Dear LO'ers,
First of all, I wish you a very happy and loveful year and life!
In LO27598 (http://www.learning-org.com/01.11/0115.html) At de Lange wrote
the following to Andrew and all of us:
"But unfortunately much of the training offered in creativity is of little
value because the same techniques which killed imagination are used once
again. Perhaps Leo who made a thorough study of creativity may want to
comment on this PO (a DeBono term)."
Well At, I can't resist such invitation. But it took some time to find the
time at the end of last year. Some free days between Xmas and New Year
gave me the peace to write the following.
Creative thinking
When Archimedes took his daily bath and when the other people in house
heard after a while an enthousiastic scream from the bathroom: "Eureka!",
it was a historic moment. Its echo joined the arrow of time until present.
What happened in that bath?
In the mind of Archimedes suddenly an insightful spark lightened - he
discovered the reason why his leg has less weight under water than above
the water.
Was it realy an unexpected flash that lightened his mind? Was it pure
luck, an accidental idea that suddenly fell as a deus ex machina from
heaven? I don't think so. His 'eureka' indicates that he has observed that
effect of weight difference under water and above water. He has even asked
himself the question "Why is that?" Possibly, Archimedes has thought about
this question already for a couple of days or weeks.
This story illustrates that new and/or creative thoughts don't come by
accident. A new thought is always preceded by an earlier observation and
by a why- or how-question. And in some way this previous early question
has generated a flow in his mind. Possibly this flow slept for weeks but
it was present and ready to be activated instantaneously.
It took a long time and a lot of effort to discover the source of the
river Nile. In fact, a large part of East Africa has been brought in
cartographic maps by all the expeditions that tried to follow the Nile to
its roots. Nearly the complete area covered by all the Nile's branches,
subbranches and sub-subbranches has been mapped before the trace to the
source was discovered. It is like the ant who climbes the tree, trying to
discover the highest leaf of the tree. If it knows the way, the ant has
only to pass 7 or 8 orders of branche bifurcations; trees and rivers
seldomly exceed this number.
And during all these attempts to find the source of that mysterious Nile
two famous Englishmen met each other in the middle of nowhere and the
words: "Mister Livingstone, I presume" joined the arrow of time until
present.
But the small piece of wood that fell near the source in the waters of the
Nile does not need brains and energy to find the end of the Nile and the
Mediterranean Sea. This piece of wood needs only to remember the law of
Archimedes.
I think that the most important prerequisite for the generation of new
thoughts and ideas is a mental environment that is characterised by
curiosity and eagerness to learn and to know. Such environment is ready
for adventure, discoveries and deeper insight. It is an environment where
the sky, air and horizon are filled with question marks, with why's, with
how's and with where's. Why seem objects at a distance smaller than
nearby? Why is it dark at night; why is it colder at night; has light and
warmth something to do with each other? Why has the alphabet the number of
letters as it has? Why are clouds 'floating' in the air? Why are some
companies or countries more successful than others? Why does switching the
factors in a multiplication not matter, whereas it does in a deviation?
Why seem some sound frequencies travel longer distances in heavy fog than
during clear weather conditions?
This importance of open mind, open senses, 'feeling' with one's
surroundings is seldomly stressed in books on creative thinking. One could
be trained in these skills, for instance by the practice to generate at
least 20 questions a day, as mind/brain gymnastics.
Possibly children grow up with daily some 10 to 50 why- and how-questions.
How is it with you, dear reader? Why are adults asking less questions than
kids? Are the minds of adults saturated, tired, too busy with other
things, or afraid for the answers or for too much knowledge? Is possibly
the mental chaos too large for formulating and asking questions?
Most of us know that our thoughts tend to follow common paths. There are
highways and popular secondary roads and some tracks which are known and
which are used at cumstances. The map is however full of roads, ways,
connections, paths and tracks which are seldom or never used. And this map
could be used in overview or as a very detailed map. On all scales are
roads. And these roads cross a 3-D space.
Most published techniques on creative thinking try to help us in leaving
the known and often used roads. They help us or force us to follow new and
unknown path ways. As the Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij once wrote: "A poet is
someone who reaches his goal via a detour". But of course, this is not
restricted to only poets. What are the common techniques?
One can fill a library with the books on creative thinking and problem
solving. I have seen only a fraction of them. Those that I have read gave
me the impression that there is a lot of duplication and most of them
focus on only one principle of idea stimulation and generation. A lot of
books seem to be writen to exhibit the creative thoughts of the author.
Few authors seem to have thought why and how new ideas germinate in their
minds.
Thus, a lot of books on creative thinking immediately start with some
techniques - creative thinking without the preceding questions. What are
these techniques? I will briefly describe them with some hesitations,
because they could be seen as 'tricks', magic hocus pocus. And I will
stress here that tricks could never be the key to creative thoughts.
All these techniques are based on the idea to help the thinker to leave
the commonly used thinking paths. Sometimes it is by way of a smooth help,
sometimes by a forceful shock.
Distracting the attention from the common path could be done by
associative thinking. It could also be done by more forceful methods. The
'random word' technique distracts the thoughts to that random word (for
instance the first noun of page xx of a book). That word then is the
starting point of associative thinking and bridging the associations back
to the original problem could generate some new insights. The most
forceful (but not at all the most powerful) is a provocative statement -
De Bono calls this a PO. Such statement generates a mental shock and
hopefully the thoughts deviate from the original thinking lines. Of course
lots of other methods could be invented to distract the thoughts from the
original thinking lines.
But in a chaotic mind, these techniques are of little use. In fact,
creative thinking needs a structured mind. A mind which can discover a
variety of pathways on all different scales - new highways as well as
small and narrow hiking tracks. Thus before using the above mentioned
techniques, the mind must be brought in order. How could we do that? And
do we have enough control on our own thinking?
A good analogy of what happens in our head is a group discussion. In an
unstructured discussion several people could talk and argument at the same
time. Nobody is realy listening, there is a lot of noise. Some people stay
quiet, some start to speek louder, two or more start to argument as
opponents, resulting in a growing distance in view points, etc. If there
is no conductor or leader who is able to bring order in this chaos, the
results of such a meeting are meagre and a lot of time is wasted. This
process could happen in our heads as well. How to bring order in this
chaos? The answer is: be a conductor of your own brains. If you are
willing to do this job, you need to know who are present in your head. Who
are the possible speakers, where are the silent corners, who is always
speaking loud in your mind. To map this mental meeting room, there is a
handy method. I will go back to one of these previously mentioned
techniques - not for creative thinking, but for mapping purpose. It is the
technique of associations.
Focus for two minutes on a LION. Write down as much as possible all things
that pop up in your mind that are in some way associated to a lion. OK,
you have done this? No? Well please try it, it is worth.
Good, you have now a list of words, all related in some way to the lion.
Did you surpass 10 items? Well done.
But think of what happened. There were several moments during these 2
minutes that the flow of thoughts catched. It didn't succeed. Hopefully
there was also a moment that suddenly this invisible barrier released and
a new flow started, quickly some other 3 or 4 words were written down. If
you analyse the written words you may be able to catagorise them. Maybe
there will be a group related to the (natural) environment of the lion (so
also the circus and zoo are included); there could be a group related to
visual aspects of the lion's body; there are possibly some words related
to symbolic aspects of the lion.
Mind you, we are trying to map our brains. It is as if we are trying to
map East Africa during our search for the source of the Nile. These
catagories are the branches. You realise that knowing most of these
branches could generate a whealth of new associations. As soon as your
associative thinking hampers, you as conductor will switch immediately to
another branche and you will be sure that 3, 4 or 5 new words will flow
easily out of your pen.
So let's not think of associations, because these are too hidden in the
dendritic pattern of the Nile, or of your mental map. Let's think of these
catagories. I will help you a bit. There are at least 5 centres in your
brains related to your senses. So taste, smell, feeling, sound, vision are
all such catagories, or branches. Realising these 5 different directions
with each 3 or 4 words means already 15 - 20 words on your list. But there
are other branches. The mentioned symbolic branche, the linguistic branch
(for instance rhime words). There is a music branche, there is a film and
picture branche, there is a book branche, a visual art branche, etc.
Please think of these catagories, they will be of great help in the
future, because you as conductor could invite these corners of your brains
to say some words. You are able to activate these pathways in your mind
and you will see that the scenery of your own mind is much richer than you
may have realised.
During some of my workshops I start with this excercise and with this
explanation. Then as a test I start a new association excercise with
another noun (usually also an animal to keep things not too confusing).
Meanwhile I have secretly rearranged my electric alarm clock to 1 minute
and 30 seconds, instead of 2 minutes. The results are 50 - 100% better and
to the surprise of the attendees in less time.
So this is one method to bring structure in thinking. There are however
other scales of the map to discover. One of these scales is the
positive-negative issue. In the meeting room we have seen the two arguing
persons opposite to each other. That could also happen in your mind.
Please try to seperate both sides. Keep them apart but give them both the
opportunity to talk. But do not mix them. With making choices for
instance, it is good to think for 1 minute only on the negative points,
close this mental session and then start for 1 minute with the positive
side.
Another important scale are the abstract and overview levels. The symbolic
branch is close to thess levels. The overview level contains analogies.
Things related by commonness. For instance the lion could be analogous to
cats, panters and tigres. Analogies play an important role in creative
thinking. It is a powerful method to take distance from the subject, not
looking for all kinds of details, but looking for the common aspects. A
good personal or group training is to take two different objects in mind
and think of analogies. Think of analogies between your partner and your
office; a book and a cup of coffee; a sand dune and a friend; etc. With
increasing differences, it is surprising how much commonness there still
is to think of. These excercises force your mental activities to a much
more abstract and high level. It forces you not to look at details and
differences. Because we usually don't need training in seeing the
differences. A painting on the wall which is only one degree off the
horizontal, is already a source of irritation. We usually have well
developed senses for differences.
But now we are mentally so high, we need also to look at our mental map in
detail. We go down to the details. And again we could explore all kinds of
branches and subbranches. We could look to parts and components of the
object under study, we could divide the object possibly in various pieces,
shuffle them in an other order, etc.
Here, in these deep and detailed levels we start to analyse the subject
under study, or the problem. This analysis is a special and accurate job.
It needs great structure in your mind. Here, we try to find the concept(s)
behind the problem, we ask the question: 'Is our problem not a piece of a
greater puzzle?'. We even could dismantle the problem or object in parts
and pieces to see what study its place in the whole. Where are the
contacts with the surroundings, what are the moving parts, what is the
driving force, etc.
This branche of analysis is very well developed in a special method, known
as TRIZ. It is recommende to visit: http://www.triz-journal.com/
And now we are descended down to the detailed levels, we realise that
there are mechanic and dynamic aspects, form and content, components and
forces. As soon as we have discovered these subbranches a complete new
world exposes in our minds. We could rise up again to the high levels of
analogies again. Thinking of form analogies and content analogies, the
process and component analogies, etc. We discover the world of systems
thinking. And we start to see the world of At de Lange's 7 E's.
If you have followed my metafors and journey through our mental activities
during creative thinking and problem solving, you have followed a highly
meandering path like the one of roller coasters in a amusement park.
Starting on a certain level with regular switching to different directions
and activating new directions. Then the meandering goes in a vertical
direction to higher and more abstract levels where some horizontal
meanders could be made. And then down again, and up again and horizontal
again. With some training a certain rhythm of these mental meanders could
be created. My own rhythm has usually a frequency of 0.5-1 minute for each
switch. In 15 minutes I have covered most areas of my mental maps. But
this meandering works only fine in a structured mind and with some
previously stated why, how or where questions.
I wish you a fruitful meandering in the coming year(s).
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
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