Raised Hands and Being Wrong

I gave some assignments on the screen, towards the end of which I went through the answer-options (A, B, C, D) requesting the students to raise the hands when the option they selected was mentioned. So when 'A' was read, a certain number of students raised their hands, when B was read another number and so on.

What's interesting is the reaction of students when they realise that the answer they've selected have also been selected by many others in class as compared to those whose hands are one of very few raised or, even worse, the only one in the air.

That feeling we get when our 'raised hand' is one among many - it's a good feeling, but also a dangerous one if we come to rely on it. It's great to know your perspective is shared by the crowd but if having a popular viewpoint is a pre-condition to doing anything cool or brave or fresh then it's no wonder that very few go out on a limb for something radical. If we wait till our POV is the majority one, we'll never take that first step towards shaping a new 'box', that new point of reference for our communities to both think within and out of.

Hence, I told the students to raise their hands REGARDLESS of how many in the class have the same answers. And raise it high. No need to be ashamed of being wrong; be ashamed of needing to be right all the time.

Extra Classes

What if all students were required to take a course they were neither good at nor passionate about and, critically, has next to nothing to do with their program specialisation?

Computer Science students who scored low on Art should be given a canvas, paints and the license to insult Monet. Hotel Management students who've never read a word of poetry their whole lives should read both Williams (Shakespeare and Blake). Mass Comm folks who have only been at one end of the bakery chain (the consumption one) should drop their cameras and pens and get their hands dirty with the dough. Medical would-be grads should be thrown in some gala and forced to be a one-day journalist.

And don't get me started on theologians and philosophers. Seriously, all of them should be enrolled in ad-hoc courses on Architecture, Impressionistic Art, Computer Design and what-nots.

Why? Because it's a tragedy if all our brains are focusing on is what we're trained and desire to do. I can understand if full-time professionals can't find the time to apply their minds to something completely alien (parenting notwithstanding), which is why full-time students shouldn't be given the luxury not to.

By working on something out of our worlds, we'll be treated to de facto occasions of 'thinking/experiencing out of the box'. Our heads will be (gloriously!) messed-up and, with some luck, hopefully our ideas will be, too.

Mix it up. Juice it down. Shake it all about and turn it all around. Serious creativity comes when we go out of our minds.

Another Way to Improve Your Creativity

Here's one : Practice constructing jokes and humourous lines (and remember the best test for Funny: are you laughing?)

This is best done not as a rejoinder to what someone else has said, but rather like Chris Tucker or Robin Williams on stage, try to start from 'nowhere' and arrive somewhere comedic (like some politicians, but that's another story...).

Naturally, you'll have to do what most 'creative people' do :

• think out of the box
• 'search' for the totally unexpected
• criss-cross mental patterns, switch contexts, juxtapose issues, etc.
• work with (literally) anything you can find
• put aside logical, analytical and critical thought (until the punch-line and even then it's implied, not stated)
• perform trial-and-error on any number of starting-points

(Be careful, though, of folks like Hannibal Lecter, Charles Manson, Nick Leeson and other norm-challenged personalities - learn the method, lose the madness).

Virtually nothing in school or college trains you on producing new ideas, or at least not formally. Standard education provides less instruction for how to be creative as opposed to where (usually, the toilet walls).

Yet the good joke-tellers and seriously creative folk have one thing in common: They tend to look/sound stupid or weird but they always have fresh ideas and, most importantly, they see and recommend a world different from what most people expect.

Far-out and Funny are the new Yin and Yang.

Our Daily Blog

Assume your pay cheque and sanity depend on you uploading one blog-post a day. Assume you're given the task of averting cosmic disaster befalling you and the universe by writing a (reasonably intelligent sounding) blog piece every 24 hours. What would happen?

Quite a bit.

You'd have to observe and make mental notes of virtually each and every moment of the day - every conversation, every gesture, every poster, every sound, every face. You'd have to keep your writing short, to the point, relevant and helpful.

You'll also have to apply everything you've ever learnt to every occasion you encounter in the on-going process of generating more and newer ideas. Your note-taking and idea-storage methods would be on overdrive. You may even read more because how else would you sustain your learning rate? (And you know you don't want to be writing gibberish)

Also, you'd have to re-prioritize the way you use the Web, thereby cutting out (often) hours of wasted time online. If this isn't good enough news, you'll also learn about focusing and channeling your attention/energy outwards, on something creative which engages other people, as opposed to brooding on what you don't have or failed to accomplish.

Rock Logic vs. Water Logic

A rock occupies unchanging space. A rock is absolute, stands firmly and defies opposing forces. Put a rock into a pail with lots of small holes smaller than it, and it can’t come out any other way than the way it went in i.e. through the opening. The only way a rock is coming out of the bottom of a holey pail is by crashing through it.

It’s the rock or whatever stands against it. Not both. Such is rock logic. It collides, confronts and maintains a fortress-like stance in the face of adverse or opposing views. Integration of positions is difficult, if not impossible.

But think about water. It flows and moves forward. It goes around entrenched positions. It bends itself and blends itself into its environment in order to find even the slightest opening forward. In some cases, it becomes almost a part of the entity it encounters without necessarily losing its distinctive identity.

Pour water in to a pail with even the smallest of holes and within minutes the water will come out. It’s found a way, where there seemed to be no way!

This is water logic. A disposition which does all it can to move forward, to find solutions, to integrate and ‘blend in’ as a means of progressing further or even producing a better alternative.

For centuries (and even nowadays), theology appeared to be a discipline perfecting the art of rock logic. The defenders of orthodoxy treated barricaded the core doctrines like a fortress, threatening heresy and expulsion on would-be innovators who went too far.

What might water logic look like in theology?

Hats On

Two students of mine wrote a piece on a 6 Thinking Hats session I led, referencing these slides:

View more presentations from Alwyn Lau.

The Holographic Brain and the Tyranny of the One Thought

Some 'left-over' jottings from my notes:

• If a child is good at music we call her 'talented'; if she's good at Languages or Maths, we call her 'smart' - what does this show about assumptions regarding the nature of intelligence? (Howard Gardner)
  
• The most natural development of the human brain: PLAY
  
• "What if we could forget history?" (Colin James, on the need to put aside past bitterness, conflict, etc.)
  
• The brain thinks/performs holographically i.e. all parts of the brain 'sees' the same thing and all parts of the brain work 'at' the same thing, the left/right-brain divide is mistaken (Mark Treadwell)
  
• "Fundamentalism is the tyranny of the One Thought or the Only Way" (Colin James)
  
• "Marriage is a somatically intelligent decision" (Colin James, referring to the triump of 'gut-feeling' over analytically feeling and how if couples used the latter when thinking about getting married they probably never would)
  
• Humour in the workplace promotes creativity (David Koutsoukis)
  
• "Let's just say he wasn't anorexically challenge" (Colin James)
  
• "We need neoteny" (Glenn Capelli)

The 3 Ages of a Human Being (de Bono @ the ICOT)

Friday was the second time I watched Edward de Bono speak. He's not the most passionate speaker in the world but the minutes fly by when he presents. His visual language is pure captivation.

De Bono didn't say anything he hasn't been saying the past 20 years. The talk revolved around the importance of perception, the inadequacy of argument, the benefits of 'parallel thinking' and the need to design new ways forward via the use of lateral thinking.

Key ideas:

• We need a new word, 'ebne' which means: Excellent, But Not Enough (de Bono applied this to our traditional tools of thought, which have come down to us from the GG3, the Greek Gang of 3 - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle)
  
  
• 90% of errors made around the world are errors of perception (rarely to do with knowledge or truth, e.g. a small boy is frequently asked to choose between a BIG $1 coin and a small $2 coin and he always choose the $1 coin, creating laughter among the older boys; when someone advised him that the smaller coin was actually worth more, the small boy politely agreed but said that if he has selected the $2 coin he wouldn't have earned as much money! The boy had perception, the others seemed only concerned about truth)
  
  
• Truth / Judgment, Logic and Argument were tools promoted by the Church to combat heresy, resulting in herself being rather poor at Perception, Creativity and Design (I think Roger Olson and other post-conservative evangelicals would agree)
  
  
• Argument is poor thinking because it's largely negative, anti-explorative, inefficient and the two parties tend to focus on the "worst 5%" of their opponent's point of view

• If we can change perception, we can change emotion, thus changing behaviour (ditto with NLP which seeks to change perception by manipulating physiology and internal representations)
  
  
• An idea for the Israel / Palestine issue: All nations supporting Israel should provide $3 billion in aid to Palestine with the caveat that for every rocket fired into Israel, Palestine would have to give Israel $50 million
  
  
• The yellow hat (among the six thinking hats) promotes "value-sensitivity" - we may reject an idea but the more creative among us would still hold on to and explore the helpful concepts inherent in an impractical suggestion
  
  
• Every creative idea is logical in hindsight, but invisible in foresight"(!!), thus the need for lateral thinking (e.g. challenge, provocation, concept-exploration, etc.)

De Bono ended with a delightful look at the three ages of a human being. Ages 0-5 is the age of WHY. 6-11 is the age of WHY NOT. And age 12-80?

The age of BECAUSE.

Kirpalian Kernels

Kirpal Singh - poet, author, futurist and creative thinker extraordinaire - is best known for his work, Thinking Hats & Coloured Turbans where, if my sketchy recall of reviews of the book is right, he proposes a kind of imaginative, cyclical, loopy and even semi-mystical form of thinking.

Singh likes to provoke and the ICOT organisers can surely take pride in his note that he was 'occasionally provoked' during the weeklong conference. Some jottings I took down from his plenary address on Day 4:

• "Scientific proof is for and of the times...we must nurture our children's confidence in their intuition"
  
  
• "Learning just a little about each other is not enough...e.g. simply studying about Comparative Religion is insufficient, we need to live it" - spoken in the context of a call for deeper inter-cultural understanding and even the insertion of this subject (and that of Relationships/The Other) in to school curricula.
  
  
• "Futurist studies must be taught in schools" - Singh lamented the fact that at present nothing was being taught on how to develop, say, space colonies or deepsea colonies; he related this to the work of Alvin Toffler (author of FutureShock and, most recently, Revolutionary Wealth) and Kevin Warwick's cyborg studies and how the future would bring inconceivable changes (all the more reason, I reckon he would say, to begin conceiving of all we'll have to deal with!)

As a professor of Literature, Singh invests much energy in peering boldly outside his field of expertise. I was moved by his story of how he brought his hosts from Laurentian University to visit a Sikh community which initially invited him for dinner. Apparently, the non-Sikhs and Sikhs, despite living together for about 120 years, have never once visited each other's homes. That a Singaporean had to travel 12,000 miles to arrange a meeting is telling, to say the least.

As with communities of ethnicity, so with communities of learning. I am sure Singh would welcome efforts towards more inter-disciplinary studies (in fact, he coined the term 'HISTERATURE' to denote a juxtaposition of History and Literary studies). Such learning would - not unlike welcoming strangers into one's home - reflect a good foot forward in the journey of reconciliation, something our fundamentalist-stricken world surely craves for - even if it doesn't know it yet.

Buzan and Managing the Manager of Knowledge

I left about 15 minutes into the Tony Buzan talk (on Day 3 of the ICOT). Not because I wasn't impressed but because I had already been impressed with the same talk delivered two years back.

In 2007 at the Mind-Map Conference in Singapore, Buzan also talked about:

• The inadequacy of traditional school systems to assess the intelligence of students (hardly a new thought but certainly worth repeating)
  
  
• The importance of nurturing the mind, failing which paralysis and atrophy sets in (read: if you're NOT working out on a regular basis and/or if you're NOT consistently learning new things - why not?)
  
  
• The significance of images (as the universal language of mankind) and associations in understanding how the brain works, thus his brainchild, the mind-map

Buzan put the modern development of education and brain research into some perspective: The universe began 15 billion years ago, civilisation a 100,000, the traditional school system 150 and breakthroughts in brain research less than 20 years ago. A drop in a drop in a drop of space-time history. (I'm not sure how useful this piece of data is but it does at least have that 'ooh-ahh' effect).

We've come a long way from the industrial revolution to knowledge management to the management of the manager of knowledge i.e. the brain.

"WE are teaching THEM?!" (Buzan on Children's Thinking)

Melody was born about three weeks ago. One comment me and my wife make quite often is the way her eyes open wiiiiiide in an all-embracing stare at the world around her.

Last Wednesday, Tony Buzan did a Q&A with the crowd with resonated deeply with me, especially given Melody's way with her eyes:

• Which group of people are the most inquisitive? Answer: Children
• Who are the most enthusiastic? Children
• The most persistent? Children
• The most happy and enthusiastic? Children
• The most eager to learn? Children

"And," he then cheekily asked, "WE'RE teaching THEM how to think??" The tragedy of the destruction of children's love for learning can be seen in the everyday:

• Children love to run - we tell them to sit still
• Children love to sing - we tell them to keep quiet and "Listen to me!"
• Children love to look deeply into objects and people's eyes - we say, "Don't stare!"
• Children love to touch anything and everything - we go, "Don't touch!"

In the context of Christian education (and I can't resist this): Children love all people and love to imagine. Then we come along and teach them who's "in", who's "out" and what they can and can't believe.

God forgive us.

Reporting / Reflecting on Forums

I've written more than my fair share of reflections on forums or seminars. And I've read plenty, too. I could be wrong, but the most common 'categories' of reporting are:

1. Summarising 'what happened'
2. Summarising the views of the speakers
3. Outlining how we felt

Nothing wrong with the above except the articles sometimes get a little repetitive and key points don't usually jump out.

The time is ripe for a fresh template with categories people may find more interesting:

• Top 4 issues raised/discussed
• Top3 most controversial moment
• Most humourous speaker
• Least convincing speaker (if our Asian sentiments could allow this)
• Most creative suggestion / idea
• Top 4 action-steps (plus the most practical)
• Key theological points (or Biblical passages) raised
• Celebrities (or politicians or 'famous people') mentioned
• Links to relevant sites
• Any more?

Thinking Siesta

Italy, Portugal and Spain stand alone with their national HR practices: They have siesta as part of their office hours.

What about a idea time, a reflection hour, a thinking siesta?

In Letters To Thinkers, Edward de Bono proposes a "thinking space" and allocated "thinking time" in an organisation to encourage the deliberate application of thinking tools in a pre-specified manner. 

Like, "Between 2-3pm, let's use Method ABC to address issue X, Y and Z. Write down our ideas and present them at 4pm."

It could be once a week. Or a fortnight. The point is - like 'lunch' - to set aside time to do something important. Unlike 'lunch', though, a thinking siesta could potentially impact the future (of the organisation, the community, the individual) in a powerful way.

Is there a downside to this?

12 Brain Rules

John Medina's latest book, Brain Rules, has some intriguing points (esp. about sleep). The website has more than enough info; no harm getting the book, though.

A Grandmaster's Psychology

"Never offer a draw to a grandmaster, because you'll never get it. There was this game where I would probably have offered a draw, but when my opponent made the offer it became a matter of honour to win in."

What is a Conclusion?

So I said it. In front of the entire teacher-induction class:

"I'm not a big fan of 'truth'. I prefer to keep the ideas coming, the explorations on-going. I resonate with whoever said that a conclusion is where thinking comes to a stop and judgment owns the day. I feel truth often divides unnecessarily. And that ambiguity is the key to learning. Without the tension, what's the point of applying one's mind?"

I could've sworn some heads were shaking slowly, with that "What's-his-problem?!" tone.

Lights On, Camera Off - Action

The Dark Knight was about choices. It was about the true definition of a hero. It was about evil being tied to and maybe a 'part of' good. It was about being hunted so others could glorify a version of the great evil-hunter. It was about giving up what one holds dearest.

The Dark Knight, like all great movies, generates loads of conversational topics. We love to talk about it, weeks after seeing the show.

What we could do more of - and could certainly gain from - is to take some action. Maybe we can ask ourselves, "After watching the movie...

• What is one issue I'll read up (more) of? And teach someone else?
  
• What is one place I'll visit? And what would I hope to achieve by going there?
  
• What is one person I'll talk to, or talk to more?
  
• What is one aspect of my behaviour I'll change?
  
• What is one way my contributions at work can improve?

Where is your Idea Notepad?

Graphic designer John Maeda photographs anything interesting he comes across. Jackie Chan keeps a small notebook in his pocket everywhere he goes. Zig Ziglar recommended putting pen and paper at bedside to capture those sudden dreamy inspirations. Microsoft has - after half a dozen Windows releases - finally thrown in sidebar Notes for Vista. Sivin Kit carries around post-it notes (first guy I've seen who does it).

Good ideas come and go. Naturally, they tend to go faster if we don't store them effectively when they come.

More importantly, ideas tend to disappear really quick when we don't recognise the need to capture them for future recall i.e. we don't even want to note it down.

Unfortunately, we can't control the timing of Eureka moments. If you're at office, capturing ideas is easy. But what if you're in the train, in a restaurant, shopping for groceries or taking a walk?

One has to be ready at almost all times (and whilst I think putting a marker pen with water-proof, but self-disappearing, ink in the bathroom is a little overkill, if it helps and your family doesn't mind, why not?).

With the advent of fancy palm-top organisers and Black Berries, this shouldn't be a problem (except I wonder how many use these devices to capture unexpectedly brainy in-comings).

Or, you can do a Jackie Chan and bring notepad and pen everywhere you go.

Easier alternative? Use your mobile's Reminder function. I do.

Fan the Mind's Full Flame

Our brains are like huge organisations where only selected divisions are functioning well. We must recover and (re)use our mind's full scope of abilities.

Infants and toddlers receive stimulations from all sources (tactile, audio, visual, the works) to open and vitalise as many neural channels as possible. At (a good) school, students are taught subjects as diverse as Art, Science, Languages and Dance. Patients at risk of Alzheimer's are told to exercise more areas of their brains.

And, yet, what are we 9 to 5-ers doing to maintain the full-dimensional use of our minds? Many of us perform the same activities which drive the same neural-cycles for hours a day, day in and day out.

This is the bane of specialisation and expertise: our minds turn a little mono-sided. We progressively nurture the under-use of our brains.

But when the opposite happens - when half dormant, itchy, shifty, yearning-for-arousal neurons come to life - pleasure follows.

Ditto the popularity of Sudoku (for non-Maths people). Ditto the joy of cooking (for the busy exec cum mum). Ditto the rise of fitness clubs (for folks stuck in a cubicle all day). Ditto the practice of doodling at work (for the high-school artist turned Marketing VP). Ditto enjoying friends who bring with them a different set of conversations from the kinds that happen at work.

All welcomed sparks of a steady flame we could fan on a regular basis. And we should fan it.

Maybe we could take a drive to a place we've never been or try a completely unfamiliar product.

Maybe we should take a break from the Epistles and spend a few weeks with Ecclesiastes.

Maybe we can talk to the wannabe heretic who's ideas are creating some awkwardness in the nice respected church community.

Maybe we can practice abstract, impressionistic art. Or try the paint-batik-by-number tool-kits (MPH has loads of it). Real fun.

Maybe we should call up some friends we haven't spoken to in months.

Maybe we should blog on the Environment instead of Politics. Or Marketing instead of Theology.

Maybe we should try the crossword or "Who Dun It?" puzzles in the papers. Or Sudoku.

Maybe we could take up prayer. I heard this kick-starts a couple of grey matter areas, too.

How the Fuel Hike is Good News

Thinking 'against the current' doesn't mean you disagree with how everybody feels. It does mean you get a more objective and balanced perspective.

Today I asked about 20 students how they felt about the recent hike in fuel prices. They all said it sucked bad. I then told them to come up with at least five reasons how the recent fuel hike can be a benefit to Malaysian society. They had exactly one minute to do it.

Their answers were:

• Focuses more attention to budgeting and economizing
• Forces us to rethink the way we spend
• Contributes less to global warming
• Spurs interest (and research?) in finding alternative sources of energy
• Reduces traffic jams
• Encourages more people to walk or use a bicycle
• Promotes car-pooling (and, as a result, deepening friendships?)

I then asked them how they felt after they did this exercise in thinking against their own emotionally charged conclusions.

I guess you could say everyone felt slightly better. We didn't end up feeling great, of course. But there was a small noticeable difference in our eyes regarding the issue.

I suppose even a minute's worth of thinking can matter, can't it?