Creative Think

The Sun Is New Each Day

Let's check in with Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the world's first creativity teacher. His thought for today is:

"The sun is new each day."

Like just about all of Heraclitus' insights, this one can be interpreted in a variety of ways. But today, the creativity strategy I see in his words is:

Think Again.

Life continually surprises us.

Problems spring up in places that were trouble-free only just yesterday. Opportunities arise in long stagnant arenas. Routines that yielded predictable results stop working.

Heraclitus reminds us that nothing is permanent and we shouldn't become slaves to our assumptions.

We should also remember that like the sun in Heraclitus' epigram, our own state of mind is also continually changing.

Some days you may be alert and lucid, while others you may be angry or mentally exhausted.

Sometimes you're optimistic about what's just around the corner, and sometimes you're filled with melancholy about the past.

All of these states of mind "color" the way we think about the problems and opportunities before us.

What issue do you need to rethink? Is the idea you reacted against yesterday really so bad? Does the idea you fell in love with last week still shine? What would benefit from a fresh look?

Beware of "Moreness"

It's been a while since we've checked in with Heraclitus (the ancient Greek philosopher who was the world's first creativity teacher). His words of wisdom for us today are:

       "The way up and the way down
               are one and the same."

What does this mean? Well, it's pretty enigmatic.

But I think there's a creative strategy implicit in this insight, and I interpret it to be:

       "Beware of Moreness."

When things are made larger, they take on a complex, new life of their own, and unexpected — even undesirable — things can happen.

Here's an example.

Let's say that you have a recipe for strawberry shortcake that serves four people.

One day you invite over seven friends to eat this desert. To make it, you simply double the recipe's proportions.

On another occasion, you make it only for yourself and a friend, and you halve the proportions.

Now, let's suppose that you invite 50,000 people over for strawberry shortcake. At this point, the biggest challenges confronting you have nothing to do with the recipe. These include buying strawberries on the commodities market, making deals with the teamsters to deliver enough cream, traffic-flow coordination, and large-scale renting of tables, chairs, bowls, and spoons.

The same things can happen when situations become larger: issues come up that weren't even thought about in the original plans.

Two questions to ask yourself as you contemplate a current problem or issue: 

Where would you be better served with "less" rather than more?

What problems might having "more" create for you?

What's Your Creative Thinking Style?

It's time again for some inspiration from Heraclitus, the world's first creativity teacher (he lived around 500 BC). Today's insight is: “I searched into myself.”

Heraclitus felt that consulting our own knowledge and intuition is a wonderful way to gain insight. Unfortunately, some of us never learned this lesson. Much of our educational system is an elaborate game of "guess what the teacher is thinking," and we come to believe that the best ideas are in someone else's head rather than our own. Heraclitus reminds us that there are good ideas within ourselves if we are willing to dig deeply enough.

I believe there's a creative strategy in Heraclitus' insight, and it is:

Discover your own creative style.

We can emulate Heraclitus by searching for own creative tendencies. Here are six of mine:

1. I get my ideas either when I'm under a lot of pressure — "the ultimate inspiration is the deadline" — or when I'm away from the problem altogether. I rarely get them when I'm doing routine tasks that require some attention.

2. If I'm mentally blocked in trying to solve a problem, it's usually because I'm in love with a particular idea — so much so that it prevents me from looking for alternatives. Only when I force myself to become detached from it and "kiss it goodbye" do I find new answers. Letting go of a previously cherished idea can be one of life's great pleasures.

3. I try to pay attention to small things: how much frowning takes place in beer commercials, what sorts of patterns dead leaves make around a storm drain, and so on. I do this partly because I've trained myself to do it, but also because I've been forced to. I'm left-handed, but the world is designed for right-handed people — something most "righties" don't even think about. I'm constantly being made conscious of how things are put together. For example, telephone booths are designed to make right-handed people feel comfortable and at ease, but lefties can feel clumsy using them.

4. My own ego can get in the way of discovering new things. However, if I allow myself to lower my resistance to those ideas that I typically dismiss as irrelevant or unattractive, I find that they can become doorways to solutions I've been overlooking.

5. I don't know what I don't know. I've got a big blind spot, and the only way to get access to what's lurking out there is to put myself in a humble, receptive frame of mind (not always easy to do) and ask others to point out what I'm not seeing.

6. Rejection of my work in the early phases of the creative process doesn't bother me. I'm not afraid of taking one of my less than stellar ideas and asking complete strangers what they think of it. I find their responses frank and refreshing.

Questions: What's your creative style? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Disrupt Success

"Every walking animal is driven
to its purpose with a whack."

In my previous post, Embrace Failure, I provided one interpretation of the above epigram from Heraclitus, (the enigmatic ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the world's first "creativity teacher").

Like all of Heraclitus' epigrams, this one can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I believe there's another creative strategy here, and it is: "Disrupt Success."

Success can make us complacent. We think,

"Everything's fine; things are working — why change them?"

So we stop trying new approaches. Often it's only when our success is threatened that we seek to make improvements. As I've mentioned before, sometimes we need a good "whack on the side of the head" to get us focused on our purpose.

An example is the "sailing ship syndrome," named after the burst of innovation in the mid-19th-century sailing-ship industry. Only after it became obvious that the steamship would dominate the commercial sailing ship did the sailing ship reach its peak of efficiency.

Faced with the challenge of steam, sailing ships reduced the average westward crossing of the Atlantic from five weeks in 1840 to three weeks in 1860. Many of the changes that made this increase in speed possible could have been made decades earlier, but it was only when faced with elimination that the motivation was present to do so.

Moral: to remain successful, sometimes we need to oppose or destroy the very things that enabled us to be successful in the first place.

Question: What previously successful assumptions can you challenge?

Embrace Failure

It's been a while since we've checked in with Heraclitus, the enigmatic ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the world's first "creativity teacher." Let's do so now. His thought for today is:

"Every walking animal is driven
to its purpose with a whack."

Like all of Heraclitus' epigrams, this one can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I believe the creative strategy Heraclitus is advocating here is: "Embrace failure."

Like other walking animals, sometimes we need a good "whack on the side of the head" to get us focused on our purpose. One thing that "whacks" our thinking is failure — it jolts us out of our routines and forces us to look for fresh approaches.

Think about it: our error rate in any activity is a function of our familiarity with that activity. If we are doing things that are routine for us, then we will probably make very few errors. But if we are doing things that have no precedence in our experience or are trying different approaches, then we will be making our share of mistakes. Innovators may not bat a thousand — far from it — but they do get new ideas.

Errors serve a useful purpose: they tell us when to change direction. When things go smoothly, we generally don’t think about them. To a great extent, this is because we function according to the principle of negative feedback. Often it is only when things or people fail to do their job that they get our attention. For example, you are probably not thinking about your kneecaps right now. That’s because everything is fine with them. The same goes for your elbows: they are also performing their function — no problem at all. But if you were to break a leg, you would immediately notice all the things you could no longer do, but which you used to take for granted.

Negative feedback means that the current approach isn’t working, and it’s up to you to find a new one. We learn by trial and error, not by trial and rightness. If we did things correctly every time, we would never have to change course, and we’d end up with more of the same.

Indeed, most people don’t change when they “see the light.” They change when they “feel the heat.” A friend of mine who had been fired from a job told me: “Yeah, getting fired was really traumatic, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to come to grips with who I was as a person. I had to look at my strengths and weaknesses with no delusions at all. It forced me to get out of my box and scramble. Six months later, I was in a much better situation.”

The same is true for large institutions, associations, and organizations. After the supertanker Exxon Valdez broke open off of Alaska in the spring of 1989, thereby polluting the coast with millions of gallons of oil, the petroleum industry was forced to rethink and toughen up many of its safety standards regarding petroleum transport. The disintegration of the Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) space shuttles caused a similar thing to happen at NASA. Similarly, the sinking of the Titanic (1912) led to the creation of the International Ice Patrol, and legally mandated iceberg reporting. The September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center forced architects to significantly raise their fire retardation standards in new high-rise building construction. The catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami forced world seismic monitoring authorities to change how they disseminate and share warning information.

We learn by our failures. Our errors are the "whacks" that lead us to “think something different.”

Question: Where have you benefited from a recent failure?

Donkeys Prefer Garbage to Gold, Part II

In a recent post, I introduced the following enigmatic epigram from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus:

"Donkeys prefer garbage to gold."

Like most of Heraclitus' ideas, this epigram can be understood in a variety of ways. I think the creative strategy here is:

Recognize that things change their value.

Heraclitus is saying is be careful what you strive toward because it just might change its value.

This moral is brought home in a provocative episode of the  early 1960s television series The Twilight Zone, entitled "The Rip Van Winkle Caper."

After robbing a bullion train from Fort Knox, four thieves stow their fortunes in gold bricks in a cave and enter suspended animation for one hundred years, certain that they will evade all pursuit.

When they awaken a century later, they find that their plan has worked perfectly except for one problem: when they try to spend their precious metal, they discover that it doesn't have the value they thought it would.

Because of advances in industrial chemical engineering in the intervening years, gold has become a ubiquitous commodity and is actually worth less than its weight in water.

A few questions to think about:

• Will what you're striving for still be valuable in the future?
• Under what circumstances might its value change?
• Might something you now consider worthless on take on value in the future?

Donkeys Prefer Garbage to Gold, Part I

It's been a while since we've checked in with Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the world's first "creativity teacher." Let's do so now. His thought for today is:

"Donkeys prefer garbage to gold."

Like just about all of Heraclitus' enigmatic epigrams, this one can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Here's one "take" on it:

Realize that people value different things.

What's important to one person can be of little consequence to another. For example, how well the Yankees perform this weekend matters greatly to a New York baseball enthusiast but hardly at all to a Helsinki accountant.

What's sacred to one group can be profane to another. For example, a hamburger establishment on Michigan Avenue will attract customers: on the banks of the Ganges it will draw outrage.

What's unthinkable in one culture can be as natural as breathing in another. For example, candy manufacturers in developed countries use special color agents to avoid staining the tongue; in developing countries some people prefer having a candy-stained mouth because it boasts of having disposable income.

Thus, your "golden idea" may be just so much garbage in someone else's estimation — and vice versa.

Some questions to think about:

• Do other people value your idea the way you do?
• How can you help them understand your perspective?
• In what ways do you need to educate yourself about other points of view?
• What are you overly concerned about that's really not such a big deal?
• What's your blind spot about not seeing cultural differences?

Also see: "Donkeys Prefer Garbage to Gold, Part II."

Forgive

Let's check in with Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the world's first creativity teacher. His thought for today is:

"The sun is new each day."

Like just about all of Heraclitus' insights, this one can be interpreted in a variety of ways. But today, the creativity strategy I see in his words is:

Forgive.

The act of forgiving can help us let go of past assumptions and also open our minds up to new possibilities. Here's an historical example.

After World War I, the victorious countries, still smarting from their huge financial outlays, demanded reparations from Germany. This was the most costly political decision of the entire World War I era. It undermined Germany's enfeebled economic political system, and fostered the conditions that led to the rise of Hitler.

A generation later, after World War II, Europe again faced economic and political chaos. But instead of demanding reparations from the vanquished Axis powers, the Allies took the opposite approach. Through its massive Marshall Plan aid, the United States helped to build much of the continent's infrastructure, including Germany's.

In doing so, it created conditions that encouraged economic health and political stability. By not perpetuating past grievances, they broke the cycle of war and poverty that had cost the world tens of millions of lives in the first half of the twentieth century.

Question: What can you forgive in a current problem or situation? What new assumptions can you bring into play? What solutions does that now make possible?

 

Be Willing to Be Led Astray

It's been a while since we've checked in with Heraclitus (the ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the word's first world's first creativity teacher). Let's do so now and see what advice he can offer us. His words for today are:

“Expect the unexpected,
or you won’t find it.”

As always, Heraclitus can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The creativity strategy I see here is:

“Be willing to be led astray.”

When we explore for ideas and information, sometimes we find things that are better or more exciting than what we were originally looking for. Thus, we need to keep our minds open to unsought-for possibilities.

For example, in the 1930s physicist Karl Jansky improvised a new antenna to study the effects of telephone static. Instead, he discovered radio waves from the Milky Way galaxy, and in the process helped create the science of radioastronomy.

In 1856, chemist William Perkin searched for a synthetic quinine to combat malaria. Instead, he discovered a dyestuff (he called it “Mauveline,” which the public shortened to “mauve”) that was the first practical synthetic color.

In 1984, biologist Alex Jeffreys studied the gene for the muscle protein myloglobin, hoping to gain an understanding of how genes evolve. Instead, he stumbled on a stretch of DNA in the middle of that gene that varied greatly from one individual to another. This led to his pioneering work in the creation of “DNA fingerprinting,” which has revolutionized not only forensic science but also other disciplines such as anthropology and epidemiology.

Think of the times in your own life when one thing has led to something entirely different. How did you get interested in your line of work? How about the times you’ve gone to the library in search of a particular book, and then found something even better on the shelf behind you?

As writer Franklin Adams put it,

“I find that a great part of the information
I have was acquired by looking up something
and finding something else on the way.”

Here's my question for you: What mindset do you adopt when you want to see and take advantage of the unexpected?

This is what I do (sometimes it works fine, and sometimes less so):

1. I try to loosen my preconceptions about what I expect to find in a situation;
2. I pay special attention to the anomalous things I come upon rather than ignoring them; and,
3. I try to use what I discover as stepping stones to something very different.

When I’m in a hurry or narrowly focused on a task, I have a hard time adopting this mindset. That's because I tend to filter out information that strikes me as irrelevant. Conversely, when I’m relaxed or playful, there’s a greater probability that unexpected things flow my way.

What works for you?

Use Your "Forgettery"

It's time for some wisdom from Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher whom I consider to be the world's first creativity teacher. His words today are: "Knowing many things doesn't teach insight."

As with all of Heraclitus' ideas, there are many ways to interpret this. What stands out for me, though, is this creative strategy:

Practice forgetting.

I think what he's getting at is this: forgetting what we know — at the appropriate time — can be an important means for gaining insight. This is illustrated in the story about a creativity teacher who invited a student to his house for afternoon tea. They talked for a while, and then it was teatime. The teacher poured some tea into the student's cup. Even after the cup was full, he continued to pour, and soon tea overflowed onto the floor.

Finally, the student said, "You must stop pouring; the tea isn't going into the cup." The teacher replied, "The same is true with you. If you are to receive any of my teachings, you must first empty out the contents of your mental cup." His point: without the ability to forget, our minds remain cluttered with ready-made answers, and we're not motivated to ask the questions that lead our thinking to new ideas.

For example, one day on his regular walk past the local blacksmith's workshop on the island of Samos, the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras temporarily forgot that the banging sounds produced by the smith's hammering of iron bars were "noise" — his usual reaction — and instead viewed them as "information." He soon discovered that musical pitch is a function of the length of the material being struck — his first principle of mathematical physics.

Remember: everyone has the ability to forget. The art is knowing when to use it. Indeed, novelist Henry Miller once stated:

"My 'forgettery' has been just as important
to my success as my memory."

Some questions to think about:

What conventional wisdom are you relying on? What would happen if you forgot the obvious answers that spring to mind and searched for new ones?