Monthly Archive for October, 2009

The Power of Ambiguity

Published on 18 October, 2009 in Creativity and genius. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Have you ever looked at a traffic accident and asked yourself, “How did that happen?”

The other night, I was playing pool and sunk a ball that I didn’t expect to sink – in fact, it was so surprising that I asked myself, “How did I do that?!” (Actually, I think it was a little more expressive than that simple phrase… but it was a very cool shot!)

But it’s even more obvious when I look at a website that I like. Sometimes, I’ve been known to look at the source code to try to figure out how they did that.

And the cool thing is that when you ask that question, you get smarter.

Maybe you’ll actually figure out an answer, maybe not. I still have no idea how I sunk that ball in the corner pocket at the other end. But the experience of being exposed to uncertainty – The Power of Ambiguity – helps you get smarter.

A recent study published in Psychological Science had people look at the surreal work of author Kafka and film director David Lynch, and found that afterwards, people were better at seeing subtle patterns. Read more about this in Science Daily or the NYTimes.

This is another great reason to visit the art gallery. Another good reason to watch art house movies. And a great excuse for me to continue staring at the complex building sites around here.

Experience the surreal. Have a look around. And when you see something strange, or someone does something unexpected, be grateful – it’s an opportunity to make you smarter.

First published on TheGeniusProject.com – and thanks Kellie for tipping me off to this :)

Being the best is a way of life, not just a job.

Published on 13 October, 2009 in High performance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

To be the best at what you do takes an extraordinary commitment. You’ll need to practise – spend hours and hours focused on getting better. You will change the way your brain works by altering the very connections of the neurons, and indeed every cell in your body.

It’s a big deal.

And you’ll want to do it every day.

Not just 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday. Not even Monday to Saturday. But every day of the week.

Our good friends Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer found back in 1993 found that experts practised the same amount every day, including weekends.

So pick your area and start practising. Every day.

(first published on TheGeniusProject.com)

Higher pay makes us worse

Published on 8 October, 2009 in Creativity and genius. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Should we encourage people to be creative? The correct answer is probably “yes”.

Should we reward people for being creative? Again, the correct answer is probably ‘yes’.

The trouble is that rewards don’t work for creative tasks. When we are being rewarded for doing better, we tend to get trapped in our existing ways of thinking and pursue solutions within our perception of the ‘rules’. And creativity is so often about breaking the rules – about thinking outside the box.

In the video clip below, Dan Pink cites researchers from the Fed Reserve finding that while tasks involving only mechanical skill would yield better performance with higher rewards, but where “even rudimentary cognitive skill” was involved, higher rewards led to people doing worse. Low and medium rewards yielded the same level of performance but high rewards led to worse performance.

Higher pay makes you work harder. But doesn’t make you better.

Higher pay leads to worse performance if you have to think.

It might have something to do with functional fixedness. Stemming from gestalt psychology researchers, this looks at how trapped we are at thinking of something as having a single function. Like being able to use a box as a platform rather than just as a box. Functional fixedness, it seems, is exacerbated by extrinsic rewards.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Australia’s Prime Minister has decided to not give himself a pay rise.

High performance comes from work where we enjoy autonomy, where we can experience a sense of mastery, and where we can feel a sense of purpose.

Geniuses tend to be motivated by intrinsic motivators – the sense of mastery rather than the accumulation of money. After all, if you’re focused on the reward, it’s hard to be focused on doing the task in front of you as well as you can.

It’s like the story of the man who was so busy chopping down a tree that he never thought to take a moment to sharpen his axe. And that guy certainly wouldn’t have time to put down his axe and head to the store to pickup a chain saw.

And that’s like the girl with the Rubik’s cube – who struggled whether to give up her completed side that was stopping her from solving the puzzle.

When we’re so busy doing, it’s really hard to do well.

How well does your current work line up?

Are you giving yourself enough time to be the genius that you could be?

Isn’t it just about experience?

Published on 6 October, 2009 in High performance. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Some people say that you just have to work harder to get better. It seems to make sense, and appeals to the virtue of ‘hard work’.

But the truth is that it’s not that simple, is it?

There are some people who work really hard – who spend hours practising or playing – but who don’t get better. Maybe you were one of them.

Sometimes we can do things a lot and not get better at all. In fact, sometimes we get worse!

When I was playing tennis as a child, I would hit the ball and play tournaments and show up to expensive coaching sessions. And at my best I consistently got mediocre results.

The trouble was that I didn’t get feedback. I was practising but I wasn’t doing it the way I needed to if I wanted to actually get better. Instead, I rehearsed the skills I had over and over until I could play ‘well enough’. But I didn’t get better than that.

Nobody told me what I needed to do and I didn’t figure it out for myself. Maybe I could have but I didn’t.

As you read this, you have been walking for a long time. Yet how much better at walking are you today from last year?

Deliberate practice goes beyond just doing the same things over and over again, and instead is focused on actually getting better. It’s about finding ways to push yourself – to make your best even better – and it’s not always easy.

Sometimes you might need to invent ways to challenge yourself.

Because that is what the best of the best will do.

Rubik’s Cubes: Let go of what you have to get what you want

Published on 1 October, 2009 in Self-awareness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Sitting on the subway, I watched with wonder as a girl was trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Such a simple invention, yet apparently something like 350 million cubes have been sold worldwide. As I watched her, I noticed that she had managed to solve one of the sides – all one side was yellow.

Yet she had a problem.

Although all that side was yellow, the other edges weren’t in the right place. She had different colours on the adjacent sides. And that meant one thing: The side that was “solved” wasn’t really solved.

And to solve her problem, she would need to rearrange the whole of that side so that the appearance of order would necessarily be replaced with disorder – temporarily if she got it right!

As tempting as it is to hold onto something that is almost good enough, sometimes you need to let go of what you have that isn’t quite right in order to get what you really want.

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