for is easy to find—in the newspaper, on the Internet, in neighborhood chitchat. Besides, the houses here are similar enough that their selling prices don’t vary all that much. So despite realtors’ persistent efforts, it’s doubtful that a postcard celebrating a high price would be enough on its own to persuade a potential seller to sign up with a particular realtor. But selling a house you’ve lived in for half a century is not simply a financial decision; it’s also an emotional one. And what better way to make that high-touch connection—and for this realtor to distinguish her services from her number-happy competitors—than with a story?
    Or take another example of narrative’s role in a time of abundance. I was at the store one afternoon picking up food for dinner, and I decided to grab a few bottles of wine. The selection was good but modest—maybe fifty bottles in all. And I quickly zeroed in on three inexpensive reds. All three were about the same price—nine or ten dollars each. All three seemed roughly the same quality. How to decide? I looked at the bottles. Two of them had labels filled with those fancy wine adjectives. But the third bottle—2 Brothers Big Tattoo Red—told me a story:
The idea for this wine comes from two brothers, Erik and Alex Bartholomaus. They wanted to sell a great wine, sourced by Alex, labeled with Erik’s art, in a non-serious way for a good cause. Their goal was to pay homage to their late mother who suffered an untimely death due to cancer. . . . Alex and Erik will donate 50 cents from the sale of each bottle of Big Tattoo Red to Hospice of Northern Virginia and/or various cancer research funds in the name of Liliana S. Bartholomaus. Thanks to your support we have donated approximately $75,000 from the sales of our first release, and hopefully much more in the future. Alex and Erik thank you for purchasing a bottle of Big Tattoo Red in honor of their mother.
    Guess which wine I bought?
    The Story of Healing
    Modern medicine is a marvel. Powerful machines, like the MRI that took pictures of my brain, are letting us glimpse our body’s inner workings. New drugs and medical devices are saving many lives and improving many more. Yet, those spectacular advances have often come at the expense of a more mundane, though no less important, aspect of care. The medical system can “completely eliminate the person’s story,” says Dr. Jack Coulehan of Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. “Unfortunately, medicine sees anecdote as the lowest form of science.” 7 You’ve probably had this experience yourself. You’re waiting in the exam room at your doctor’s office. When the doctor comes in, two things are almost certain to happen next. You’ll begin