In this week reading, Howard Gardner describes five kinds of minds we will need to thrive in the world during the era to come in ‘Five Minds For the Future’. He brings out a point possessing these 5 minds will well-equipped a person to deal with what is expected, as well as what cannot be anticipated. Without these minds, a person will be at the mercy of forces that he or she cannot understand, let alone control.

This is my understanding of the five minds and how I can apply it.

1. Disciplined mind : Honing and training to perfect my skill sets, so that I can utilise these skills to help me in my career. To not be lazy and to constantly have that readiness to learn mindset in everything that I do.
2. Synthesizing mind : To be able to absorb and apply knowledge that I’ve learnt throughout many sources. To also have that ability to be flexible in learning skills and applying that to my career.
3. Creating mind : To have that learning mindset, as well as a try-everything mindset. To not get comfortable in my current state, but to be open to constantly explore different ideas.
4. Respectful mind / Ethical mind : Learning to work with different people who have different mindsets. I’ve come to a realisation that teamwork is important in many things that we do, and if we don’t learn how to work with each other, we cannot grow.

I felt that this week’s reading reminded me of some important aspects that may have slipped off my mind. One important skill that we should always have is to constantly place ourself in a position to learn and try new things, new skills. To constantly challenge ourselves, to push ourselves to achieve our goals. Working life will be very different to uni life, and it’s something that I will experience once I graduate this semester. This will definitely be 5 reminders that I will take away.