Primal Intelligence

Angus Fletcher opens this book by taking us inside classified training he helped design for the most elite Special Operations forces in the U.S. Army to test a radical thesis: we’ve misdefined intelligence. Fletcher is a professor of story science at Ohio State and his work has been called "life-changing" by Brené Brown and "mind-blowing" by Malcolm Gladwell, but what makes this book so compelling is how practical and real it is. He argues that intelligence is not just logic, data, or IQ, it’s primal. It’s intuition that detects the exceptional, imagination that defines a clear strategy, emotion that acts as a compass for growth, and commonsense that helps you act wisely under uncertainty. This was one of my Top 5 books in my 101 books in 101 days sprint because it challenges how we think about thinking and gives us a concrete way to perform better when it matters most. Big Ideas we explore include The Four Powers, Intuition as noticing the exceptional, Imagination and your ONE Thing, Emotion as fuel and guidance, and Commonsense as Now +1.