The quote from John Keats that inspires this post is from a letter he wrote to his brothers George and Tom in December 1817. He was commenting about the ideal literary state of mind, one in which someone exhibits “negative capability”.
A sense of calm assurance and innovatory endeavour in the inevitable “uncertainties, mysteries and doubt” that defines the ups and downs of striving for something original.
I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason
Keats, John (1899). The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge Edition. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. p. 277
Most of the time it is what we don’t do in any given creative inquiry that helps us the most. This is especially true for when we are working on an issue with our teams that requires us to generate some new thinking or ideas.
It is also true when we are exploring a new line of inquiry with learners. In both of these situations, we are consciously choosing to step into a state of flux, a situation that can often be defined by what is not known rather than what knowledge we share.
Human nature does, in some way, dictate that we prefer the habits, rituals and the agreeable comforts of processes we know. We draw a degree of situational steadiness from the fact and reason we can rely on. We see this type of reaction in others as we work with them to move on to new practices or technologies.
The comfort in the known is often too tempting to make the leap and embrace something new. The physical reality of technology is even more challenging as it is harder to ignore and move off of your desk than an ideological concept.
Letting these go and embracing the state of change and the unknown that surrounds us is counter-intuitive and it takes practice to fully accept. Here are some ideas to help.
Accept the mess
The learning process seems to be defined by these moments of flux we experience, sometimes they are fleeting, but often they are protracted. Uncertainty, doubt and mystery is part of our process of learning.
Accepting that we will experience the uncertainty of such times is a great first step for us personally and within our teams, whether learners or leaders. After all, “If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” as Einstein once suggested.
Reflect on how uncertainty makes you feel
Secondly, we must be emotionally aware of this uncertainty. What I mean by this is to use our emotional state to help prepare for future experiences that will be similar.
When you are navigating an organisational inquiry it not only puts you in a state of cognitive flux but one of mild emotional turmoil as your intuition presses you to seek steady ground and the reassurance of decisions. We are torn between seeking originality and the comfort of tried and tested ideas.
We should be mindful of how this uncertainty feels, how we react to it and how our emotions change. When we have the energy to record our own emotional experience of such moments we are far more likely to recall them in future times and use these emotional schemata to respond more appropriately.
As an aside I think that meta-emotion is an area we must help learners understand much better. On a simple level to be able to help them manage their own learning more effectively by having a better understanding of their own emotional topography.
Trust the process
A third area that contributes to a better creative approach to inquiry is the understanding that we have a process. When you take this knowledge away or it is not shared amongst a group, we are introducing another mystery: where is this all heading?
We have all experienced those meetings or projects which never went anywhere, great energy and contribution but no follow up or shared understanding of the direction it was heading.
All too often inquiry can feel like we are researching forever, as much as we want to embrace not knowing, and Einstein’s suggestion from earlier, our process needs to signpost the way through this.
I believe that when we are able to recognise “uncertainties, mysteries and doubt” as a natural part of learning; when we share a process and if we have awareness of our emotional reaction, we are engineering the best possible conditions for creative inquiry and hopefully new ideas to flourish.
It was with a fair dollop of trepidation I took to a stage last week at Edutech 2014 in Brisbane and shared some ideas about creative learning. Marginally due to the number of people, but mainly it was the fact that I had not done the keynote before, some new ideas / new keynote angst.
During my talk we explored the struggle for great pedagogy and the tension of creative learning. I outlined the need to dispel the myth that we are making such polarised choices about learning – the reality and the beauty of it is in the complexity.
I shared some research by Elizabeth Bonawitz, called the Double Edged Sword of Pedagogy that showed young learners are more likely to explore and discover for themselves if they are not taught all of the information. Their tendency to explore increases when adult instruction suggests there is more to find out.
Furthermore Bonawitz observed the emerging awareness to an instructional pedagogy even in youngsters:
“the results suggest a striking competence in young children: they are able to negotiate the trade-off between exploration and instruction such that they explore more when that can rationally infer that there is more information to be learned. Moreover, children demonstrate this competence remarkably early. By preschool, children seem actively to evaluate their teachers both for the knowledge they have and their ability to demonstrate it. Thus, well before children are immersed in formal education, they are sensitive to some conditions that promote effective instruction.”
Signalling that there is more to discover can be achieved by simply saying “I don’t know”. Not in any defeatist sense of closure but in one of open delight that there is much more to learn.
I have always believed that such a stance with learners should be a default option. Especially when we are fielding the questions they ask. In addition to encouraging further exploration we also encourage more questioning. Think of these questions as way-markers for that journey into a new land, over time they will leave a breadcrumb trail for us to look back upon and maybe for others to discover together.
Another important effect of saying “I don’t know” in terms of learning is the prolongment of the period of enquiry, providing more opportunities for further questions and discovery. If questions start everything a prolonged state of uncertainty maintains and deepens our thinking, as John Dewey outlined:
“To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough enquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of a belief, until justifying reasons have been found.”
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I thoroughly enjoyed sharing some of my ideas during the keynote and it has been lovely to have seen some of your feedback comments from those of you who were there. I will be exploring some more of the themes from my talk in future posts over on the NoTosh Facebook page and in much more detail here.
In “The Rules of Genius, Rule #9: Approach answers obliquely“, Marty Neumeier outlines a range of thinking strategies (in the italicised sections below) to explore a challenge in new ways. These strategies are always great to have in your toolkit when exploring a period of enquiry with children or adults.
In an effort to build on Neumeier’s thinking and develop something new, I have expanded on the various steps he has outlined with some additional thoughts and links to help you approach your own creative exploration in a holistic way and to think obliquely.
Note: I have created a handy little graphic from all of these great strategies you can download it here for free.
(1) Think in metaphors
A metaphor is a link between two dissimilar things: “The world is a stage.” By equating the world with a stage, you can more easily imagine that we’re all actors playing a part an insight you might not have had without the metaphor.
When you use a metaphor to link two ideas together, you are combining elements that have little or no logical connection. By breaking the rules of logic in this way, metaphors can open up the creative side of the brain – the part that is stimulated by images, ideas, and concepts. So metaphorical thinking can help you with creative problem solving: To use another famous metaphor, it helps you “think outside the box”.
(2) Think in pictures
Visual thinking can strip a problem down to its essence, leading to profoundly simple connections that language by itself can’t make. The ability to draw stick figures, arrows, and talk balloons is all you need to think visually.
Visualising your ideas in a simple way is a strategy we regularly use when working with groups. We encourage them to draw their initial idea on a post-it note and share it quickly with a colleague.
This quick sketch and share, precludes us from investing too deeply in a given idea and does force us to be open to hearing how to make it better from our peers – as we don’t have all the answers, and our idea is only roughly formed we are more likely to be open to advice.
You could also follow the “5 Sketching Secrets of Leonardo Da Vinci“: Look for new combinations; Engage your imagination; Collaborate with others when you sketch; Use annotations in your sketches; Sketch your ideas out 4-5 times.
(3) Start from a different place
When you grab for the “correct” solution, brilliant solutions will elude you. You’ll get stuck in the tar pits of knowledge, unable to free your mind of what you already know. The easiest way to escape this trap is by rejecting the correct solution—at least temporarily—in favor of the “wrong” solution. While the worst idea can never be the best idea, it will take your imagination to a different starting place.
Typically when we are exploring new solutions we have an invisible filter that is usually marked “safe”. Even with encouragement it is very hard to break that safe set and come up with a new set of ideas beyond the realms of feasibility. We rarely spend time in this fanciful place and so find it very difficult.
But coming up with your 5 Worst Ideas to solve a problem is a great way to let the pressures go a little, it often leads to lots of laughs and by inverting some of those negative elements there is often a kernel of something great there. Some nice little activity steps in this post about it.
(4) Steal from other domains
If you steal an idea cleverly enough, the theft will go unnoticed. While stealing is not the same as pure imagination, it does take a mental leap to see how an idea from one industry or discipline could be adapted to another.
Recognising the similarities with the handover disciplines (in emergency care) visible in the pit of a Formula One racing team, they invited the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams to work with them to examine how their processes could be more structured and effective. They went out to the pits of the British Grand Prix, met Ferrari’s technical managers at their base in Italy and invited some of them to come and observe their handovers at Great Ormond Street…The input of the Formula One pit technicians resulted in a major restructuring of their patient handover from theatre to the ICU.
It is a fine example of a group being able to see beyond their own discipline in order to seek out innovative ways to solve existing challenges.
(5) Arrange blind dates
Great ideas are often two ideas that haven’t previously been introduced. Using a technique called “combinatory play,” you can throw unrelated ideas together to see if the create a new idea. Look for combinations that have a natural fit.
Maria Popova shares a post on Brain Pickings about the elemental work of combinatory play in the creative process, of course referring to Einstein’s take on it: “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” However Popova shares a lovely introduction to the concept herself:
For as long as I can remember — and certainly long before I had the term for it — I’ve believed that creativity is combinatorial: Alive and awake to the world, we amass a collection of cross-disciplinary building blocks — knowledge, memories, bits of information, sparks of inspiration, and other existing ideas — that we then combine and recombine, mostly unconsciously, into something “new.” From this vast and cross-disciplinary mental pool of resources beckons the infrastructure of what we call our “own” “original” ideas.
(6) Reverse the Polarity
Write down as many assumptions about the problem as you can think of. Reverse them. Think about what it would take to make the reversed assumption true. Some of these may lead to new ideas.
Assumptions are often the baggage that we bring along on a journey of change. The way things have always been “done” has a powerful influence on the decisions we make and indeed the ambition we often hold for change. With too much room they can stultify organisational change.
When I am working in education there are many assumptions being made because the challenges we face are often deeply complex and involve different people. We need to be open enough to Name them and Challenge them.
Human nature is such that when we assume we know how to do something, we perform the act without much thought about the assumptions we make. History is replete with thousands of examples of what happens when people don’t challenge assumptions.
This is taken from What Monkeys Teach Us about the Assumptions We Make, by Michael Michalko the author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques. Make sure you explore the post and read the great story of where assumptive practice can blindly lead us.
(7) Ask simple questions
What else is this like? Who else believes this? What if I changed it slightly? What can I eliminate? What can I substitute? Is this the cause or the effect? What if I changed the timing? What if I made it bigger? What would happen if I did nothing?
No doubt this is linked with our ability to challenge those assumptions we hold, asking questions is, in my humble opinion, the pre-cursor to any creative process, rarely are they missing.
exploration of one of the simplest, but most fundamental, aspects of how students learn and how students display their learning in lessons: higher order questioning. It is simply about getting students to ask ‘why‘ and an exploration of the crucial value of such deep questioning.
(8) Watch for accidents
You can sometimes make the best discoveries when you’re searching for something else. Pay attention to anomalies, surprises, or feedback that confounds your expectations. These can open up exciting new areas of inquiry.
One wonders whether the rare ability to be completely attentive to and to profit by, Nature’s slightest deviation from the conduct expected of her is not the secret of the best research minds and one that explains why some men turn to most remarkably good advantage seemingly trivial accidents. Behind such attention lies an unremitting sensitivity.
(9) Write things down
Not all your ideas will be worthwhile, but they might trigger new ideas. Make a list of your thoughts as you work through any problem. Keep a notebook, a sketchbook, a scrapbook, or an idea file. A pencil can be a crowbar for lifting ideas from your subconscious.
I like that description from Neumeier of the pencil being an idea-crowbar. In this particular field, Da Vinci has set us some incredible precedent as explored earlier.
Thomas Alva Edison has much to offer as well in this particular note-taking technique. In this post exploring Edison’s creative process in further detail it suggests that historians have discovered over 3500 detailed notebook belonging to him. In those books there is over four million pages of idea, sketches and notes he made.
What is immediately apparent is that Edison’s mind wandered through a vast spectrum of unrelated projects in an apparent free flow of associations. This is a critical point to understand. The mind grows through the number of connections it can make. Genius finds relationships between the most diverse things….Frequently, one of Edison’s inventions would spawn another in an unrelated field, which in turn would give rise to another in a different area of interest. It’s as though by pushing, experimenting and thinking in one direction, Edison simultaneously benefitted in all the other projects that he was working on. This points to the concept of the holographic mind. Affect one part and you affect all the parts. Nothing is wasted.
Whether we are exploring a period of curriculum enquiry with our class, tackling a challenge in our organisation or embarking upon a period of creative development, our thinking and the tools we use to do it, need to offer us as much breadth as possible. Typically we need to be able to see complex themes or challenges from as many different angles as we can.
Taking this type of multi faceted thinking strategy not only provides us a more comprehensive creative approach, it gives us all the best possible chance to break new ground and reveal opportunities that have yet to be discovered.
FREE Bonus Thinking Divergently Resource
My Thinking Divergently resource summarises these approaches in a useful little graphic format.
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