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Fragment of the book by M. Mikalko. Hacking creativity. How to see what others do not see. - M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2016.
The book will reveal the secrets of non-standard thinking of famous people and tell you how to apply them in practice. Leading Creativity Expert Michael Mikalko shows you how creative people think - and how you can use their secrets to think outside the box and create new ideas.
Creative genius operates in accordance with Darwin's theory of biological evolution. According to her, nature creates many opportunities by blind trial and error, and then the process of natural selection decides which species will survive. In nature, 95 percent of species fail and die out in a short space of time. Genius is analogous to biological evolution in that it requires the unpredictable generation of a vast array of alternatives and assumptions. From all this set, genius isolates the best ideas for further development and delivery to others. The first strategy in Part II, Thinking Easy, shows how geniuses create ideas in abundance.
An important aspect of this theory is that, as in evolution, some means of making ideas vary, and for these options to be truly effective, they must be "blind." These can be considered as options obtained by chance or other unrelated factors. In nature, a set of genes completely devoid of variants will not be able to adapt to changing circumstances, which will ultimately prove fatal to the survival of the species. Over time, genetically programmed wisdom will become stupidity. The exact same process is at work within us. Each person has the ability to create ideas based on existing thought patterns - what they have been taught. But without variability, theories will stagnate and lose their competitive advantages. As I said, if you always think the way you used to,
Say it loudly several times: crayon, crayon, crayon. Now answer: what is the name of the yellow part of the egg? Your brain organizes incoming information according to habitual thought patterns, choosing proven ways to process information. If you said "protein", then you were deceived by the pattern created by repeating the word "crayon". The correct answer, of course, is "yolk".
Our minds create patterns to simplify a complex world to make it easier to handle. These templates are based on life experience, education, and previously successful solutions. When we look at an example 6 × 6, the answer 36 automatically pops up - we don't even have time to think. We are considering a new product of our company and understand that we provide good design at an affordable price. We look at the business plan and immediately see that the financial calculations are wrong. We do this all the time through thought patterns based on previous experience. Among other things, these templates help you perform repetitive tasks with great precision, such as driving a car or presenting a sale. But these same patterns make it difficult to generate new ideas and creative problem solutions, especially when faced with unusual data.
Creativity involves deviating from previous experiences and methods. Example: Divide a cake into eight pieces, making no more than three cuts. Most have problems solving the problem, which is explained by previous experience in cutting cakes. To solve, you need to change your idea of \ u200b \ u200bthe cake, about its piece and how to cut the cake in general. One solution is to cut the cake in half and hoist one half over the other. After that, you need to sequentially cut the pieces twice more and pile them on top of each other. Alternatively, you can divide the cake into four pieces and then cut them horizontally. Alternatively, you can cut the cake as shown in the pictures below.
When you abandon ingrained patterns and ignore worldly wisdom, you immediately find that there are many solutions.
In nature, a genetic mutation is a variation that results from a random event, ignoring the conventional wisdom of the parental chromosomes. Nature allows natural selection to decide which variations are allowed to survive and thrive. A similar process occurs with geniuses. Creative geniuses come up with a wide range of original ideas and solutions, because they ignore stereotyped methods of thinking and seek different views on the problem. They deliberately change their thinking, relying on such thought patterns that include chance and seemingly unrelated factors in the sphere of reflection. These special patterns of thinking enable them, having the same information as everyone else, to see something of their own.
The strategies described in Part II allowed creative geniuses to come up with many original ideas and creative problem solutions through the use of different ways of thinking. These strategies are:
These strategies do not reproduce creative experience, only presuppose it. For illustration, let's say that you agree with my opinion - the best view of my block is from the roof of my house. This is not a reproduction of an experience, but a guess. To get such an experience, you cannot fly up to the roof with an effort of will. You need a certain tool - a ladder that will allow you to climb to the roof and look around there. Likewise, if you agree with my assertion that geniuses generate ideas by putting together new combinations of things, you cannot force yourself to suddenly think in this way. Special techniques are needed to understand how to do this. This is why each strategy contains specific techniques and practical tools for applying these strategies to generate the insights that are needed in business and personal life.
These strategies unleash your creativity, break down ingrained patterns, and stimulate new ones by introducing information that was previously unavailable. Figure A illustrates a habitual thought pattern in which thought moves linearly from problem to solution. So we were taught to think. When faced with a problem, we analytically choose the most promising approach based on past experiences in life, work and education, exclude all other approaches and work in a clearly defined direction, arriving at a plausible solution.
Figure B shows how a genius abandons a formulaic way of thinking by introducing random stimuli. This causes new thought patterns to emerge, giving rise to fresh ideas and concepts that would not have appeared if we continued to adhere to traditional ways of thinking.
This part ends with the last strategy - "Awaken the spirit of cooperation", which creates the conditions for open and honest collective thinking in sessions of group brainstorming.
D
Thinking is easy
The hallmark of a genius is his incredible productivity. All geniuses are productive. Bach wrote cantata every week, even when he was sick or tired. Mozart has written over six hundred pieces of music. Einstein is famous for his research in the theory of relativity, but he published 248 other works. Darwin is known for his evolutionary theory, but he also owns 119 other publications. Freud wrote 330 works, and Maslow - 165. Rembrandt wrote about 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings, and Picasso's works are known in general over 20,000. Shakespeare created 154 sonnets. Some of them became masterpieces, others were no better than the poems of his contemporaries, and some were simply bad. Moreover, great poets have written more bad poetry than little-known ones: it's just that they wrote more.
The common misconception that phenomenal creative geniuses invest all their talent in several separate masterpieces is simply wrong. Thomas Edison is best known for the creation of the light bulb and phonograph, but he owned 1,093 patents - still a record. Edison viewed creativity as ordinary good, honest, hard work. "Genius," he once said, "is one percent inspiration and 99 percent sweat." He conducted 9,000 experiments to perfect the light bulb, and 50,000 to invent the rechargeable battery. Once, when an assistant asked him why he kept looking for durable light bulb filament material after thousands of mistakes, Edison replied that he simply did not understand the question. In his opinion, he has never been wrong, but has found thousands of options that do not work.
AND
True north
Geniuses are productive because they can think easily. Ease of thought leads to the generation of many ideas. To think easily, you need to organize your thinking around a certain number of principles - a type of thinking that I call "True North". True North is the standard by which all courses are reconciled. A mediocre compass points to magnetic north, which changes over time. Only the gyrocompass points to "true north" - an unchangeable point that will not lead ships to a dead end. It's only if you brainstorm your thinking according to “true north,” will real ideas begin to come to mind in large numbers. These principles are eternal, timeless and enduring.
The principles of "true north" for creative thinking are as follows.
O
Deferred judgments
When looking for ideas - both individually and in groups - it is necessary to refrain from judging, evaluating and criticizing ideas when they appear. Nothing drains the creative spirit more quickly and fully than critical, evaluative thinking.
It is not so easy. We have learned to be critical and are used to making judgments, evaluating new thoughts and ideas instinctively and immediately. Only humans can try to come up with new ideas, while at the same time offering compelling explanations for why they won't work. It's like driving a car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. Accordingly, every time we brainstorm for ideas, we manage to spend more ' most of the time to invent reasons why the idea will not work or fail, rather than coming up with as many ideas themselves as possible. Apparently, judging is easier than coming up with something new, so we often focus on criticizing ideas at the cost of generating those ideas. Difficulties arise when ideas are judged too early and rejected out of the box before all the circumstances have been taken into account.
Below is a diagram describing a person who evaluates ideas immediately after they are proposed. This person ponders idea A and rejects it as frivolous. Then he considers ideas B and C and discards them out of the box. As a result, he comes up with idea D - safe, conservative, which looks good on the basis of his past experience and does not carry any risks. After evaluating the idea, the creative thought crystallizes and stops. Too few new ideas are generated, and thoughts tend to lean towards weak, safe, conservative options.
The following diagram shows the thought process of a person who does not evaluate ideas immediately after they appear. He is able to think freely and flexibly. It allows unlimited deployment of ideas, their organization in ranks, a kind of hitchhiking of options, any combination of them for the invention of new ones, until it comes to the final breakthrough result that makes one exclaim “Eureka!”. Judgment-free thinking is dynamic and flexible. Ideas replace each other, giving rise to additional ideas and their combinations, which multiplies the possibilities.
Francis Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, admired his father's ability not to judge at once the many untenable ideas that came to his mind, without throwing them out of the door, unlike most colleagues. The richness of his imagination was combined with the ability to take into account what others did not take into account. Darwin's colleagues explored new ideas and theories from their own stereotyped experience. If ideas did not fit this experience, they were rejected. Darwin, on the other hand, was ready to analyze all ideas and theories, was interested in where they would lead him. The thinking of his colleagues was static, while Darwin's thinking was dynamic and flexible. This willingness to take into account what others called "wacky experiments" led him to develop a theory of evolution.
TO
Constructive thinking
The secret to postponing judgment when generating ideas is to divide thinking into two stages: constructive and practical. Constructive thinking is the generation of raw ideas, without any evaluations or judgments. Turn off your inner critic, that is, the part of your consciousness constantly explaining why something will not work or is not feasible. The strategy is to come up with as many obvious and innovative ideas as possible, and criticism is inappropriate at this time.
Once you've come up with more ideas, change your strategy. Practical thinking, evaluating and judging ideas should come to the fore. It is necessary to identify which of them have the greatest value. Edison once claimed to have come up with 3,000 different theories of electric lighting. Each of them looked reasonable, but he settled on the most practical and profitable. His first goal was to create as many opportunities as possible, and then he went about evaluating - identifying the healthiest and most viable idea.
Constructive thinking and practical thinking are two separate mental operations, and there is no compromise, middle position between them.
TO
Quantity
The Edison Laboratory in New Jersey contains an astounding selection of hundreds of phonograph horns in various shapes, sizes, and materials. There are round, square, angular, short, thin, flat, and there are wriggling, reaching two meters in length. This collection of rejected ideas is a graphic illustration of Edison's thinking strategy of exploring every conceivable possibility. Any brilliant idea of the inventor had surprisingly ridiculous predecessors - for example, a strange horse-drawn device that was supposed to collect snow and ice in winter and press it into blocks so that they could be used as refrigerants in summer.
TO
Quantity turns into quality
Imagine a pearl diver on an island somewhere in the southern seas. He pushes the canoe away from the shore, paddles into the lagoon, dives deep into the water, takes out a shell from there, dives out, climbs into the boat, paddles to the shore and opens the shell there. Inside there is only a mollusk, so it again pushes off the coast and paddles into the lagoon.
This is a crazy waste of time. Of course, it would be normal not to row with a single shell to the shore, but to dive as often as possible until the whole canoe is full of shells, and only then return to the shore. Pearls are rare and a diver will have to open many shells before finding pearls. Only a fool decides to come back on purpose for every shell. The same is true for ideas. Very often we come up with one or two ideas and rush around with them, as if they are the answers to all questions. But creative ideas, like pearls, are rare. Therefore, it is wise to issue as many hypotheses as possible before the evaluation stage. A good idea can be an obstacle to a great one, and a great one, in turn, can prevent you from finding the right one.
Increasing productivity in terms of ideas requires a conscious effort. Let's say I ask you to spend three minutes thinking about alternative uses for conventional bricks. Of course, some ideas will surely come to mind, but experience suggests that there will be few of them: the average adult has three to six options on this score. However, if I propose to list 40 uses for bricks as quickly as possible, you can get the job done pretty quickly.
TO
Quota
Quota and time constraints concentrate your energy in such a way that ease and abundance of ideas are guaranteed. Quoting is not only a more efficient way to concentrate, but also a more productive method of creating alternatives. To meet the quota, you list all the usual uses for bricks (building a wall, fireplace, supporting a barbecue grill, etc.), as well as anything that comes to mind (anchors, barricades, ballast, newspaper fixing device (so as not to fly away), a tool for leveling the ground, a material for sculpture, a door closer, etc.): the imagination works to match a given amount. By forcing us to work hard, the quota we define allows us to come up with more imaginary alternatives than we would normally be able to.
Thomas Edison ensured productive thinking by assigning quotas on ideas for himself and his assistants. So, he set for himself a quota of one small invention every ten days and one major every six months. This quota of ideas is a good way to increase your thinking productivity: for example, 40 ideas if you are thinking about a problem alone, or 120 theories if a whole group is brainstorming. By forcing yourself to come up with 40 ideas, you rein in your inner critic and write down everything that comes to mind, including the obvious and weak options. The first third will be all the same good old ideas. The second third will be more interesting, and the third will show all your inspiration, ability to build complex structures and curiosity.
The quality of the first ideas is usually worse than the subsequent ones. To become crystal clear, cold and clean, tap water must drain for some time. In the same way, thought must accelerate before it becomes truly creative. Initial ideas are usually wrong. Why this is happening is not entirely clear, but one hypothesis is that familiar and safe solutions are closest to the surface, and therefore come to mind first. Creative thinking depends on how much you manage to extend the flow of ideas in order to weed out the familiar uninteresting ones and come to the unusual ones that require imagination.
Below is a list of five words. Write down the first association for each word. Repeat this five more times, and each time the association should be different from the one you wrote down for that word last time.
123456FishWarGovernmentOceanCar
You will notice that the latter associations are much more original and unique than the former. Actually, generally accepted associations for each word come to mind at first. When you challenge yourself to give unusual, infrequent answers, you will find that the originality of the associations has increased, and the role of imagination has increased.
Researchers have found an interesting relationship between people's birth order and revolutionary creativity. Firstborns usually become conservatives, and later children, like Darwin, become original thinkers. Firstborns are more likely to follow entrenched traditions than their siblings. They tend to suppress the younger ones. Later children are more open to the world, as this openness helps them find an unoccupied niche in their family. This same feature leads to the development of imagination and creativity. Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson, Jeanne d'Arc, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vladimir Lenin, Virginia Woolf and Bill Gates demonstrate typical behavior for late children.
When you want to create something new or offer a creative solution to a problem, it is often necessary to distance yourself from the first thoughts. If I'm going to surprise my wife on Valentine's Day, I know I must reject the first idea that comes to my mind. Probably, it is worth giving up the second, third and fourth. To get something creative, you need to go beyond your usual reactions and consciously create something new.
WITH
Making a list of ideas
By setting a quota, you are forcing yourself to write a list of ideas. Leonardo da Vinci had a real mania for the formation of lists and catalogs of his thoughts in small notebooks that he carried with him everywhere. Thousands of pages of lists compiled by him provide excellent raw materials for a true encyclopedia of creativity. It is worth starting to consciously cultivate the habit of writing down ideas during the brainstorming session or organizing them in the form of a list. The list will help to preserve thoughts and ideas forever, to speed up thinking, to look for alternatives without decreasing concentration.
Making a list of ideas will help you remember them. It happened to everyone: you look at the phone number, then you are distracted before the call - and in a matter of seconds the phone is forgotten. The fact is that new information is layered on old before the brain has time to prepare the previous information for sending to long-term memory.
Read the first row of numbers, cover them and reproduce. In all likelihood, you managed to get it right. Now look at the next row, close it and see if you can reproduce a lot this time. Perhaps now you will face difficulties.
7 9 4 1 0
2 6 5 8 9 3 1 4 7 0 5 3 9
Psychologists claim that the human brain is capable of holding five to nine pieces of information at a time. However, after about 12 seconds, the information is stored badly, and after 20 seconds it may disappear altogether, if you do not constantly repeat it to yourself or simply write it down. (For example, when you finish reading this chapter, you'll probably forget the first row of numbers as well.) Writing signals to the brain that this piece of information is more important than the rest, so it should be sent to long- term memory. If you don't make a list of ideas, all your energy will be spent remembering old ideas, rather than coming up with new ones.
Draw your wristwatch as close to the original as possible without looking at it. Compare the drawing with the original. If you are in the majority, your reproduction will be inaccurate. Many details are likely to be missing. Although we look at this device several times a day, its image in our minds appears rather vaguely.
Writing down ideas or making a list of them speeds up thinking and helps you focus on a subject.
Speed. Writing down ideas speeds up thinking. Many of us are convinced that we think quickly. Imagine an alphabet, capital letters. How many letters do curved lines contain? Now watch how the brain works. First you imagine A, then B, and so on. It's like watching a slideshow: first one image, then another, frame by frame at a time, until you reach the end of the alphabet. It is with this speed that our brain works. You think no faster than the speed of life itself. Imagine a tennis match, and now speed up what is happening 100 times. Difficult, isn't it?
We think sequentially, not simultaneously. By the way, in the English alphabet there are curved lines in 11 letters.
Concentration. Writing down ideas helps you concentrate.
Another belief, as common as it is, is that we are capable of doing several things at the same time. For example, I can write a work report, listen to the broadcast of a football match, and pay attention to my child. If you are sure of this, try counting forward in sevens (for example, 7, 14, 21 ...) and at the same time - backward in threes (–3, –6, –9 ...). It turns out that the only way to do this is by alternation. Thinking is busy with one topic, and then moves on to another. Try to think about what you did yesterday and at the same time what you are going to do tomorrow. Note that you will be doing this sequentially, not simultaneously.
Listing ideas is one of the easiest ways to be more effective at coming up with ideas because it doesn't involve changing behavior. Plus, it works surprisingly well in helping you think easier and more flexible.
Processing ideas
Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb: his genius was that he was able to improve the light bulb as a consumer product. He took the idea and processed it. Not content with a simple light bulb, he invented a practical complete electric lighting system using dynamos, cabling, and a means of channeling current that could flow into multiple bulbs at the same time. Then, when Alexander Graham Bell announced his work on the telephone in 1876, Edison immediately began looking for ways to improve Bell's work. Thanks to this, a year later the phonograph was born - the device that made Edison famous.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, a brilliant Russian composer, wrote down his ideas in a fit of inspiration, but after that he improved, developed or concentrated them for several days. Paul Valéry, a French poet, believed that hard work was an important component of creativity: he was an obvious exception to the generally accepted opinion that poets write masterpieces mainly thanks to the muses. He called this idea completely wild. Paul himself, as we know, worked very hard: for example, only 250 typewritten drafts of his masterpiece "Young Park" remained.
In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe published the poem The Raven. A year later, he published a critical essay "Philosophy of Creativity", where he described the process of creating a poem. One would expect Poe, the romantic poet, to speak of the divine inspiration that spawned the poem overnight, in an ecstatic intoxication. However, Poe emphasized that not a single line of the work was whispered from above. On the contrary, the work proceeded methodically, step by step, and moved to completion slowly, as he made constant edits to each line, changed the length of the poem and its subject matter, even individual words.
The smallest changes are significant. You meet a friend (girlfriend) whom you have not seen for a long time. It doesn't look the same as before. You're asking:
"What's happened? You've lost some weight?" But this is not the case. To your surprise, it turns out that a friend has grown a mustache (or a friend dyed her hair). Well, of course. How could you lose sight of this?
They missed it because they used to think of their buddy as a whole, so every feature of his mental image influenced everyone else: change one part and the whole changes. The same happens with ideas and concepts. We consider the idea as something single - a kind of "gestalt", therefore any change, however small, affects both the whole itself and the way we perceive it. Remember how Manco changed the perception of its duct tape by changing its name to Duck ™ tape. Japanese engineer Yuma Shiraishi developed a whole new concept of home video, believing that videotapes must be large enough to accommodate a full-length film. This simple modification changed the whole concept of video equipment and led to the VCR revolution.
Constantly improve your and others' ideas, process, add details, change depth and dimensions. Ed Whitten is often referred to as the most brilliant physicist of his generation. He's a luminary of string theory - an area as mysterious as what it explores: string theory seeks to explain what matter is. But Whitten never rests on his laurels: every morning he wakes up with the intention to work on his ideas. Having "emptied" your cranium and removed from there as many ideas as possible, process them, modify or try new combinations.
The book will reveal the secrets of non-standard thinking of famous people and tell you how to apply them in practice. Leading Creativity Expert Michael Mikalko shows you how creative people think - and how you can use their secrets to think outside the box and create new ideas.
Creative genius operates in accordance with Darwin's theory of biological evolution. According to her, nature creates many opportunities by blind trial and error, and then the process of natural selection decides which species will survive. In nature, 95 percent of species fail and die out in a short space of time. Genius is analogous to biological evolution in that it requires the unpredictable generation of a vast array of alternatives and assumptions. From all this set, genius isolates the best ideas for further development and delivery to others. The first strategy in Part II, Thinking Easy, shows how geniuses create ideas in abundance.
An important aspect of this theory is that, as in evolution, some means of making ideas vary, and for these options to be truly effective, they must be "blind." These can be considered as options obtained by chance or other unrelated factors. In nature, a set of genes completely devoid of variants will not be able to adapt to changing circumstances, which will ultimately prove fatal to the survival of the species. Over time, genetically programmed wisdom will become stupidity. The exact same process is at work within us. Each person has the ability to create ideas based on existing thought patterns - what they have been taught. But without variability, theories will stagnate and lose their competitive advantages. As I said, if you always think the way you used to,
Say it loudly several times: crayon, crayon, crayon. Now answer: what is the name of the yellow part of the egg? Your brain organizes incoming information according to habitual thought patterns, choosing proven ways to process information. If you said "protein", then you were deceived by the pattern created by repeating the word "crayon". The correct answer, of course, is "yolk".
Our minds create patterns to simplify a complex world to make it easier to handle. These templates are based on life experience, education, and previously successful solutions. When we look at an example 6 × 6, the answer 36 automatically pops up - we don't even have time to think. We are considering a new product of our company and understand that we provide good design at an affordable price. We look at the business plan and immediately see that the financial calculations are wrong. We do this all the time through thought patterns based on previous experience. Among other things, these templates help you perform repetitive tasks with great precision, such as driving a car or presenting a sale. But these same patterns make it difficult to generate new ideas and creative problem solutions, especially when faced with unusual data.
Creativity involves deviating from previous experiences and methods. Example: Divide a cake into eight pieces, making no more than three cuts. Most have problems solving the problem, which is explained by previous experience in cutting cakes. To solve, you need to change your idea of \ u200b \ u200bthe cake, about its piece and how to cut the cake in general. One solution is to cut the cake in half and hoist one half over the other. After that, you need to sequentially cut the pieces twice more and pile them on top of each other. Alternatively, you can divide the cake into four pieces and then cut them horizontally. Alternatively, you can cut the cake as shown in the pictures below.
When you abandon ingrained patterns and ignore worldly wisdom, you immediately find that there are many solutions.
In nature, a genetic mutation is a variation that results from a random event, ignoring the conventional wisdom of the parental chromosomes. Nature allows natural selection to decide which variations are allowed to survive and thrive. A similar process occurs with geniuses. Creative geniuses come up with a wide range of original ideas and solutions, because they ignore stereotyped methods of thinking and seek different views on the problem. They deliberately change their thinking, relying on such thought patterns that include chance and seemingly unrelated factors in the sphere of reflection. These special patterns of thinking enable them, having the same information as everyone else, to see something of their own.
The strategies described in Part II allowed creative geniuses to come up with many original ideas and creative problem solutions through the use of different ways of thinking. These strategies are:
- creation of new combinations of objects - "Make up new combinations";
- the use of random stimuli - "Bind the unrelated";
- opposite thinking - "Look at the other side";
- metaphorical and analogous thinking - "Look into other worlds";
- an active search for random opportunities - "Find where I was not looking."
These strategies do not reproduce creative experience, only presuppose it. For illustration, let's say that you agree with my opinion - the best view of my block is from the roof of my house. This is not a reproduction of an experience, but a guess. To get such an experience, you cannot fly up to the roof with an effort of will. You need a certain tool - a ladder that will allow you to climb to the roof and look around there. Likewise, if you agree with my assertion that geniuses generate ideas by putting together new combinations of things, you cannot force yourself to suddenly think in this way. Special techniques are needed to understand how to do this. This is why each strategy contains specific techniques and practical tools for applying these strategies to generate the insights that are needed in business and personal life.
These strategies unleash your creativity, break down ingrained patterns, and stimulate new ones by introducing information that was previously unavailable. Figure A illustrates a habitual thought pattern in which thought moves linearly from problem to solution. So we were taught to think. When faced with a problem, we analytically choose the most promising approach based on past experiences in life, work and education, exclude all other approaches and work in a clearly defined direction, arriving at a plausible solution.
Figure B shows how a genius abandons a formulaic way of thinking by introducing random stimuli. This causes new thought patterns to emerge, giving rise to fresh ideas and concepts that would not have appeared if we continued to adhere to traditional ways of thinking.
This part ends with the last strategy - "Awaken the spirit of cooperation", which creates the conditions for open and honest collective thinking in sessions of group brainstorming.
D
Thinking is easy
The hallmark of a genius is his incredible productivity. All geniuses are productive. Bach wrote cantata every week, even when he was sick or tired. Mozart has written over six hundred pieces of music. Einstein is famous for his research in the theory of relativity, but he published 248 other works. Darwin is known for his evolutionary theory, but he also owns 119 other publications. Freud wrote 330 works, and Maslow - 165. Rembrandt wrote about 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings, and Picasso's works are known in general over 20,000. Shakespeare created 154 sonnets. Some of them became masterpieces, others were no better than the poems of his contemporaries, and some were simply bad. Moreover, great poets have written more bad poetry than little-known ones: it's just that they wrote more.
The common misconception that phenomenal creative geniuses invest all their talent in several separate masterpieces is simply wrong. Thomas Edison is best known for the creation of the light bulb and phonograph, but he owned 1,093 patents - still a record. Edison viewed creativity as ordinary good, honest, hard work. "Genius," he once said, "is one percent inspiration and 99 percent sweat." He conducted 9,000 experiments to perfect the light bulb, and 50,000 to invent the rechargeable battery. Once, when an assistant asked him why he kept looking for durable light bulb filament material after thousands of mistakes, Edison replied that he simply did not understand the question. In his opinion, he has never been wrong, but has found thousands of options that do not work.
AND
True north
Geniuses are productive because they can think easily. Ease of thought leads to the generation of many ideas. To think easily, you need to organize your thinking around a certain number of principles - a type of thinking that I call "True North". True North is the standard by which all courses are reconciled. A mediocre compass points to magnetic north, which changes over time. Only the gyrocompass points to "true north" - an unchangeable point that will not lead ships to a dead end. It's only if you brainstorm your thinking according to “true north,” will real ideas begin to come to mind in large numbers. These principles are eternal, timeless and enduring.
The principles of "true north" for creative thinking are as follows.
- Delay judging when generating ideas.
- Come up with as many ideas as possible.
- Jot down the ideas that come to mind right away.
- Develop and improve ideas.
O
Deferred judgments
When looking for ideas - both individually and in groups - it is necessary to refrain from judging, evaluating and criticizing ideas when they appear. Nothing drains the creative spirit more quickly and fully than critical, evaluative thinking.
It is not so easy. We have learned to be critical and are used to making judgments, evaluating new thoughts and ideas instinctively and immediately. Only humans can try to come up with new ideas, while at the same time offering compelling explanations for why they won't work. It's like driving a car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. Accordingly, every time we brainstorm for ideas, we manage to spend more ' most of the time to invent reasons why the idea will not work or fail, rather than coming up with as many ideas themselves as possible. Apparently, judging is easier than coming up with something new, so we often focus on criticizing ideas at the cost of generating those ideas. Difficulties arise when ideas are judged too early and rejected out of the box before all the circumstances have been taken into account.
Below is a diagram describing a person who evaluates ideas immediately after they are proposed. This person ponders idea A and rejects it as frivolous. Then he considers ideas B and C and discards them out of the box. As a result, he comes up with idea D - safe, conservative, which looks good on the basis of his past experience and does not carry any risks. After evaluating the idea, the creative thought crystallizes and stops. Too few new ideas are generated, and thoughts tend to lean towards weak, safe, conservative options.
The following diagram shows the thought process of a person who does not evaluate ideas immediately after they appear. He is able to think freely and flexibly. It allows unlimited deployment of ideas, their organization in ranks, a kind of hitchhiking of options, any combination of them for the invention of new ones, until it comes to the final breakthrough result that makes one exclaim “Eureka!”. Judgment-free thinking is dynamic and flexible. Ideas replace each other, giving rise to additional ideas and their combinations, which multiplies the possibilities.
Francis Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, admired his father's ability not to judge at once the many untenable ideas that came to his mind, without throwing them out of the door, unlike most colleagues. The richness of his imagination was combined with the ability to take into account what others did not take into account. Darwin's colleagues explored new ideas and theories from their own stereotyped experience. If ideas did not fit this experience, they were rejected. Darwin, on the other hand, was ready to analyze all ideas and theories, was interested in where they would lead him. The thinking of his colleagues was static, while Darwin's thinking was dynamic and flexible. This willingness to take into account what others called "wacky experiments" led him to develop a theory of evolution.
TO
Constructive thinking
The secret to postponing judgment when generating ideas is to divide thinking into two stages: constructive and practical. Constructive thinking is the generation of raw ideas, without any evaluations or judgments. Turn off your inner critic, that is, the part of your consciousness constantly explaining why something will not work or is not feasible. The strategy is to come up with as many obvious and innovative ideas as possible, and criticism is inappropriate at this time.
Once you've come up with more ideas, change your strategy. Practical thinking, evaluating and judging ideas should come to the fore. It is necessary to identify which of them have the greatest value. Edison once claimed to have come up with 3,000 different theories of electric lighting. Each of them looked reasonable, but he settled on the most practical and profitable. His first goal was to create as many opportunities as possible, and then he went about evaluating - identifying the healthiest and most viable idea.
Constructive thinking and practical thinking are two separate mental operations, and there is no compromise, middle position between them.
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Quantity
The Edison Laboratory in New Jersey contains an astounding selection of hundreds of phonograph horns in various shapes, sizes, and materials. There are round, square, angular, short, thin, flat, and there are wriggling, reaching two meters in length. This collection of rejected ideas is a graphic illustration of Edison's thinking strategy of exploring every conceivable possibility. Any brilliant idea of the inventor had surprisingly ridiculous predecessors - for example, a strange horse-drawn device that was supposed to collect snow and ice in winter and press it into blocks so that they could be used as refrigerants in summer.
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Quantity turns into quality
Imagine a pearl diver on an island somewhere in the southern seas. He pushes the canoe away from the shore, paddles into the lagoon, dives deep into the water, takes out a shell from there, dives out, climbs into the boat, paddles to the shore and opens the shell there. Inside there is only a mollusk, so it again pushes off the coast and paddles into the lagoon.
This is a crazy waste of time. Of course, it would be normal not to row with a single shell to the shore, but to dive as often as possible until the whole canoe is full of shells, and only then return to the shore. Pearls are rare and a diver will have to open many shells before finding pearls. Only a fool decides to come back on purpose for every shell. The same is true for ideas. Very often we come up with one or two ideas and rush around with them, as if they are the answers to all questions. But creative ideas, like pearls, are rare. Therefore, it is wise to issue as many hypotheses as possible before the evaluation stage. A good idea can be an obstacle to a great one, and a great one, in turn, can prevent you from finding the right one.
Increasing productivity in terms of ideas requires a conscious effort. Let's say I ask you to spend three minutes thinking about alternative uses for conventional bricks. Of course, some ideas will surely come to mind, but experience suggests that there will be few of them: the average adult has three to six options on this score. However, if I propose to list 40 uses for bricks as quickly as possible, you can get the job done pretty quickly.
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Quota
Quota and time constraints concentrate your energy in such a way that ease and abundance of ideas are guaranteed. Quoting is not only a more efficient way to concentrate, but also a more productive method of creating alternatives. To meet the quota, you list all the usual uses for bricks (building a wall, fireplace, supporting a barbecue grill, etc.), as well as anything that comes to mind (anchors, barricades, ballast, newspaper fixing device (so as not to fly away), a tool for leveling the ground, a material for sculpture, a door closer, etc.): the imagination works to match a given amount. By forcing us to work hard, the quota we define allows us to come up with more imaginary alternatives than we would normally be able to.
Thomas Edison ensured productive thinking by assigning quotas on ideas for himself and his assistants. So, he set for himself a quota of one small invention every ten days and one major every six months. This quota of ideas is a good way to increase your thinking productivity: for example, 40 ideas if you are thinking about a problem alone, or 120 theories if a whole group is brainstorming. By forcing yourself to come up with 40 ideas, you rein in your inner critic and write down everything that comes to mind, including the obvious and weak options. The first third will be all the same good old ideas. The second third will be more interesting, and the third will show all your inspiration, ability to build complex structures and curiosity.
The quality of the first ideas is usually worse than the subsequent ones. To become crystal clear, cold and clean, tap water must drain for some time. In the same way, thought must accelerate before it becomes truly creative. Initial ideas are usually wrong. Why this is happening is not entirely clear, but one hypothesis is that familiar and safe solutions are closest to the surface, and therefore come to mind first. Creative thinking depends on how much you manage to extend the flow of ideas in order to weed out the familiar uninteresting ones and come to the unusual ones that require imagination.
Below is a list of five words. Write down the first association for each word. Repeat this five more times, and each time the association should be different from the one you wrote down for that word last time.
123456FishWarGovernmentOceanCar
You will notice that the latter associations are much more original and unique than the former. Actually, generally accepted associations for each word come to mind at first. When you challenge yourself to give unusual, infrequent answers, you will find that the originality of the associations has increased, and the role of imagination has increased.
Researchers have found an interesting relationship between people's birth order and revolutionary creativity. Firstborns usually become conservatives, and later children, like Darwin, become original thinkers. Firstborns are more likely to follow entrenched traditions than their siblings. They tend to suppress the younger ones. Later children are more open to the world, as this openness helps them find an unoccupied niche in their family. This same feature leads to the development of imagination and creativity. Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson, Jeanne d'Arc, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vladimir Lenin, Virginia Woolf and Bill Gates demonstrate typical behavior for late children.
When you want to create something new or offer a creative solution to a problem, it is often necessary to distance yourself from the first thoughts. If I'm going to surprise my wife on Valentine's Day, I know I must reject the first idea that comes to my mind. Probably, it is worth giving up the second, third and fourth. To get something creative, you need to go beyond your usual reactions and consciously create something new.
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Making a list of ideas
By setting a quota, you are forcing yourself to write a list of ideas. Leonardo da Vinci had a real mania for the formation of lists and catalogs of his thoughts in small notebooks that he carried with him everywhere. Thousands of pages of lists compiled by him provide excellent raw materials for a true encyclopedia of creativity. It is worth starting to consciously cultivate the habit of writing down ideas during the brainstorming session or organizing them in the form of a list. The list will help to preserve thoughts and ideas forever, to speed up thinking, to look for alternatives without decreasing concentration.
Making a list of ideas will help you remember them. It happened to everyone: you look at the phone number, then you are distracted before the call - and in a matter of seconds the phone is forgotten. The fact is that new information is layered on old before the brain has time to prepare the previous information for sending to long-term memory.
Read the first row of numbers, cover them and reproduce. In all likelihood, you managed to get it right. Now look at the next row, close it and see if you can reproduce a lot this time. Perhaps now you will face difficulties.
7 9 4 1 0
2 6 5 8 9 3 1 4 7 0 5 3 9
Psychologists claim that the human brain is capable of holding five to nine pieces of information at a time. However, after about 12 seconds, the information is stored badly, and after 20 seconds it may disappear altogether, if you do not constantly repeat it to yourself or simply write it down. (For example, when you finish reading this chapter, you'll probably forget the first row of numbers as well.) Writing signals to the brain that this piece of information is more important than the rest, so it should be sent to long- term memory. If you don't make a list of ideas, all your energy will be spent remembering old ideas, rather than coming up with new ones.
Draw your wristwatch as close to the original as possible without looking at it. Compare the drawing with the original. If you are in the majority, your reproduction will be inaccurate. Many details are likely to be missing. Although we look at this device several times a day, its image in our minds appears rather vaguely.
Writing down ideas or making a list of them speeds up thinking and helps you focus on a subject.
Speed. Writing down ideas speeds up thinking. Many of us are convinced that we think quickly. Imagine an alphabet, capital letters. How many letters do curved lines contain? Now watch how the brain works. First you imagine A, then B, and so on. It's like watching a slideshow: first one image, then another, frame by frame at a time, until you reach the end of the alphabet. It is with this speed that our brain works. You think no faster than the speed of life itself. Imagine a tennis match, and now speed up what is happening 100 times. Difficult, isn't it?
We think sequentially, not simultaneously. By the way, in the English alphabet there are curved lines in 11 letters.
Concentration. Writing down ideas helps you concentrate.
Another belief, as common as it is, is that we are capable of doing several things at the same time. For example, I can write a work report, listen to the broadcast of a football match, and pay attention to my child. If you are sure of this, try counting forward in sevens (for example, 7, 14, 21 ...) and at the same time - backward in threes (–3, –6, –9 ...). It turns out that the only way to do this is by alternation. Thinking is busy with one topic, and then moves on to another. Try to think about what you did yesterday and at the same time what you are going to do tomorrow. Note that you will be doing this sequentially, not simultaneously.
Listing ideas is one of the easiest ways to be more effective at coming up with ideas because it doesn't involve changing behavior. Plus, it works surprisingly well in helping you think easier and more flexible.
Processing ideas
Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb: his genius was that he was able to improve the light bulb as a consumer product. He took the idea and processed it. Not content with a simple light bulb, he invented a practical complete electric lighting system using dynamos, cabling, and a means of channeling current that could flow into multiple bulbs at the same time. Then, when Alexander Graham Bell announced his work on the telephone in 1876, Edison immediately began looking for ways to improve Bell's work. Thanks to this, a year later the phonograph was born - the device that made Edison famous.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, a brilliant Russian composer, wrote down his ideas in a fit of inspiration, but after that he improved, developed or concentrated them for several days. Paul Valéry, a French poet, believed that hard work was an important component of creativity: he was an obvious exception to the generally accepted opinion that poets write masterpieces mainly thanks to the muses. He called this idea completely wild. Paul himself, as we know, worked very hard: for example, only 250 typewritten drafts of his masterpiece "Young Park" remained.
In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe published the poem The Raven. A year later, he published a critical essay "Philosophy of Creativity", where he described the process of creating a poem. One would expect Poe, the romantic poet, to speak of the divine inspiration that spawned the poem overnight, in an ecstatic intoxication. However, Poe emphasized that not a single line of the work was whispered from above. On the contrary, the work proceeded methodically, step by step, and moved to completion slowly, as he made constant edits to each line, changed the length of the poem and its subject matter, even individual words.
The smallest changes are significant. You meet a friend (girlfriend) whom you have not seen for a long time. It doesn't look the same as before. You're asking:
"What's happened? You've lost some weight?" But this is not the case. To your surprise, it turns out that a friend has grown a mustache (or a friend dyed her hair). Well, of course. How could you lose sight of this?
They missed it because they used to think of their buddy as a whole, so every feature of his mental image influenced everyone else: change one part and the whole changes. The same happens with ideas and concepts. We consider the idea as something single - a kind of "gestalt", therefore any change, however small, affects both the whole itself and the way we perceive it. Remember how Manco changed the perception of its duct tape by changing its name to Duck ™ tape. Japanese engineer Yuma Shiraishi developed a whole new concept of home video, believing that videotapes must be large enough to accommodate a full-length film. This simple modification changed the whole concept of video equipment and led to the VCR revolution.
Constantly improve your and others' ideas, process, add details, change depth and dimensions. Ed Whitten is often referred to as the most brilliant physicist of his generation. He's a luminary of string theory - an area as mysterious as what it explores: string theory seeks to explain what matter is. But Whitten never rests on his laurels: every morning he wakes up with the intention to work on his ideas. Having "emptied" your cranium and removed from there as many ideas as possible, process them, modify or try new combinations.
