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Wellness
Five must-reads to chill and refresh you on your summer vacation
From nightmare predictions of a dystopian future to the best ways to get a good night’s sleep, our selection has something for everyone.
It’s the time of year to unwind and relax, but that doesn’t mean switching off your brain completely. IMD professors offer their reading recommendations to give you food for thought alongside the sangria and sunscreen.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prescient critique of television’s transformation of discourse that resonates profoundly in today’s AI-driven information ecosystem. Neil Postman’s central thesis that the medium itself restructures thought illuminates how televisual epistemology privileged entertainment over substance, fragmenting attention and eroding contextual understanding.
His distinction between Huxleyan and Orwellian dystopias proves remarkably applicable to contemporary AI systems. Where Orwell feared information suppression, Huxley feared information triviality, and Postman recognized television as manifesting the latter. Today’s algorithmic curation extends this pattern, engineering psychological capture through unprecedented personalization of content delivery.
Postman’s concept of “information-action ratio” (receiving more information than one can meaningfully act upon) anticipates our modern condition of perpetual cognitive overwhelm. His observation that media shape epistemology correctly predicted how AI-driven platforms would restructure knowledge acquisition toward frictionless consumption rather than disciplined understanding.
Most critically, Postman identified how mediated information environments reconfigure social relations and civic capacity. Where television made public discourse a form of entertainment, AI interfaces now further atomize collective experience while paradoxically homogenizing thought patterns – not through censorship but through engagement optimization that fundamentally alters how we conceive reality itself.
Michael Yaziji, Professor of Strategy and Leadership
Ten Percent Happier
Dan Harris
An honest, humorous, and practical guide to mindfulness in the modern world, Ten Percent Happier changed my life. With the skepticism of a seasoned journalist, Harris takes readers on a deeply personal journey from panic attacks in high-pressure newsrooms to hilarious encounters with self-help gurus. The book stands out for its accessibility. Harris doesn’t preach or promise enlightenment but offers a grounded, often self-deprecating account of how mindfulness made him, as he says, “ten percent happier.”
Harris’s writing is sharp, warm, and relatable, especially to those turned off by spirituality and wellness clichés, and therefore very suitable for working professionals. This book is perfect for anyone curious about meditation but intimidated by it or those simply seeking more clarity and calm amid the chaos of life. It is a thoughtful, engaging read that demystifies mindfulness and claims that small, consistent changes can have a powerful impact. The audiobook, narrated by Harris himself, is excellent too.
Anand Narasimhan, Shell Professor of Leadership and Governance
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
I wish I’d read this book years ago. I used to treat sleep as negotiable, something to cut when life got busy. I thought I was being productive, but in reality, I was robbing myself of the very thing that makes productivity, clarity, and emotional stability possible. Matthew Walker changed that completely. Why We Sleep is packed with research but it is so clearly explained that you don’t need a science background to follow it – and once you do, you will never look at sleep the same way again.
What convinced me the most was learning what sleep does. Non-REM sleep acts like a neural cleaning crew, clearing out toxins, strengthening memories, and restoring learning capacity. REM sleep, meanwhile, helps us process emotions, build creativity, and connect
ideas in ways we can’t while awake. Miss either, and your brain and body start to fall apart in slow motion.
Walker also shows how sleep deprivation increases the risk of everything from depression to heart disease and even weakens your immune response. Why We Sleep shifted my priorities, and it is essential reading if you care about your health, your brain, or simply being more yourself.
Winter Nie, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change
Meditations for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman
A fun and insightful read on how to think about life and the choices we make to lead a good life. Meditations for Mortals includes many counterintuitive perspectives that I had not considered before. I returned again and again to several chapters (the one on scruffy hospitality, for example), and I have put a few of Burkeman’s recommendations into action.
Albrecht Enders, Professor of Strategy and Innovation
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
Set in a pleasant rural boarding school in England, the story follows the lives of well-behaved students trained in the arts and literature. The young people become exactly what the world wants them to be. However, they are taught nothing about the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. A gripping mystery and a beautiful love story emerge over the course of the novel. We are made to face how we treat the vulnerable in our society, and in exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro critiques human arrogance and explores a possible future.
The Nobel laureate is a master storyteller whose beautiful language is pure reading pleasure. At the same time, he layers his narrative so subtly that the discovery of the hard truth about our society is bearable. His way of seducing us into thinking more deeply about what makes us human is as empathetic as it is masterful. If you enjoy this, I also recommend Klara and the Sun by the same author.
Katharina Lange, Affiliate Professor of Leadership
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