Lit: Life Ignition Tools: Use Nature's Playbook to Energize Your Brain, Spark Ideas, and Ignite Action

Selected as a must-read by the curators of the Next Big Idea Book Club, including Daniel Pink, Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, and Adam Grant

“In this illuminating guide, Jeff Karp illustrates how we can break free from the routines that limit our thinking. LIT is an essential toolkit for converting intentions into actions that matter.” —Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Don’t we all want to tap our innermost talents of creativity, the full power of our good brains?. . . LIT is a blueprint for a richer, deeper life." —Diana Nyad

“Jeff Karp’s much-needed book provides a spark and helps us light ourselves up from within — while lighting up the world around us, bringing joy and creativity to all aspects of our lives.” —Arianna Huffington

Radically simple experimental tools to help anyone tap into a high-energy brain state to fire up innovative potential and shape their lives with intention—by the founder of a Harvard biomedical engineering innovation lab.

In an age of convenience and information overload, it’s easy to go through the motions, pressured, distracted, and seeking instant gratification rather than harnessing our potential for meaningful and impactful lives. In LIT, Jeff Karp, Ph.D., professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and biotech innovator, helps us look to nature as a vital source of humankind’s best wisdom, most inspired action, and greatest good. Diagnosed with learning differences at a young age, he persisted through nearly insurmountable struggles with support from his mom in developing ways to achieve hyper-awareness and maximize decisions based on his curiosity, passion, creativity, and connection to nature. He evolved these approaches into LIT (Life Ignition Tools) —and road-tested these tools daily in his own personal life and with his lab team to innovate medical discoveries inspired by the “problem solving” process they find throughout the natural world.

LIT teaches us to:

• turn inward and connect with what is truly important to us
• turn outward to act on that, connecting with others and different ways of knowing
• question assumptions—break out of habitual thinking and other patterns to discover what really serves you best
• explore, experiment, and discover fresh approaches to old challenges

Dr. Karp also shares insights from some of the world’s most accomplished people, including Nobel Prize winners, the founder of an Indigenous wellness center, a visionary photographer, a social justice activist, a five-time US memory champion, an Olympic medalist, and a neurosurgeon who founded a center for compassion, as well as professors, inventors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and members of his laboratory.

Using Dr. Karp’s principles, anyone can redirect their lives with energy, focus, creativity, motivation, intention, and impact. Learning to be lit is the ultimate renewable energy and is accessible to everyone, anytime, wherever you are.

Jeff Karp, Ph.D., is an acclaimed mentor and biomedical engineering professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, a Distinguished Chair at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He has dedicated his research to bioinspired medical problem-solving, and his lab's technologies have led to the formation of twelve companies. The technologies they have developed include a tissue glue that can seal holes inside a beating heart; targeted therapy for osteoarthritis, Crohn's disease, and brain disorders; "smart needles" that automatically stop when they reach their target; a nasal spray that neutralizes pathogens; and immunotherapy approaches to annihilate cancer. Dr. Karp is also head of innovation at Geoversity, Nature's University, a rainforest conservancy located in one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world. He was selected as the Outstanding Faculty Undergraduate Mentor among all faculty at MIT and the top graduate student mentor of Harvard-MIT students. Dr. Karp lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife, children, and two Cavalier King Charles spaniels.

Teresa Barker is a nonfiction book writer and former journalist with a lifelong affinity for the outdoors, wildlife, and the plant world. She grew up in Tennessee, lived many years in the midwest, then Oregon, and now lives in the Chicago area.