Sutherland - Alchemy
I am not asking you to read this book and then perform any peculiar feat of intelligence – all that is necessary is to abandon the assumptions that you carry around with you like a comfort blanket every day. The difficult part is to abandon them all at the same time, which carries a risk of social embarrassment. For instance, given the modern open-plan office and our obsession with responding to emails as quickly as possible, it might be embarrassing or even damaging to spend 20 minutes staring blankly into space. However, without this time to disengage, it is harder to practise mental alchemy.