Brain Audit

Learning and talent is all supposed to hinge on ease of instruction.
But what if you made learning difficult?
And what if there was no apparent benefit or payoff?

One Indian researcher ended up doing just that, quite by mistake…
In the year 1999, Sugata Mitra occupied an office at NIIT (a computer-training institute that has trained over five million students). And his office overlooked an urban slum in New Delhi.

A wall separated the slum from the office
So Sugata and his colleagues made a hole in the wall, and placed a computer in that hole. The monitor and the touch pad faced the slum. And the computer had a decently fast connection and was connected to the Internet.

Then Sugata and his colleagues sat back and watched.

What would happen next?
About eight hours later, an eight year-old child and six year-old girl were browsing the Internet.

Now the browser was in English, and technically at least, the kids didn’t speak the language.

But what if they were somehow helped?
There they were browsing the Internet, but hey, this was an urban slum. It’s possible that they were helped by someone with an understanding of computers, and/or an understanding of the foreign language.

This experiment was bringing up more questions than answers
So Sugata headed off to Shivpuri. Now Shivpuri is reasonably remote in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

They put another computer in the wall, and it was found by a 13-year old school dropout.

Yet in eight minutes, having never seen a browser before, he was busy browsing. By the evening, over seventy (yes, seventy) kids had begun to browse (again with no prior knowledge of browsers).

By the year 2000, the experiment had gone one step further.
Sugata took the experiment to a village called Madantusi, near Lucknow, in India.

Now if you know India, even just a little bit, you’ll know that English is all pervasive. Yes, the accents and the pronunciation is a bit different, but you can make yourself understood in English.

Well, the village of Madantusi didn’t seem to have an English teacher at all.
And once again, the computer was placed in the wall, this time with CDs available. And no Internet connection.

And the computer was left there for three whole months.

When Sugata came back three months later he was amazed
The little kids turned to him and said they needed a faster processor. And a better mouse.

How did the kids learn what they needed?
Amazingly, though all the terms and the information was in English, the kids taught themselves to understand the ‘code’ of English.

The kids were now using over 200 English words in conversations with each other.
In fact, in many instances, when the computers were hooked up to the Internet, the kids would search for a website that would teach them the English alphabet.

Are you stunned?
You should be.

Not only was the concept of the computer alien to most of the kids.
But the language was the equivalent of you reading an unknown language, like Swahili.
And yet, the kids quickly worked it out.

So how did they work it out?
Were they more talented?

As it turns out, they were not.

The kids were just kids from the village, who’d found something interesting.

So how did they pick up this talent of browsing, finding websites, and speaking a foreign language?

You see, talent is a matter of understanding code.
If code is simple to follow, then you understand and apply it.
But as it turns out, even when things are difficult, the human brain is able to work things out.

So why do we not become as talented as we should be?
Parents. And teachers.

The people who believe that we’re born to do certain things.
And not other things.
The people who tell us that nature, and family and heritage determines talent.

Time and time again, these parents and teachers tell us who we are.
And what we should be doing.
And what we can’t do.

But as it turned out, in this experiment there was no parent. Or teacher.
The hole in the wall computer was manned only by curious kids, eager to learn.
And to teach each other the ‘code’.

And time and again, they succeeded, across the length and breadth of India.
No matter what the level of education, or language, or diversity. The experiment played out almost the same way time and time again. And a whole bunch of kids became magically talented.

Which makes you wonder, eh?
Are parents, and teachers, and our school system…who believe in talent, the factor that kill our talents?

Hmmm…

Note: Watch the video below that details the experiment. If you’re reading this on email, you’ll have to go to http://www.brainaudit.com/blog to watch the video. If you’re online, you can already see the video right under this line.

Could you read maps with your feet?
That’s not quite how we read maps, eh?

Some of us need directions, and need to close our eyes.
Some of us need to see a picture. And print the picture.
Some of us need explicit left-right directions.

But what if you weren’t any of those people mentioned above?

What if you read maps with your feet?
Gillian Lynne is a dancer.
Back in the 1930’s she was doing miserably at school.
The pictures didn’t help. The words didn’t help.

Obviously, nothing the teachers did or said got Gillian’s attention.
And she spiralled into, what we’d today call, a ‘challenged child.’
She was unfocused.
Fidgety.
Refused to learn.

So her mother took her to a doctor
Luckily the doctor wasn’t a teacher.
He turned on the radio, sneaked out of the room, and then asked Gillian’s mother to look at what Gillian was doing.

So what was she doing?
She was dancing.

Gillian didn’t think with her head. She thought with her feet.

All those words, and pictures, and blah-blah that was being taught at school was completely wasted on Gillian.
Because her method of learning, wasn’t words, or picture, or lecture-related.
It was all about dance.

Now here’s the sad story: Gillian went on to be famous
She went on to join the Royal Ballet.
She worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at West End, and was cast in roles on British Television.
She was the choreographer on the world-famous Andrew Lloyd Weber musical: Cats.
And then The Phantom of the Opera.

She was the director and choreographer of the Muppet Show.
She started her own dance school.
She did this and did that.

So why do I call it sad?
What if Gillian weren’t famous?
What if Gillian didn’t do what she did to become famous, but simply settled down for the rest of her life in the suburbs?

What then?

There are six billion talented people on the planet, all being fed with the school-system of teaching.
And for all practical reasons, at least five billion are getting the wrong instructions.

Which of course brings up the question
Do we really have dumb kids?
Do we really have dumb adults?
Do we really think that there are un-creative people out there?
Do we really think that Gillian couldn’t read maps by dancing on the map with her feet?

The method of teaching is wrong.
Yes, wrong.
We’re all fed with this same funnel of words. Mostly words.

The biggest chunk of your education is a matter of reading a book.
But what if someone could teach you through cartoons?
Or what if someone could teach you through music?
Or what if someone could teach you through dance?

The method of teaching is wrong.
Has always been. Well, it’s been right for some and wrong for many.
And it’s because we’ve never recognised the most important factor of all.
The factor that some of us, can indeed read maps best with our feet.

So how do you think best?
Post your answer in the comments below

Would you have the same abilities?
So would a clone of you be exactly skilled at learning something you already know?

Or would external factors matter?

Some people need time to take a decision
They need to sleep on their decision, before making up their minds.

So why do some people act so quickly, whereas others ruminate, and munch over their thoughts?
And why is this munching so contrary to the normal working of our brains?

Let’s take an example: Let’s say I threw a rock at you.
What do you do? You take a decision. That’s what you do. You don’t have time to analyse the rock, the velocity etc. You simply get out of the way. Most of the decisions we take from moment to moment are instantaneous. We decide to walk faster or slower. Cross the road or stay on this side of the road. Instantly, we’re able to take these decisions. Why?

Because there’s enough information.
Not less.
Not more.
Enough.

But we’ve been trained to sit down and analyse the worst ramifications.
We’re doing #$%$^# research. Of course, there are zillions of ways to slice and dice anything, so research, at the very core helps. But add to the research; layer after layer; and you get to a state of confusion.

So yes, you never have to sleep on anything.
Try it today.
Try a YES or NO option for any decision.
You’ll find it’s easy.

So what do top performers have that others don’t?
Top performers are able to take decisions based on Yes or No.
Because in every situation it’s impossible to tell the outcome.

Yes, impossible.

You can do all the planning in the world, and the outcome may turn out to be completely different.

e.g. You’re buying a house. You have a great job.
You can pay the mortgage. You do all your homework. You get the mortgage. You move into the house.

A week later you have a $200,000 mortgage. And the ability to pay it.

Then your boss comes up to you and tells you you’re going to be made redundant. (That’s my story when we moved to New Zealand).

So yes, I could sleep on it all I wanted.
I would either own the house. Or not.
I needed enough information, and then needed some action.

Training yourself to take YES/NO decisions is the first step.
Sleeping on it, doesn’t solve the problem
Sleeping on it, simply causes more confusion, in many a case.

If you want to take a quick decision get all the relevant facts together.
Choose the information that’s most relevant.
And then take a decision.

Because too much information clutters up your decision-making ability.
As a result you do NOTHING.

Which is a problem in itself. 
Try this exercise: If you were a citizen of the US, who would you vote for? Obama or McCain? And how would more information help you decide?

Here’s a test.

Find a three-year old.
Any three-year old child.

Give them a piece of paper. And some crayons.
Then ask them to draw.
Notice what happens next.

They start drawing.
Every single three-year old draws.

Now try this same test with a group of kids that are about eight or nine years old.

And something weird happens
Suddenly the room is split up into kids who say they can’t draw vs. kids who can.
So what happened between three and eight?
And what happens between eight and eighteen (or eighty for that matter?)

How is it possible that you cannot find a three-year old who can’t draw, and then suddenly they’re all art-challenged?

Any ideas?

Is it true that I write six articles a week?
No it’s not.
Many days I’ll write six articles a day.

And that’s not bragging.
And it’s most certainly not talent.

So what’s the story: How did I get so darned prolific?
I was forced by others to write at least twice a month (well, persuaded). One of the early persuaders was Allen Weiss, from marketingprofs.com.

Today, Marketingprofs.com has hundreds of writers, but back then, it was Allen and probably ten or twenty of us (I don’t know). What  I do know was that he was keen on me writing at least twice a month. And he’d publish the articles. And I’d get subscribers. So it was good for all of us.

Then I think I was still writing, and they wanted articles more often
So I started writing once a week and I’d publish the articles on Psychotactics.com and Marketingprofs.com.

Oh, did I struggle?

But it was easier writing once a week, than once a month.

Then in 2002, I started up 5000bc.com
But I was still writing less than I am now. However, in the year 2004, I revamped 5000bc.com. At the time, I was a member of another membership site. That owner of the site was writing about 4 articles a week, so I thought, ok, I’ll write about 4-5 articles a week for 5000bc.

And so I moved up to about 6 articles a week.

Now all this writing may sound horrific to you.
How do you get the time to write 6 articles a week?

But the converse is true. The more you write, the more you ‘discover’ the secrets of writing (because you have to be super-efficient).

The more you ‘discover’, the faster you get at the darned thing.

And that’s not all. If you write once a week, you have to warm up. Writing almost six articles, means that you’re writing almost every day, if not at least 2-3 days in a week.

That of course, is only part of the writing.
At Psychotactics.com we have courses. And workshops (Most of our courses have about 200 pages of notes each). And I had to write for that.
And forums on the courses. More writing.
Started up a blog and asked who wanted to read it. A few put up their hands. More writing.
Started up a second, and third blog. More writing.

If it’s beginning to sound insane to you, it’s not.
I probably spend less time writing than most writers.
Through NO MAGIC PILL and sheer writing, day after day, I’ve become good enough to write 2-4 articles in about 2-3 hours. Most people never go past the first paragraph in that amount of time.

And how do I know that?
When I first started, it used to take me 2 days to write an article. And often, that article never made it to the finish line. I’d trash it, and start over again. Most people think I’m exceptionally good at writing. I am. But it’s not because of the breakfast I’m eating.

It’s because of persistence, and practice. And those little secrets I learned along the way.

Note:In case you’re wondering, I do teach how to write like a crazy person: Here’s the link to the Article Writing Course

Susan Polgar is the world’s first female chess grandmaster.
In fact, before Susan’s ’sudden’ arrival on the chess scene, people believed that the female brain was somehow inferior to the male brain.

Especially when playing chess.

And then Susan kinda burst that sad bubble of male superiority.
But we’re not here to talk about male or female brains.
We’re here to talk about measurement.

Because Susan is such a genius, the kind scientist folk decided to look inside her brain.
And they found something quite startling.

But to understand how startling it is, we have to understand how your brain and mine works, in the first place.

Here’s how our brains work
When we see a person, or meet a person, we remember their faces.
We do so, because our brain stores this information in a place called the ‘fusiform gyrus.’
So though we may not remember the person’s name, we sure as heck remember their faces.

Susan remembers faces as well
And she too stores these faces in the ‘fusiform gyrus.’
But she stores something else there too.

She stores thousands of chess games in the ‘fusiform gyrus’
So to her brain, the entire chess game, with all its moves, is like a face of a person.
Which means she can recall thousands of games, just like you and I can recognise a face.

But was Susan born with this unusual brain?
She certainly doesn’t think so. She believes that her brain needed to store the information. And since there was so much information to store, it just found a store room that was handy. That storeroom happened to be the ‘fusiform gyrus.’

Her brain is no doubt different from ours
And so was Albert Einstein’s brain. The legend goes that Einstein’s brain was far more developed than most other brains.

Now there’s absolutely no debate that the brains of geniuses are different from our brains.

But did they start out that way?
Were they born with a superior brain?
Or did the sheer discipline of learning increase their brain capacity and function?

No one measured baby Einstein’s brain.
Or baby Susan’s brain.
Or the brain of millions of babies who turn out to be geniuses.

But here’s what I’m guessing.

That there are a hundred billion neurons in your brain (remember the fairy lights?).
Even if one brain is bigger than another. Or different from another, it doesn’t count for much.
Having a hundred billion neurons or a hundred and twenty billion neurons counts for little—if they don’t light up.

The lighting up of your neurons is what sets your brain aglow.
It’s what creates the intelligence.

We are so focused on believing that some people are more talented than us.
We are so focused on how un-creative we are.
That we let most of those billions of neurons lie dormant.

Unlit.

Like a Christmas tree with billions of bulbs and most of the bulbs without any power.

If you want to become a genius, it’s relatively simple.
You’ve got about a hundred billion neurons in your head.
How many are you going to light up?

Light up many of those neurons and some day soon they’ll put you in a lab.

And measure your brain activity.
And call you a born-genius.

Here’s a cartoon.

What’s funny about it?
Nothing.
It’s a guy on a boat. And an island in the distance.

Now don’t think of a funny line.
Instead think of something disconnected.
What’s the last thing you’d expect to see in a scene like this?

Put it down in the comments.
If you think of a great caption, that’s fine.
If you don’t, let’s just put down something that’s disconnected to this scene.

Making ‘funny’ work for you, is simply a matter of three core steps
Step 1: ‘Recognising disconnection.’
Step 2: Then putting the ‘disconnection’ down on paper.
Step 3: Then finding a connection that makes it funny.

Ok, over to you. Let’s have a disconnection in the comments.
Let me get you started.
Link ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food’.
Close your eyes (This is important)
What picture do you see?

Yup, make sure you close your eyes when you think of  ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food.’
What picture do you see?
Post your comments. Whatever they are. (Doesn’t have to be funny).

How does ‘funny’ work?
Let’s look at few cartoons to begin with.
Then let’s look at a comedian in full flow.
Then let’s look at a video.
And we’ll do the impossible.

We won’t just analyse ‘funny.’
We’ll replicate funny. We as in you and I.
Yes, both of us.
You’re ready?

Let’s start out with the cartoons

Is this funny?
Sure it is. So why are you suddenly so amused?
A guy with bandages isn’t funny. A guy on a snowboard isn’t funny.
And yet, a guy on a snowboard with bandages is funny.

It’s the disconnection that makes things funny
Or creative.
Or whatever you want to call it.

Example 1:
So if we look at an air-hostess serving muffins and coffee on a flight, it’s not funny.
But an air-hostess serving muffins and coffee on a canoe is funny.

Example 2:
A man saying to another man: “I’d like to be a prince, but I hate paparazzi ” is not funny.
A frog saying to another frog: “I’d like to be a prince, but I hate paparazzi” is funny.

But notice what’s happening?
It’s not just the disconnection at work, is it?
No it’s not. If you don’t know what an air-hostess does, or can’t refer back to the story of the Frog Prince, then there’s no joke at all. Then it’s just a string of words, and a well-drawn picture.

The core of what comedians use is a complete disconnection
But if you go up to a comedian and ask him/her: “Do you use disconnection?,” they may not know what to answer? They don’t know what to answer, because they haven’t analysed what’s happening. And right now, we’re in analysis mode.

So let’s head over to see how comedians use disconnections, shall we?
Let’s look at this clip by Jon Stewart, on Comedy Central.
Feel free to see the entire clip, but note than in about a minute and thirty-five seconds you’ve laughed twice or thrice already.
(Note that if you go past a minute and thirty-nine seconds, it stops being funny).
So watch the clip, and then let’s do the analysis.

So what was funny?
Tea? There’s a president of a country sitting on your show, and you bring out tea? Oooh, nice disconnect.
For exactly thirty-eight seconds in the video, you watched the video seriously.

Then the tea came out. So did your smile.
Then a whole bunch of disconnects crop up. Till the Osama Bin Laden joke.
Now imagine if Jon Stewart had asked that Osama Bin Laden question about ten minutes into a serious discussion.

Would you have laughed?

Maybe. Maybe not.
What made the joke hilarious was that Jon asks the question right in the middle of the first sip of tea.
Now that’s funny.

And of course, let’s look at a video
This video cracks me up every time I see it. And by now you can tell what’s really happening in the video. And why it’s funny.

But let me not spoil it for you. Watch the video first. (NOTE: It has some “adult” language and “swear words” so yeah, if you’ve got kids around, you may want to watch this one with the headphones on, or later when they’re not around).

And what was funny?
Sure it’s the disconnect.Why would Darth go to the canteen?
Why would the canteen guy associate Darth with his boss?
Why does Darth get hassled for an autograph?

At each of those specific points you laughed.
But what’s funny about someone going to a canteen?
What’s funny with someone mistaking you for their boss?
What’s funny about getting hassled for an autograph?

It’s not funny at all.
Except if Darth Vader is involved.
The whole craziness of the situation is what makes things funny.
The disconnection is what causes the laughs.

You want to create laughs?
Take a perfectly ordinary situation. And create a disconnection.
Of course, you won’t make anyone laugh.
Your jokes may not appear funny at all.

And there’s a reason.
You’ve just started to train your neurons to dance in a new way. You’ve just started to teach your neurons to look for a disconnect.

And when you first start to dance (even if you’re a neuron) you look a bit nervous and ungainly.

But if you keep at seeking out and putting disconnections together, you’ll strike up a neuron string of bulbs.

Then you’ll do what every cartoonist does.
What every comedian does.
What every funny video does.

You’ll simply put two disconnected objects or situations together, using your vast database of learning and memory.
And create laughs.

So remember I told you that we (yes, both of us) could create funny cartoons or situations?
Well, we will. But not just yet. Because this post has taken enough of your ‘work time’ already

So let’s wait for the next post, ok?
Yes, we’ll do the impossible. We’ll get you to be funny, even if you have no history of being funny.
Until next time…

Have you ever seen fairy lights on a Christmas tree?
Each bulb is connected to each other.

Yet if one bulb fuses…
The next one seems to fail.
And then the chain seems to break.
So if you started out with five hundred lights on your Christmas tree, the failure of one bulb could take away the glow of about fifty bulbs.

In your brain you have about a hundred billion ‘bulbs’ called neurons (give or take a few zillion)
These neurons are pretty darned useless by themselves.
But turn on a memory, or a skill, and these neurons light up.

Now what’s really important is the understanding of how ‘talent’ and neurons are connected
Let’s say you can draw really well.

When someone gives you a pen and a sheet of paper, and asks you to draw something, a set of those lights fire up. And when you look at the firing up, it seems that all the lights fire up at one go.

But in reality there’s a gap.

The neurons fire up in different sequences for each thought or skill
So if you’re drawing a cat, it’s firing one set of lights.
If you’re drawing a dog, it’s quite another set.
If you’re drawing a girl in a bikini. Heck yeah, it’s a whole different set.

But the firing up of the neurons depends on the database in your brain
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same political drama unfolding, and can draw ten thousand political cartoons that are totally different from each other. The cartoons still reference the same drama.

But the cartoons differ in terms of gag timing, in style, in size etc. And that’s because of the pathway that each cartoonist’s brain is following.

So what’s really happening in their brain?
Think of the fairy lights on the Christmas tree.
And imagine they were not all yellow lights.

Imagine instead that the lights had the ability to mix (like you mix colours on paper)
So as you turn on the switch, a set of red lights ignite and race to turn on.
At the very same time, the yellow lights ignite their sequence.
And at one point, the red and yellow lights meet at a junction.
And you get an orange.

This is the genesis of an idea
Bulbs of different colours mixing at one specific point.
It’s how the neurons in our brain work.

Now instead of just red and yellow lights, think of millions of shades of lights (millions of neurons).
And they’re all racing, and meeting at different junctions.

And mixing
Mixing and creating different shades.
Red mixing with blue.
Blue mixing with yellow.
Yellow mixing with green.

Suddenly there are millions of shades. Shades that all culminate to create a neuron dance.
And the neuron dance ends up with you saying “Eureka!”

Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same drama
And each draw one, two, even ten funny gags.
It’s because of how their bulbs light up.

But the question remains.
We can indeed fire up millions of neurons in our brain. We can reference vast memory banks.
But why can’t we come up with gags?
Why can’t we be funny too like that cartoonist or comedian?

Maybe it’s just that we’re not talented enough.
Maybe it’s just that cartoonists think in a different way.

And it’s true. They do think in a different way
In fact, somewhere along the line, their brains worked out a neuron dance with one added combination: the combination of how to make something funny.

So what’s happening here?

Remember that fused bulb?
The bulb that prevents about fifty lights from coming on? That fused bulb prevents the lights from igniting in your brain. When we replace that bulb, suddenly all the lights are aglow.

All the fifty bulbs come alive.

What we have to do then, is to find that darned fuse bulb. And make sure we replace it pronto.

And when that bulb is replaced, then we have a new dance.
A neuron dance that enables us to think ‘funny.’

Pretty cool, huh?
So how do we start to think ‘funny?’
Let’s find out, in the next post, shall we?

Imagine you have a computer at home
And this computer is linked to another two computers.

And let’s say you wanted to search for a file named ‘monkey’.
If you initiated a search, guess what you’d get?
You’d get what you searched for: Namely all the files named ‘monkey.’

So if you have no files named ‘monkey’, you’d get zero responses.
Now let’s suppose you tried to do the same thing when you were online.

Let’s just say you typed in the word ‘monkey’ on Google
You know what happens next, don’t you?
You get 186,000,000 responses.

That’s 18.6 million responses
But that’s not the cool part. The cool part, is that the responses are visual, and textual, and there are thousands of variations on the topics. Topics that range from what monkeys eat. To where they live. To how monkey are connected with spiritualism. If you can think of the word ‘monkey’, and think of another word that’s not even remotely connected to ‘monkey’, you’ll find it on Google.

Smarter people are not smarter.
They have a database in their brain.
A database consisting of millions of ideas, concepts, and learning beyond what the average Joe seems to have.

Because of that database…
A smart person can answer questions out of left-field.
A smart person can literally see things that others can’t see.
A smart person is able to take completely disconnected situations, memories and learning and merge them together to make sense instantly.

So will reading a million books make you smarter?
Yes it will.  A lot smarter than you are right now.
But just having a database is not enough.

Google has a database. But that’s not enough.
What makes Google smarter, is the ability to recognise the pattern of the keywords.
So that when you type in keywords, Google brings up a close match to what you’re supposedly looking  for.
And it also brings up several matches that you hadn’t considered.

Your brain works in a similar fashion
When you have a problem to solve, and you put that problem to your conscious brain, it does a brain-wide search. It brings up connected and disconnected memories, situations and learning.

Which means that that if you spend six years reading up on ‘monkeys’, your brain is more than likely to make hundreds of connections with ‘monkeys’ and something random—like ‘coffee.’

This random mix is what we refer to as um, creativity
Most people who appear smarter work in this manner
Someone asks them a question. Or put forward a challenge of sorts.
And their brain races wildly through their personal database.
Linking connected and random memories, situations and learning.
And it comes up with a superb answer.

And their audience is astounded at how smart they are.

But in the end it’s the database.
If their database can’t access data on ‘monkey’, then it accesses nothing.

And it makes them look very chimp-like, doesn’t it?

Note: The obvious graphic to put at the top of this post would be a real monkey. But because I can access the term ‘monkey’ in my brain, I can think of soft toys, or dunces, or bananas. Or a zillion other things. Spend some time thinking of the word ‘monkey.’ You’ll be amazed at how many associations you have with this single word. 

I grew up in Mumbai, India.

And in on my journey in the world of advertising, I ran into a creative director called Adi Pocha.
Adi hired me to write 30-second commercial scripts for clients.

Now I’m not really sure why he hired me.
Because frankly, I didn’t have any real skills in copywriting.
Well I thought I had, but now I know that I didn’t.
What’s worse is that I’d never written a thirty-second commercial in my life. (And Adi knew it).

As you can imagine, I was totally at sea, when I was given my first assignment
Two days later, Adi asked if I’d written anything.
I told him I hadn’t.
“I can’t seem to get it done,” I said morosely.

And Adi turned to me and said these golden words
“If you and I go onto the street, and I pull up an uneducated person, give them twenty rupees—and ask them to write a commercial, what will they say?” he asked.
” That they can’t write a commercial,” I answered, matter of factly.
“So that uneducated person says, they can’t. And you say you can’t. So what’s the difference between you and that uneducated person?” Adi asked.

“Any body can say the word ‘can’t‘.
You were hired, because you should give it a shot. And make the mistakes. And then learn from your mistakes.”
And then I was commanded to go and write three sets of commercials.

Can’t do this. Can’t do that.
If everyone on the planet has a talent, it’s the ability to say the word ‘can’t’.
It stops us from improving our lives, and harnessing the enormous power of our brains.
It stops us from improving our weaknesses.

But surely we should work on our strengths and not our weaknesses...
That statement is only half true.
There are situations in business and life, when working on your weaknesses are counter-productive.
But this isn’t weakness myth isn’t true for learning.

We were all weak at learning to walk.
We were all weak at learning to talk.
We were all weak at learning to drive.
We were all weak at things that we take for granted today.

Learning isn’t a matter of weakness or strength.
It’s a matter of the teacher. And the willingness of the student. And the simplicity of the code.

Your job is to seek out the teacher.
To be the willing student.
To find a code, a system that’s simple to crack.

And suddenly the ‘can’t’ factor disappears.
Suddenly, you’re not like everyone else.
Suddenly the word ‘can’t exists, but you know there’s a way out.
And you’re willing to take that way out.

If there’s one talent you don’t want to have it’s this one: The talent of saying ‘I can’t’
Adi would not be pleased.

Arthur Benjamin does some amazing feats of brain magic.
He holds an entire audience in awe multiplying numbers such as 57,683 x 57,683.

And says funny words like ‘cookie fission’. Add ‘kerry’ to ‘fission.’ And then ‘rev up’, and add that to ‘fission.’

He has no problem squaring numbers faster than calculators.
In fact he squares two digit numbers, three digit numbers, and four digit numbers like we say ‘three square equals nine’.
He’s able to tell you which day of the month you were born on, based on the year and the date.
And that’s just some of the crazy mathematical stuff he does (and yes, he does it live!)

But is Art Benjamin a liar?
Because he tellls us he’s not a genius.
He says he’s using a method. And when someone says the word ‘method’, it means they’re using a series of steps.
So Art Benjamin is saying he’s not a genius.

Liar!

Susan Polgar, the first female grandmaster in chess says something similar.
Her words are: “You’re in total control of your own destiny. I really believe that if you put your mind to it, and you really want it, you can achieve it. Whatever it is.”

Liar! 

Andy Bell is the holder of the title of World Memory Champion
In twenty minutes he has to remember the sequence of ten decks of cards. That’s 520 cards. And he has to remember every card, in its correct sequence. No matter how many cards are fired at him, Andy remembers them perfectly. Everyone correct, and in the right order.

Again, Andy says he has a method. “As I child”, he says, “I had conventionally good memory. But once you learn a technique, like the location method I use, it takes everything beyond what you can possibly do naturally. I think I have the same mental equipment as everyone else. So it’s something anyone can do.”

Liar!

So here’s the irony of so-called genius.
The really smart people say they’re not smart.
They say they have a method. A code. A system.
That they’re like everyone else.
Conventional. Regular. Not genius-like at all.

All liars.

Including the biggest one of them all: Albert Einstein who said, “I am not smarter than anyone else. I’m just more curious.”
Yeah, right!

Note: To watch the video of Arthur Benjamin doing his mathemagic act, you’ll need to go online to: http://brainaudit.com/blog/?p=49

2007 World Skating Champion: Miki Ando

When you look around you and see talented people you may run into a common misconception.
You may believe that those considered ‘talented’ or ‘creative’ require less practice.

Makes sense, huh?
If you’re already talented, where’s the need for practice?
You already have what it takes.

Your brain is genetically engineered towards your talent.
You should be coasting downhill, while the others struggle.

Yet the evidence all around you, points to the exact opposite situation.
The top athletes in the world practice long hours.
The top artists in the world seem to be stuck to their palettes.
The best speakers go over their material, time after time, after time.
The best figure skaters do their routines hypnotically.

In fact, when research was done on the top figure skaters, here’s what the researchers found.
They found that the mark of the top skater is the ability to do their spins and jumps.

And that the absolute crème da la crème skaters did more jumps and spins, when practicing.

The researchers found that the slightly lower-ranked skaters did just a little less practice.
And took more breaks in between their jumps and spins.

Less practice, eh?
And yet we strongly believe that talent is inborn.
Because if talent were indeed inborn, then where’s the need to practice?

Where’s the need to do yet another jump and turn?

Surely even at the highest level of sport, one figure skater would be so overloaded with talent, that it would be impossible for others to catch up. Surely it would be impossible, no matter how many hours of practice their competition puts in.

Talent or creativity is the result of many, many hours of frustrating practice.
Because when we have courses, like say Article Writing for instance, I can tell you who’ll be the star of the course.
I can tell you within days of the course beginning, who’ll write better articles than anyone else.
I can tell you, even without knowing that person’s background, or capability, or any so-called talent.
I can tell you based on momentum.

The ones who consistently write better, faster, and with more panache are those who practice.
Day in, day out. Week in, week out.

The momentum builds on itself.
Suddenly patterns emerge.
Suddenly the achievement is higher.
Suddenly the pats on the back increase.

But is momentum alone enough to create a factor of skill?
Obviously not.
However, it is one of the most critical factors, as compared to everything else.

Because whom would you rather believe?
The perception of the average person on the street—who believes in inborn talent?
Or the figure skater doing yet one more practice jump and turn?

If you learned to ride a bicycle, there’s a pretty good chance you fell.
And fell down a lot.

I sure did.

What’s worse is I learned to ride on hills, with red mud.
And that means there was a good chance of losing control on the slopes. And grazing your feet, hands and face rather badly.
Plus I rode in the age without helmets. And without all those fancy shin guards, and knee-guards.
Logically, I should have never learned to ride a bicycle.

Logically, the lack of balance should have driven me nuts.
Logically, the number of band-aids and bandages should have made me give up.
Logically, my brain should have figured out, that the bike was trying to kill me.

But like you, I had a bicycle moment
For days on end, there was no respite from the falling.
Then suddenly in one second, I had a moment: The Bicycle Moment.
Suddenly I could balance. Suddenly I could ride. Suddenly it didn’t make sense why I was struggling so much.

Bicycle moments are seen everywhere.
Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philamornic Orchestra, talks about the fact when he got a pianist to stop playing on ‘two buttocks’. And got the young pianist to lift ‘one buttock.’ And there was a gasp from the audience.

You see the pianist had already practiced enough.
He’d already fallen many, many times.
But when that ‘one buttock’ moment arrived, it was his ‘bicycle moment.’
From that moment on, that pianist was no longer the same person.

But there are several issues that stop us from reaching the ‘bicycle moment’

• Issue 1: We don’t get an A grade in advance.

• Issue 2: If we are given an A, then what’s the need to improve?

• Issue 3: The tiny critiques set us back. Make us nervous. Less prone to risk—and more prone to never reaching our potential.

So let’s look at each issue separately
Issue 1: We don’t get an A grade in advance.
The reason I learned to ride a bike, is because all my friends could. It wasn’t like I needed to play Chopin’s Prelude No.6.

Every kid around me was having fun racing down the road on their bicycle.

It would be silly, even stupid for me not to learn how to ride.

My father could ride a bicycle. So could my mother. So could my uncles. And my grandmother.
Man, if there was talent in my family, it was bicycle riding, eh?
So I had an A in advance.

I had to ride. So I did.

But more importantly, I was expected to ride. It’s not like my parents, friends, and critics said, “You’re not genetically supposed to ride a bike. You’re not talented enough.”

You’d sound like a dope if you told someone something like that.

But look at what they do when you sit down to learn a skill.
They say: “Our family doesn’t have a mind for business. Our family can’t draw a straight line. Our family can’t do this, and can’t do that.”

Like hell you can’t.

There’s no family that’s genetically developed to achieve any skill. Not a single family on this planet. And yet, family after family happily hops onto a bicycle and rides away. Isn’t that amazing?

So if we know that we’re going to be able to achieve the grade, then hey, magically we achieve it.

Issue 2: If we are given an A, then what’s the need to improve?
Good question. Because we know for a fact that humans are lazy.

Now there’s one thing that trumps laziness. It’s called pride.

Your ego is bigger and stronger than laziness. In a boxing match, your ego would KO laziness out for the count in thirteen seconds.
When teaching someone something, you never appeal to their sense of achievement.

You appeal to their sense of ego.

And again, to reference Benjamin Zander…
He decided to give every single student an A. No matter what they did during the year, the student would get an A. Of course, this seemed unfair. Should the slacker get an A, even though another student has put in ten times the effort? But there was a catch.

The student had to write a letter to Benjamin at the start of the year.
The student has to say how the year would pan out, and why the student would deserve the A.

And the letter had to be handed in at the start of the year, explaining in full detail how the year would look. And why they’d end up as an A student.

Ego kicks in.
It’s why kids learn to cycle despite the falls.
If my friend can learn, so can I. I’ll take the grazes and the wounds, and get right back on my bike, thank you.

Using ego as a tool sounds almost too simple to be true. But hey, it’s true.

And sure, ego leads to over-confidence. And there’s where a mentor comes into play.
A mentor who critiques enough, but not too much.

Which takes us to the third issue: The tiny critiques set us back. Make us nervous. Less prone to risk—and more prone to never reaching our potential.
How do we not let the critiques drive us crazy?
It’s the mentor that’s always at fault.

Mentoring is a skill that needs mentoring. As teachers we need to go to the right ‘teaching school.’ But few of us ever do.
And so we don’t learn how to teach our students.

But here’s how students learn.
Students are like three-year old kids.
They can only grapple one letter of the alphabet at a time.
As a teacher, you can see the entire alphabet. Write it out. Understand the grammar. Understand the subtelties of the language.
The student can’t.

To them, the single letter of the alphabet is like climbing a mountain.
So when we knock the student off that mountain, it’s shattering to their ego.
This is more in the case of adults than kids.
Kids are like bicycle-riders. They don’t care.
Adults are wimps. They feel hurt, upset, angry, frustrated.

As a teacher, we need to understand this concept of ‘each letter of the alphabet.’
We need to get the student to work on one tiny part. One little part of the mountain. And then the next and the next.
But inevitably, we’ll run into impatience.
So we need to prepare for impatience in advance.
The student needs to write the ‘letter’ to us in advance.
The letter should outline that they’ll learn in little bits; master than bit; then move ahead.

The ego has kicked in again. Now they’ll want to live up to the letter.
They’ll know that climbing the mountain is hard work, but they’ll do it because they’ve promised to do it.

In little bits.
The more confident they get, the faster they’ll climb.
Then the critiques will seem like just another dumping of snow. Not an avalanche.

This is the core of what makes the ‘bicycle moment’ work:

1) The A Grade in Advance
2) The usage of ego in training.
3) Tiny bits of training. And mastery of those tiny bits.

It’s how I learned to ride a bicycle.
It’s how you learned to ride a bicycle.
And how we all have our bicycle moments.

Feel free to ask questions.
I do want to answer them

Frédéric-François Chopin

I may have heard Chopin’s Prelude No.4 a least a dozen times.
Or may have never heard it at all.
I couldn’t tell you for sure, you see.

Because there’s all this classical music playing in the background when I go to hotels. And to airports.

And I’m not paying attention.

But there was this one time I did pay attention
You see, I was listening to a presentation given by Benjamin Zander.
And Benjamin Zander didn’t just play Chopin’s Prelude No.4.
He patterned it for me (and everyone else, of course)

So how did he pattern Prelude No.4?
Well he brought my attention to the composer.
And to the music he was about to play.
And then he played it.
And I went through the first phase of patterning: recognition.

I was hearing Prelude No.4 for the first time ever.
Or rather, actually listening to Prelude No.4, for the first time.

Then Msieu Zander did something magical
He repeated the music.
Over and over.
And recognition seeped into my classical-music-starved brain.

And we moved quickly to the layering
Suddenly I wasn’t just listening to the music.
I was being shown specific notes.

Why one note made me feel happy.
Why the other note made me feel sad.
Why the Prelude seems to be struggling. Almost hitting bad notes.

How the Prelude hits so-called bad notes, and then hits the note we’ve been waiting for.
How that note gives me a sense of ‘aha, finally.’
And why that 2 minute Prelude is now an integral part of me.

If I heard it on the street. Or at an airport. Or at a hotel, I’d stop.
And listen. And understand. And try to find more layering in that pattern I know so well.
And it’s only because Benjamin Zander slowed down the pattern for me.
But he only slowed down the pattern for Prelude No.4.

I’m on my own for Prelude No.5.

Note: As a result of this one presentation, I went and bought over 80 classical pieces from iTunes. All Chopin, for starters. And to date, I’ve heard the same set over 30 times in less than five weeks. I put it on each morning as I’m writing articles, and imagine I’m this great pianist. I type faster when the music speeds up. And slow down when the music slows down. My life is richer because of Benjamin Zander’s presentation. And because he took the time to slow down the pattern for me.

To see Benjamin Zander’s presentation click here.

So what is patterning?

Patterning is simply a factor of:
1) Recognition.
2) Repetition.
3) Layering.

Recognition comes first
Imagine you’re in a city you’ve never been to before. Around you are cobbled stone streets. Hey, you’re in Rome.
But you’re hopelessly lost. The summer sun has long set, and you desperately want to get back to the hotel. But you can’t figure out where you are. This situation, as you’ve already worked out is a lack of recognition.

Of course, you know what comes next
You go back to the same cobblestone area the next day. And the day after. And then suddenly, you’re not even thinking about the way back to the hotel. Ah, but you are. Your brain has worked out a temporary map. And the repetition has helped you to get back.

Layering of course, is something we don’t pay attention to, at all
But it’s layering that really makes the difference. You see, recognition and repetition are core parts of your learning. But layering takes it to another level.

The first time you were lost, you didn’t see the beautiful flowering tree
Or the green paint on the window. You didn’t see that pizza place around the corner. But now you do. Your brain is beautifully layering colour, odour, sound, texture and tons of other stuff, that you’d find impossible to explain. And in a way impossible to re-create.

How do we know that we couldn’t re-create it all?
Because if someone told you to simply draw the scene, you’d only be able to re-create some of the scene. You’d miss out on many elements. You’ll miss out that faded poster on the wall. You’ll miss the ornately carved park bench. You’ll wonder how you didn’t see the bright red post box.

And if someone were to take you on this magical mystery tour...
The tour of the faded poster. The ornately carved park bench. And the bright red post box.

Then you’d enter the first phase: Recognition.
Of course, you’d see it again and again: Repetition.
And you’d start to recognise details. Far more details would enter your brain every single time. Aha!: Layering.

Now add recognition, repetition and layering at high speed.
And you have patterning.

Patterns are why you see a chair and know it’s a chair.
Why you listen to Chopin’s Prelude No.4 you’d remember it, if it was played to you again and again.
Why you see a child, and know it’s not your child.

That’s patterning.
Which is why you could recognise the Rubik’s Cube at the top of this page.
Your brain had seen it enough times, to tell you that it was indeed not any old cube.
But a Rubik’s cube.

And if that picture wasn’t of an actual cube, but a cake designed like a Rubik’s Cube.
Or furniture. Or just about anything. You’d still recognise the pattern.
Aha, you’re a genius.

Recognise the pattern.
And you’ve cracked the code.
But there’s still more work to be done.
It’s not enough to recognise a pattern. Or to crack a code.

But let’s leave it for another post, shall we?
For now I’d love it if you had any life stories, or comments or questions.
Feel free to fill in the comments box.

Imagine you went to a friend’s house today.

You’re in your friend’s kitchen.
And you see a chair.

And you sit down on that chair.

How do you know it’s safe to sit on that chair?
But even more interestingly, how do you know it’s a chair in the first instance?

Your brain worked out the pattern, didn’t it?
It figured out, that if the chair looked like a chair, then it must be a chair.

The chair you picked may be orange, and you’ve never sat in an orange chair before, but hey the brain still sees it as a chair.

And even if the chair didn’t have four legs. Even if it had just one central beam, your brain still sees the chair as a chair.

This is the simplicity of patterning
You see the chair. You sit on it.
A five-month old baby sees it.
And slams into it. Bumps into it. Stares at it.

Isn’t sure what to do with it.

The patterns are clear in your brain. The patterns ain’t that clear in the brain of that baby.

Which brings us to why some people seem so talented
They just see patterns we don’t see (not yet, anyway!)

But here’s the really frustrating part.
If you ask a ‘talented’ person what they’re seeing, they can’t explain what’s really happening.

So if you asked the famous artist Picasso, what patterns he saw before he drew a masterpiece, he may not have been able to give you an answer. And yet, he was seeing patterns.

But patterns at such high speed that most talented people can’t tell you what they’re seeing.
These um, talented people simply draw, or sing, or dance.
They can’t describe to you the pattern (in most cases).

So how do we know it’s a pattern after all?
Because of the repetition.

Picasso’s first drawing may not look exactly like the next, but try as he may, the next drawing will have an overlap of the first.
A dancer may do a completely different dance routine, but hey, there’s the style coming through. And what is style, but a pattern?

Artists, dancers, heck even criminals follow a pattern.
But because we can’t see the pattern at normal speed, we think it’s talent.

Yes, you have a talent for spotting a chair.
Yes, you have a talent for sitting down on a chair.
But can you explain that talent to me?

No you can’t.

Because it’s happening too fast in your brain.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in the brains of so-called talented people.
But let’s do the impossible in the posts to follow, shall we?
Let’s slow down patterns so that you can see them.

Aha…now that would be something eh?
Then the so-called talent wouldn’t be so magical after all.
But how do we slow things down? That’s the question.
And yes, there’s an answer.

Amazing as it may sound, there’s a simple, logical answer.
But hey, that answer will come in another post.
For now, look around and see your magnificent brain. And how it seems to recognise patterns all the time.
You are indeed talented at recognising patterns.
But we’ll go one step further. We’ll do stuff that seems impossible.
Like draw cartoons. Or write jokes. Or do things that seem um, quite out of your current league.

Watch this space.

And feel free to ask questions. Your questions will help me.

Imagine you do a course with Psychotactics (e.g. the Article Writing Course). And you learn specific steps to write an article. Well, heck you’re copying the steps, right?

And that makes you a clone, right?
Wrong.
Well, not exactly wrong.

The chances of others perceiving you to be a clone are very high.
But you can never, ever be a clone.

You couldn’t be a clone, even if you copied everything…
Because layering comes into play.
What you’ve learned over the years somehow gets added into the mix.

Good stuff that you’ve learned. Bad stuff too.

And though you think you’re becoming a clone, you’re creating a variation.

Kids start off trying to be clones of their parents
A child copies the actions, accent of its parent. As humans we’re all wannabe-clones.

If the entire human race walked on one leg, you can be sure that our kids would learn to walk on one leg.

And yet, there’d be variations.

Which kind of takes me back to when I first started cooking.
At that point, I didn’t want to experiment at all. I’d want to be told exactly what to do, and how to do it, down to the last ingredient, and the last measure. At that point I’d be a clone–almost.

But as I grew in confidence, that cloning factor didn’t get reduced. It just layered itself on the top of other factors.  And so, my ability to cook better and quicker meals continued to evolve.

And all the time, I thought I was just being a clone. But obviously, I was wrong.

Cloning is simply impossible
Because even when we’re trying to copy something in the greatest detail, we create some variation.
No matter how minute, the variation must exist.
Even an exact photocopy isn’t an exact photocopy down to the last detail.

A layer has entered the zone.
And layering is an amazing journey.

As we’re about to find out in my next post.

Do you like sushi?
Or do you hate it?
Or would you simply avoid it?

You see sushi is a common dish across the world today.
But there are people who don’t have fun around sushi.
To them, sushi is something scary, and different from steak and potatoes.
Steak and potatoes is what they love and understand.

But what’s all this sushi stuff got to do with understanding how people learn?

People learn with patterns
Talent has a direct co-relation to an understanding of patterns.
So while one person is able to learn through audio, the other person struggles.
One person is looking for ’sushi learning’, and the other wants ’steak and potatoes learning.’

And our world is all ’steak and potatoes.’
Look at the Internet. Look at our schools. Look around us.
We have audio, some video, and loads of text.

What if I wanted to learn through ‘cartoons’ instead?
What if I learned ten times faster through mind-maps?
That kind of learning doesn’t exist.
So the learner runs into a mind-block.

That block prevents people from going ahead.
Suddenly, they’re told that they’re not talented.
Suddenly, they feel a bit frustrated.
Suddenly, they decide that ’sushi’ isn’t for them at all.

But what if sushi weren’t presented as ’sushi?‘
And presented as something else?
And they enjoyed the ’sushi meal’, thinking it was something akin to ’steak and potatoes?’
At that moment, their brain has recognised a taste it likes. A new pattern.
Now they’re more than likely to eat ’sushi’, when at first they completely detested it.
The ’sushi’ didn’t change. The method of presenting the sushi changed.

And suddenly there is an interest.
An interest that leads to desire.
Desire that leads to fancy.
Fancy that could very well lead to obsession.
But it all started with the change in the way the pattern was presented.
When the pattern changes, the behaviour changes.

And the blockages to learning, reduce. Or completely vanish into the yonder.

Which reminds me…
This post is all about words. Or ’steak and potatoes’ learning.
Time to put in some video. And cartoons. And mind maps. And whatever I can get my hands on.
Time for some ’sushi learning.’

P.S. I couldn’t have found a better picture to illustrate ’sushi learning’ than that gadget above.
Sadly the product is no longer available. I guess it was too pricey at $89 for 256mb  

Have you ever seen an seven-year old child playing the piano?
Then listen to the same eight-year old playing the piano.
And then that child struggles on to become a nine-year old playing the piano.
And then he moves on to ten.

And then suddenly at eleven, something magical happens
The clunky sound disappears from the playing.
Suddenly, there’s flow and rhythm.
And you sit up in awe, saying: “What a talented child.”

And you’d be wrong.
Because talent has little or nothing to do with it.
Ben Zander, celebrated conductor of orchestras, and trainer shows you exactly what’s happening from the age of seven, eight, to nine, then on to ten. And finally what happens when the child becomes eleven?

The teacher hasn’t changed.
The method of teaching hasn’t changed.
So what did change?

Why does the child begin to play like a dream?
It’s a factor of impulses, says Ben Zander.
When they first start playing, children put an impulse on every note.
When they continue playing, children then put an impulse on every second note.

And if they persist, they then put an impulse on every fourth note.
And by the time they’re ten (and four years into training), they put an impulse on every eight note.

And then it happens…
The eleven year old plays music that makes you sit back in awe.

But what’s really happening?
Layering. That’s what’s happening.
When we learn a language, we learn to recognise sound.
Then we learn a word. Or two.

Then we’re able to string a sentence.
Then we’re able to add grammar, and make the sentence grammatically correct.
Finally we have enough layering, to not exactly pay attention to every word.
Every impulse.

We speak languages.
We rarely turn to an eleven-year old and say: Oooh, you speak such fine English.
You must be soooo talented in English.
And yet, English is a difficult language to learn. But learn it we all do.

The point is: If we’d given up speaking in our first year, or second year, or third year, we’d lose the ability to learn  the language. The layering has to happen. Otherwise, we stop learning.

People consider talent to be innate.
But a core part of talent is mere layering.
One over the other, over the other.
And suddenly a child plays the piano with mastery.
We speak languages fluently.
And an ex-cartoonist (that’s me) starts talking about marketing and brain stuff.

We fail to become talented because we fail to layer.
We’re stuck at the basic impulses, instead of progressing onwards.
We’re just seven year olds hacking away at the piano.
That’s all we are!

Note: Look at this video (yes again). Because by the time you get to 2:30, you’ll see how Ben Zander explains the concept so eloquently. Yup, 2 minutes and thirty seconds should show you all you need to see. But watch the full video if you wish to, as well (I’ve watched it no less than eight times already) As you can see, I’m layering too

We all believe that Einstein was talented.
He wasn’t.
He just hit his forehead a lot.

The Slap On The Forehead: What does it mean?
Einstein wasn’t talented. He developed pattern recognition. He worked out a pattern.

Once you see the clarity of the pattern, it’s like night and day. You’re not bumbling around in the dark. Suddenly everything seems easy. In fact, you wonder why everyone else doesn’t see it the same way. Why are they bumbling in the dark, you wonder.

Every ‘talented’ person has had this ‘aha-moment’ several times in their life. They are doing something—often something disconnected to their ability—and then it hits them. The pattern becomes super-clear.

And they hit their forehead.
That hitting of forehead is a moment when the brain recognises a pattern that others have failed to see. Any ‘talented’ person will tell you that the pattern has existed forever. And that they’ve just failed to see it. Of course, so have the others around them.

Because the ‘talented’ person is the first to see the pattern in this specific way, they are called ‘talented.’ But truly talented people know and recognise the forehead moment. They know it’s the moment that they finally recognise a new direction. Or to put it another way, another pattern.

You can do this while driving a car
Let’s say we wanted to go from my house to the city in peak traffic. No matter how bad the weather, I can get you to the city from my house about 40 cars ahead of anyone who sets out at the same time, from the same destination. It doesn’t mean that I’m talented at driving. It means that I’ve recognised a pattern.

I’ve worked out exactly the spots you need to change lanes. Yes, the exact spots. Changing lanes at those specific spots will get you about 40 cars ahead. Which is handy, when you’re in a hurry. But you know what? How do you get 600 cars ahead?

It’s called ‘taking the bus’.
The bus has its own freeway unhindered by traffic. It can get you to the city 600 cars ahead.
Now you don’t see that as a talent, do you? But it is? It’s the ability of the brain to recognise a pattern.

Pattern 1: Do what you’ve always done.
Pattern 2: Change lanes at specific points and get 40 cars ahead, every single time.
Pattern 3: Get on the bus, and get 600 cars ahead. Every single time.

This pattern recognition is what we call the forehead moment.

That duh sound you hear, is the new direction unfolding.

Once you work out the new direction, nothing is the same.
And other car drivers either follow you (like they did with Einstein)
Or they take the bus.
Or they call you talented, and do what they’ve always done