Is Creativity A Myth?: Research Talks Back
Just today, Ankesh Kothari sent me a link.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1147152,00.html
Judge for yourself.
And compare notes with what’s been posted on this blog so far.
How Your Body Responds To Long-Lost Memories
Imagine you listen to a song that you haven’t heard for twenty years.
And you know the tune, but the lyrics seem all jumbled in your brain.
So you play the song once.
Then once again.
By the third time, you’ll remember every word of the lyrics you knew twenty years ago.
So what happened there?
The same thing that happened to me when I went to play badminton.
I hadn’t played for well over twenty years.
The first day back was pure torture.
Both on the court, and off the court.
I was gasping for breath. My head was throbbing. I barely stumbled back to my car. And slept for the rest of the day just catching up on my energy.
Three days later I went back to play.
And something weird happened.
While I was struggling to get the shuttlecock across the net the first day, I was able to get it across a whole lot better the second time. And then I went a third time. And a fourth time. And by the fifth trip to courts, I was able to play eight games. Unlike the first time where I was struggling to reach the shuttlecock, I had no problem at all–sometimes I even had time.
So what’s so interesting about this story?
Here’s what’s interesting.
The five visits to the court weren’t back to back visits.
They were over three weeks.
And in those three weeks, I hadn’t done anything spectacular to bring about this massive change in my body.
I wasn’t exercising more. Wasn’t training more. This incredible change was happening in my brain.
Like some song from long ago, it was remembering the ‘lyrics.’
And letting me improve my game in massive incremental steps.
So that within five visits to the court my brain was remembering moves, and had the capacity to handle energy from twenty years ago. The lights were all switching on.
Your body too responds to long-lost memories
In fact, it’s not even fair to call them long-lost.
They’re more like long-buried. And re-discovered.
Which means that if you’ve been told you can do something exceedingly well, your brain reaches into the long-lost memory. And compares data. And then it does something short of exceedingly well. And then with little practice, it improves in leaps and bounds.
But the brain works the other way too
It can bring up failure-data. And the body then refuses to co-operate. And just like you remember the words of the song, you start to remember the words of failure.
Which makes it imperative to understand how layering and memories are linked.
And how we can get rid of stupid memories with the concept of layering.
And suddenly become far more talented than we thought possible.
Next post: How layering is almost more powerful than memory itself 🙂Â
Why Our Brains Freeze
Writer’s Block?
Artist’s Block?
Dancer’s Block?
They all relate to one simple factor.
Your brain freezes.
It doesn’t have a memory of a fire-drill
So let’s start with the fire-drill, shall we?
The reason why you had a fire-drill in school or at an office, isn’t because the organisation likes making you run out of the building, and onto the street.
The biggest reason for fire-drills, is to know what to do in an emergency.
Because contrary to what you may believe, people don’t actually run helter-skelter in an emergency. They sit there, transfixed, as if in a bad dream.
And in your business, emergencies pop up like 800-pound gorillas
Suddenly you have to write a report. Or create a presentation. Or even worse, write an engaging article.
And your brain panics. It freezes. And it has no memory of any fire-drill.
The brain goes into panic mode. It scans memory bank after memory bank for a memory of success.
On the contrary, it finds failure after failure
Why does it run into failure? And how do we overcome this failure? Listen to this short 7 minute audio, and you’ll understand exactly what goes in the mind of a so-called ‘talented’ person. Why that person is able to walk right past that 800-pound assignment, while you can only watch in terror.
Why Learning Is Difficult: And How Lack of Intimidation Helps Build Talent
Imagine you had to learn Photoshop.
And you were given a Photoshop manual.
Or maybe thrown into the deep end, with the program.
There you are, wondering what those complicated things on the tool bar mean.
There you are, wondering why Photoshop–or any other learning–can’t be simpler.
But yes it can be simpler.
What if we learned Photoshop, or at least a bit of Photoshop without opening Photoshop at all?
What if we learned it, without even a computer at hand?
That would be nice and un-intimidating, huh?
Most learning is intimidating
Not only do our brains have to take in too many facts, but the things we learn are often complex.
And the method used to teach often erroneous.
Because the best way to learn is not to learn at all.
But to have fun.
To discover things.
And to feel this sense of achievement.
Achievement and awe.
If you don’t know Photoshop, you’re going to feel this sense of awe in a few seconds.
But even if you do know it, you’ll see the simplicity in the method.
So here we are: Without Photoshop in hand. Or a computer.
And let’s say you want to draw a brush stroke.
Now tell me, if you wanted to use a brush stroke, which letter of the English alphabet would you choose?
You said “B” right?
Well you’re right. If you opened Photoshop, and pressed the letter B on your keyboard, the program would take you right to the Brush tool.
But suppose you wanted to decrease the opacity of the brush tool to 50%, what number on your keyboard would you press?
Did you say the number 5?
Well, you’re right. And if you pressed the number 6, you’d get an opacity of 60%. And the number 1 would give you an opacity of 10%. And of course 90% would be the number 9. So what would 100% opacity be?
Yes, it is indeed the number 0. 🙂
So there we are, without a computer. Or Photoshop.
We chose a brush tool.
We increased and decreased the opacity.
Now how about we increase and decrease the brush size.
So you have two square brackets on your keyboard
The left one that looks like this: [
And the right one which looks like this: ]
Which square bracket would you press to increase the brush size?
The right one, right?
But what if you said, “The left square bracket.”
Well, so what? You got it wrong once, but you learned from it.
And in a few minutes, we learned how to:
1) Pick a brush.
2) Increase the opacity (or decrease it)
3) Increase the brush size (or decrease the brush size).
All without touching the computer.
What If We Were All Born Without Talent?
No one ever asks that question, do they?
We automatically assume that we’re born with some talent.
But what if the reverse were true?
What if we were all blank slates?
What if everything depended on where we lived?
What if everything depended on if we were taught, based on how we learned fastest?
What if we had ‘teachers’ that didn’t believe in talent?
It’s all very fine to believe in talent.
But that’s like believing that 2 + 2=4.
Or to believe that time exists.
Because time doesn’t exist.
Neither does 2+2.
We humans made it all up.
And what if we made up the concept of talent as well?
Makes you wonder how many more skills you could have, if only you didn’t believe in talent, huh?
But again, it’s fine to fire rhetorical questions. But science is about proof.
And not only is it about proof.
But the proof must work across the board.
This means that anyone who’s interested in learning should be able to master the talent.
Anyone.
This means that you could walk into a cafe, where there were fifty people seated.
Fifty people of different ages.
Fifty people from different countries.
And education.
And capabilities.
And imagine we assumed that all of those fifty people are blank slates.
And we could teach them a skill.
But not only a skill, but help them become faster and more efficient than others who’d been using that skill for a long time.
We need a worthy challenge don’t we?
So let’s take a really difficult challenge.
Let’s learn Photoshop.
Let’s learn Photoshop without the toolbars.
And then let’s get everyone around you, no matter what their abilities, to learn Photoshop.
And then, learn it in such a way, that people have been using Photoshop for many years look at you in wonder.
And then, just to make it even more interesting, let’s learn Photoshop without a computer.
Is that a good enough challenge?
Are you game?
Because you’re one of those fifty people.
And this blog is the cafe. 🙂
So? Are you game, then?
Are you willing to believe in the blank slate, not because I say so.
But because you can prove it to yourself.
Are you?
Say yes in the comments section if you are ready 🙂