Head, Hand, Heart


I've started reading Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Overrated, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect by David Goodhart and it really resonates.

He divides the labor market into three broad categories:

Head - primarily cognitive, working with symbols. Think computer programmers, accountants, lawyers, physicians who work in the medicine specialties - family medicine, internal medicine, infectious disease. 

Hand - primarily physical - craftspeople such as carpenters, plumbers, machinists, as well as surgeons - people who manipulate the physical world with skill.

Heart - primarily caring professions - nursing comes at the top of the list, but also people who provide child care. Other caring professions. 

All professions have a mix of all three to some degree or other. Nurses certainly have components of cognitive and physical. Craftspeople have cognitive elements (and are often underrated), but also have to deal with customers and fellow workers. 

I'm only a bit of the way into the book, but this is very interesting. 

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