LIT: Life Ignition Tools

A Next Big Idea Book Club Must Read 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. When we’re accustomed to a low energy brain state and lulled by the comfort zone it creates, it’s difficult to rouse ourselves to act with intention and create the lives we truly want to lead. 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. As a student at McGill University and at the University of Toronto, as a researcher at MIT, and as a professor at Harvard Medical School, 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 navigate multiple streams of sensory input and manage information overload recognize manipulative messaging that can throw us off course explore, experiment and discover fresh approaches to old challenges intercept routine patterns to actively think and decide versus just jumping in with habitual responses LIT takes us off autopilot and helps us stay alert, present, and fully engaged in our lives. 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, a neurosurgeon who founded a center for compassion, and numerous professors, inventors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and members of his laboratory—all creatives in their own ways. Using Dr. Karp’s principles, anyone can redirect their lives with energy, focus, creativity, motivation, intention, and impact to create the lives they truly want to lead. Learning to be lit is the ultimate renewable energy and is accessible to everyone, anytime, wherever you are.