Brain Audit

Here are a few more photos

“Giants in their field”

Peggy Gower, Near Chicago, Il, USA
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Here is Cuatro studying the Brain Audit at MIT…I actually took this picture at night.

J
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And a few more from Milan

These photos of The Brain Audit were taken in Milan’s orthopedic joint replacement surgeon in the Seattle.

Milan Shannon Moore, Seattle, Washington, USA

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>>Click to see the other Brain Audit Book Photos

You may not have heard of Paul Wolfe.
You may never hear of Paul Wolfe.

But someday soon Paul Wolfe will grow his business.
And by the time we finish with the year 2012, Paul will be extremely successful.

So what is this prediction based on?
You see Paul doesn’t have many subscribers to his website (At last count he had less than 20).
In fact, he just started doing YouTube Videos a while ago (Maybe a month or less).
And those videos have bad lighting. And aren’t something magical.

But the magic isn’t in the videos.
Or the subscriber list.
It’s in the daily routine.
You see, every night before he goes to bed, Paul writes down what he’s done every single day.
And the achievement for the day.
And every single day he’s doing a little bit more. And more. And even more, as you may expect.

Which tells me one thing.
I don’t care how talented Paul really is.
I don’t care if his videos never improve.
I know that he’ll succeed.

Because the DNA of successful people is exactly the same. They keep at it. They do stuff every day, and keep at it relentlessly.
Which is why this is my prediction for 2012.

Paul Wolfe will be running a reasonably successful business.
Despite the recession.
Despite the blah, blah.
Despite everything you hear.
He’ll do it.

Watch this space.
Or watch his videos.
http://uk.youtube.com/user/howtoplaybassdotcom

And here’s the reasoning why: http://www.psychotactics.com/artmastery

I was sitting at my favourite cafe in Takapuna with Renuka’s niece, Marsha.
Marsha was only three and half years old at the time, and happily drinking her um, ‘coffee’, when she looked upwards (as most kids do), and noticed a black object on the glass.

“What’s that?” she asked.
“Fungus,” I said.

“Fungus,” she repeated about three-four times.
Then promptly she forgot. And asked again.
Of course I told her it was called fungus. And she nodded happily.

When she went back home to her mother, she ran through the door and said “Mama, I saw a bungus.”
Of course confusion reigned till I stepped in to clarify that it was a fungus.
And Marsha was delighted to correct herself and say the word correctly.

Most adults don’t act like Marsha
They’re defensive. Incredibly defensive.
They’re attacking. And it gets a bit scary how they fight back at times.

They don’t want to make a mistake.
They don’t want to appear in a bad light.
They are insecure. Because if they weren’t insecure, they would have no problem making mistakes. Or letting the world know about mistakes.

Most of us want to appear perfect.
We don’t want to make mistakes.
We don’t want others to learn that we’ve made a mistake.
In effect, we’re dolts.

Even a three and half year old knows better.
In fact the reason why kids have an enormous learning capacity is because they follow a very clear pattern of:
1) Learn
2) Talk
3) Implement
4) Make mistake.
5) Go back to start.

Most kids are smart because they’re professional mistake makers. They live in a world of ‘conscious incompetence’. Most adults are dolts.

They learn less not because they don’t have the time. Or because they have no talent.
They learn less because they can’t be like Marsha.

This isn’t a learner sign: It’s a ‘I’m going to make a mistake’ sign

Think of anything you’ve ever learned.
Anything.
Ever learned.

And the only way you’ll have learned it is by making a mistake.
Look at the act of learning the alphabet.
Speaking; walking; running; talking; dancing, and just about anything.
And you’ll never be able to point out even one instance in your entire life that was learned without making a mistake.

This idea of willfully making a mistake scares the heck out of most people.
It literally means that you have to make mistakes—and that if you don’t make mistakes you can’t learn. If you can’t learn, you can’t acquire a new talent. If you can’t acquire a new talent, you remain exactly where you are.

Are you scared?
You should be.
Because the younger you are, the less you’re afraid of making mistakes. The older you get, the more you tell your brain it’s bad to make a mistake. The older you get, the more you feel you have to learn something quickly, and correctly the first time.

Yet that’s not the way the brain learns at all.
The only way the brain learns is through actively making mistakes. The brain’s most powerful tool is to make the mistake, recognise the mistake, and then try to remember the mistake. This is so that it doesn’t make the mistake again, or doesn’t create mistakes of an equal intensity.

This process needs time and effort.
The smaller, and simpler the task, the quicker the brain is able to eliminate mistakes. The more complex the task, the more time and effort is required to make the mistake, recognise it, remember it and finally correct it.

And yet the correction factor is almost never 100%.
So let’s say you’re learning a new dance step for instance. The brain has to first goof up. Once it has goofed up, it has to recognise the goof up, or it won’t improve. Once recognition sets in, all your neurons have to fire in the right sequence to memorise this mistake.

The more you muck up the dance step, the more your brain has to work out what’s wrong. And with every mistake, it eliminates only a percentage of the error. It’s only when it eliminates 100% of the error, does it then get that dance step right.

What’s interesting is that you’re never learning one step at a time.
You’re learning several steps. And the brain has to go over this whole sequence of making the mistake, recognising it, memorising it and then fixing it.

And it has to do this entire sequence for every single mistake.

Luckily our brains have enormous computing power.
And they’re able to process these mistakes and make corrections in a matter of milliseconds—if we are willing to make the mistake, that is.

The biggest reason we don’t get talented is for a simple reason.
It’s because we can’t bear to make a mistake.
And as you can now tell, that’s the biggest mistake of all!

Note: During this lesson I had to go through this exact process, because I was trying to learn how to insert an ‘em-dash’. On my PC, I have to press Alt + 0151 on my keyboard to get an ‘em-dash.’ On a Mac, it’s different. I have to press  Shift+ Alt + – to get the same result. I learned how to create the ‘em-dash’, and then promptly goofed it up. I had to go back several times to learn it. And now I think I have it. Or do I?

Do we come into this world as conservative thinkers?
Or are we born with a radical bent?

Not surprisingly, we aren’t born with a blank slate.
We come into this world with Version 1.0 embedded in our brains.
So if you look at the most isolated to the most populated places on the planet, you’ll find we’re born with the same core Version 1.0 software.

And yet the software gets a sort of ‘virus’.
Some of us turn extremely conservative. We detest radical thoughts.
And some of us turn extremely radical. We in turn detest conservative thinking and actions.

But showing contempt for the other side is crazy.
Because everything on the planet, including talent, is a matter of structure. Structure is conservative.

Talent is also a matter of art. Art is radical free-thinking.

Creativity and Talent do not exist in thin air. They need structure.
Structure is boring without creativity. It would make our lives drab and doom us to boredom.
Creativity without structure would lead to complete chaos.

Both must exist side by side.

Our iPhones, our cars, our houses, our computers: everything is based on someone’s ability to transcend their radical or conservative virus, and use both sides to create something new.

We can live with a virus that forces us to be ultra-conservative or ultra-radical.
Or we can understand that they’re like yin and yang.
That one cannot actually exist without the other.

The day you learn how to use the conservative as well as the radical part of your brain, that’s the day you’ll learn faster than ever before.

But can you do it?
Can you actually step over to the other side?

Try it. You’ll be amazed at what you find there!
(Watch this video by Jonathan Haidt as well: You may need to be online to watch it)

Catherine’s painting: Click to see big picture

Here’s an interesting story about ‘creativity’.
It’s so interesting that I’ll reproduce it verbatim.

What’s even better is that it’s about a painting.
And how the painting linked to article-writing?

You’re dying to know, huh? Well read on.
This note is from Catherine Marechal, who lives in Italy and whose first language is French.

Happy Birthday Sean!
I want to thank you and let you know of an unusual result of the article writing course.  I have been painting a lot with my left hand. I always had difficulty just finding the time to paint. Now I just do it almost every morning and have no problem finding the time…. and my painting is very different from my right hand work!

What is the link with article writing?
As you know I had problems with keeping only one idea in my article outline. After a conversation with Leah, when I told her I thought my problem was because I was mostly right brain. She asked me if I was left handed. I said no,  and that as a small kid I was ambidextrous but the French school system decided that I would be right handed. and I became right handed.

After talking with Leah, I decided to do my article outline handwriting with my left hand. In fact it worked, you said that you could not see any change to do in my article.

My friend Celeste Varley (the painter and teacher) who I have been encouraging to take your article writing course, suggested that I try to paint with my left hand rather than doing with both hands (but mostly my right hand was predominant) after I told her the story.

So here is my birthday gift, one of my left hand painting
Catherine

Incredible, huh?
That a mere shift of the hand not only made her article-writing a whole lot better, but that Catherine is now painting frequently, and with great confidence.  And that is indeed the power of the brain when it decides to achieve things, rather than just back away and pretend that about a lack of ‘talent’.

See that bridge. That’s a ‘bridge of pain’ or ‘no-pain.’ Find out how your brain deals with creating permanent pain.

I play a lot of badminton these days.
And after running on the courts for two hours, I’m fine.
But the next day, my knees are sore.
I find it difficult to bend my knees. And have to use some sort of pain-relieving balm.

So I decided to use my brain as a balm instead
And drive resources from my brain to make sure my knees are not sore any more.
So all I did was focus on my knees not being sore.
And believe me, I’m no magician.

Incredibly, they’re not sore any more.
Now this sounds bizarre, doesn’t it?
Probably as bizarre as learning a new skill.

When you learn a new skill you’re in extreme pain.
And of course, you have all those naysayers saying, “You’re not talented.”
So there’s a lot more than mere extreme pain. There’s discouragement too.

But the brain can rise above all of this pain to create permanent success.
You see the brain works on the system of synapses and neurons (wait, don’t glaze over, because I’ll explain)

Think of neurons as two sides of a cliff.
Neuron 1 is one side of cliff.
Neuron 2 is the other side of the cliff.
There’s a wide, deep ravine in between those cliffs.

To cross over, you need a bridge
That bridge is the synapse bridge.
When we learn something new, the brain keeps building a bridge between the two cliffs.
All the time, as you go through your day, your brain is building new bridges.
The more you repeat a learning or action, the more the brain works on strengthening the bridge, because it recognises the bridge as important.

So you can create a bridge of pain.
And the brain will keep working on that bridge so that your synapse (bridge) is one one of pain.

Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.
Pain and more pain.
So that a once rickety bridge becomes a steel structure.
A structure that’s permanent, and can take on even more loads of pain.
Thus increasing your pain manifold.

Really talented people recognise the failure and the pain
But they rise above it forcing their brain to remember the joy and achievement.
The excuse-makers find a way to focus the brain on the pain and failure.
And the brain gives us exactly what we want. It creates a stronger bridge of pain or joy—depending on what you choose.

So do you want to fix muscular pain?
Or creative pain?
Get your brain to swing into action. And see how it fixes the so-called problem faster than you think.

How much is 3 + 3?
You know the answer already, don’t you?

That answer is embedded in your brain through a factor of repetition.
Time and time again, you were called on to remember random numbers.
Then you had to add them up, multiply them and eventually they formed a memory.

Your brain has a storage point for all these bits and pieces.
And talent works on memory. But depends far more on layering.

So if you were to listen to Clay Shirky on collaboration (see video below), you’d learn about collaboration in groups.
If you were to listen to Clay Shirky a second time,  you’ll learn something quite different about collaboration in groups.
If you were to listen to Clay Shirky four or five times, you’ll learn something quite different every single time.

How do I know this?
Because I went for a walk to the beautiful Milford beach, near my home.
And during that one hour walk, I listened to the same audio five times over.
Each time my brain remembered something from the previous hearing, and layered a new learning over it.
The more I listened, the more I learned.
It wasn’t just repetition.
It was literally a bunch of new ideas that were popping in my brain with every repetition.

In effect, I was layering.
Then I took that layering, and added some more information.
I listened to Deborah Gordon and how ants use collaboration (see video below)
Then I spoke to my wife, Renuka about how collaboration could be used on our websites.
Then I brought up the concept of collaboration in a client call.

With every layer, my understanding of collaboration increased in leaps and bounds.
I now understood collaboration like never before.
What my brain is doing, is creating a whole bunch of amazing links.
Links that help me learn.
And get more talented in the understanding of collaboration.

Compare this with 3 + 3.
No matter how many ways you look at it, it’s still 6.
Which brings us back to the question of superiority. Which is more important? Layering or repetition?
Without a doubt, layering is what helps us become talented.
Memory merely helps us remember those layers.

Memory isn’t superior than layering. And neither is layering superior to memory.
Both are needed to learn and sustain a skill.
But if you really want to become a genius at something you can’t depend solely on memory.
Memory by itself is just a bunch of 3 + 3 situations.
Layering is what causes genius.

More on this later…now that I’m back thanks to a nudge from Stew Walton
For now, watch these fascinating videos on collaboration.

Six times of course!

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.

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  

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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?

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

In the early 1970s, men’s tennis was dominated by Americans.
In your wildest imagination you would not believe that a Swede would change all that.

The name of this Swede was Bjorn Borg.

In less than 10 years, Borg made an entire country ‘talented.’
Some of the most impressive tennis players like Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg and dozens of other players sprouted from the Swedish woodwork.

About the same time, a woman called Martina Navratilova surfaced from Czechoslavakia. She too, started winning everything in sight.

And then, magically, the Czechs became talented.

The very same phenomenon surfaced in India
Before the year 1985, the Indian cricket team was considered to be a second-class cricket team.

Then from nowhere, they rose to win the World Cup against all odds. And from then on, you’d be slightly mad if you had a one-day tournament, and didn’t have the Indian team as an active participant.

What causes an entire country to suddenly be talented in a sport?
Surely it can’t be inspiration. If it were inspiration, then any one from any country could simply be inspired to do the same.

You see there’s quite another factor at work.

It’s called pride.

Or a lack of wimpiness
Because so-called talent requires hard work. There’s not a single ‘talented’ musician who doesn’t put in many, many hours of hard work. There’s not a single speaker, dancer, writer, athlete, teacher who simply ambles in, and oozes talent.

Talent is the culmination of so many factors, that it almost seems magical.

And unique.

And that’s because we see the expression of talent in a matter of minutes. We see a person draw a cartoon in a few seconds; write an article in an hour; play a difficult piece of music in a matter of minutes. And they seem to be so talented.

Yet the reason we aren’t talented, is because we’re wimpy.

Most people give themselves the permission to be untalented.
And we don’t have to look to the Bjorn Borgs or Martina Navratilovas to find so-called talent.

If you look around you, you’ll find some families seem to be overly talented.
They seem to be involved in the arts, writing, music and somehow seem to be so very creative.

But stop and think about it for a second.
What stops your kids from being as talented?
What stops you from being more talented?

It’s the stupid, nonsensical belief that people were born with talent.

That one country is more talented than another.
That one family is more talented than yours.

Don’t tell that to the Swedes
Here’s what Bjorkman, himself a world No.4 has to say: “We were so good that we spoiled everyone at home. There was no way we could keep winning Davis Cups, have No. 1s and Grand Slam singles champions.

We played the Davis Cup semifinals last year and were not even nominated for the top five teams in Sweden. I think people do forget some of the achievements we still create in tennis because they compare everything to the past.”

And here’s what Bjorn Borg himself has to say:
“We are struggling with the junior tennis in Sweden, but we’re working very hard to improve that. They’re also struggling in Australia”.

“But I think this goes in a circle. Sweden produced players for many, many, many years, unbelievable players. It’s impossible to continue to
do that forever”.

“But I’m sure Swedish tennis and Swedish juniors, we will be back. But it’s going to take quite a few years.”

Can you spot the wimpy-talk in the language?
Talent doesn’t arise from wimpy talk.
It arises from action. And patterns. And layering. And emotions.

“I think” is not a powerful emotion. It’s a doubt.
I think is wimpy.
Recognise that in your own life. Cut out the wimpy talk and get moving towards creating real talent.

Because talent starts with emotion. If you don’t believe you can do it, you never will.

There are many ways to define talent. Most of them are wrong.

Here’s how one dictionary defines talent:

Natural ability? Don’t make me laugh.
A capacity for achievement? Are you saying one person has a better capacity than the other? On what basis?
Special ability? Special, why special. Does this mean no one else can do this specific task? Or have this talent?

The problem with the definition, is that no matter where you look, you find ‘talent’ or ‘creativity’ to be defined in a way that’s horribly inaccuarate. Because the real definition of talent (and I’m typing this at the top of my head—because I’m so um, ‘talented’) runs something like this:

Talent is the combination of many emotions, memories, patterns and repetitions, implemented at high speed
You see what’s happening in this definition. We’re talking about emotions, and memories and stuff that doesn’t automatically assume that one person is ‘more gifted’ than another. That one brain doesn’t necessarily have less powerful hardware than another brain. But before we go into the depths of ‘hardware and software’ of the brain, let’s look at the concepts of emotions, patterns, memories and repetition. And what high speed has to do with all of these factors.

But for now, you have a definition, at least.

Feel free to disagree

People believe they’re good at drawing…or bad at drawing

How this this crazy notion come about? How did we get it into our heads that we were good or bad at something? I’ll tell you how.

Let’s take drawing, because most people simply can’t draw…

So why can’t they draw? Is it because they’re not talented? Let’s see, shall we?

Imagine a skill you’re good at: Like walking around a banana peel, for instance.
Imagine someone put five banana peels in your path.
Or ten. Or twenty-five. Or even fifty.

Would you be able to avoid the banana peel, and walk right along?
Silly question, eh? But what’s the banana peel got to do with your brain?
The brain recognised the danger of the peel. It recognised that the peel could create damage.
You could slip; fall; hurt yourself; even die.

So the brain pays attention. It prevents you from stepping on the peel in the future.
Drawing, on the other hand,  doesn’t cause you to slip; fall or hurt yourself.

So your brain has no need to pay attention.
Yet, imagine you did a drawing as a child.
Imagine that every time you did that drawing you were slapped.
Not just slapped hard across the face. But ridiculed. And punished.
What are the chances you’d become really outstanding at drawing?

Pretty slim, huh?
So let’s take the exact opposite. Let’s say you did the drawing, and your mother was really excited. She showed it to everyone. She told you (and told the world) how talented you were. She brought you more crayons. More paper. More encouragement. And despite being ‘lousy’ at drawing, she felt no intimidation when showing you—a little child—how to draw.

And so the stirrings of talent begin.
You become talented.
You draw more.
You use drawing as a weapon to get attention.
You spend more time, understanding the medium and patterns better.
You get more attention. You draw even more. And the attention feeds on itself, resulting in more effort, more training.
And voila, you’re an artist.

You see it’s stupidity that causes us to believe in talent.
Talent is nothing but a seed, well watered.

Which is why most of us have a ‘talent’ to speak almost one language.
Most of us have a ‘talent’ to press door bells, and speak on phones.
Most of us have a ‘talent’ to recite and write our alphabet from one end to the other.

Which brings us back to drawing
Surely drawing is a lot more complex than reciting and writing the alphabet.
You think so? Tell that to a three-year old child.
Watch as she struggles with just the letter A. Or B. Or the combination of A, B and C.
So what makes her talent grow?

It’s the banana peel of life.
Her parents know that that child will ’slip and fall’ if she doesn’t learn her alphabet.
So they make the alphabet fun. They show the child a cat. And say the letter C.
They show the child a ball, and you guessed it, it’s the letter B.

And soon, every child becomes a genius at the alphabet.
And you know what, if you are a genius at the alphabet, I can indeed teach you how to draw using NOTHING but the alphabet.
And could you then become a genius at drawing?

Hmmm…food for thought, eh?
So what are your questions? Because as you can tell, this is indeed going to be a long, long series.