directional unfocusing

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.


We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

 

My tenth grade English teacher pointed out that The Chariot and many other Emily Dickinson lyric poems can be sung to the tune of  The Yellow Rose of Texas. (I think it was Ms Svobodny -- Jeri?  I can't remember)  Of course the thing to do during study hall was to go to the library and find other poems and sing them in your head.  Try it with the Marine Corp Hymn, Ghost Riders in the Sky, the Wasbash Cannonball and probably many more.  I didn't think about it for years until I found myself chatting with a poet who brought it up.  She had been to a writing camp where a practice called Halloweening was used.

 

I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

This morning the director of a small technology company in Cambridge, England wrote thanking me for an earlier post on creativity asking if I could write a bit more.  Here goes..

 

First read my old post making sparks - it's short.

 

Neuroscientists talk about the Default Mode Network - think about it as an active set of connections that operates when you're not focused. An unfocused network.  It turns out to be quiet active and is often the part of the brain that makes the unusual connections found in creative thinking.  Learning how to engage and control it is a trick many creative people use is to engage this part of the brain.  

 

Some of this may be wired in, but the brain can be very plastic and adaptable. I'm reasonably convinced some of this can be learned and this is where the fun comes in.  You want to turn off some of the orderly task-focused work the industrial revolution gave us  and bring in some play and certain types of day dreaming.  Setting aside some time for your own thoughts is important as is getting away from multitasking.  Finding instant "answers" without having to think (wikipedia and Google) have been shown to be counterproductive if creativity is the goal. The dominated group think that comes with most brainstorming is kills creativity.  You get the idea...  structure tends to be bad if used throughout the day.

 

What appears to be good is letting your mind wander after having worked hard on something.  Do something very different to shift focus. Often repetitive "mindless" tasks work..  Einstein played scales on his violin, Feynman learned to draw and a dozen other things, a friend with a Nobel Prize knits and plays with Legos.¹  It should go without saying that you need to be deeply immersed in your main task for this to be useful.

Some find adding a bit of unpredictability important.   This works for me.  I draw (poorly) a bit every morning with the subject being whatever comes to mind when I'm brushing my teeth.  It all gets thrown away, but it's an important part of my toolkit.  I also take walks in the woods and try to avoid the same path and taking time to notice something new each time.  Stay away from the phone unless you have a creative friend to take a share the walk. Walking in a city I'll pretend I'm a slalom skier and find a path around other pedestrians.  

 

Jheri is coming into her own as a designer and clears her mind with fast bike trips through the streets of Copenhagen and Paris picking out a color from a magazine page and then turning in some direction when she sees it and moving until she sees the next color.  She's dangerously fast with hair flying out behind her trying to catch up.  She sometimes takes walks with colored lenses in her glasses  or wears some comfortable flat shoes that add about four inches.  Different visual perspectives divert and unfocus her mind.

 

Other tricks ..  if you're at a lecture you tend to retain more if you doodle rather than take notes.  Your friend is a piece of paper or a Field Notes book and a nice pen or pencil.  The class notes of prominent thinkers often turn out to be wild doodles with a few key words here and there. 

 

Halloweening.  The poet decided to try to get into Emily Dickinson's mind as much as possible.  She's not a lyric poet, so it was not exactly easy.  She wore white and stayed in the same rooms for a week not going outside communicating with others with a few physical letters as she wrote poetry trying for Dickinson's style..  She said it gave her a great breakthrough unrelated to Dickinson or herself - a different way of seeing the world.  Picasso's salon - la bande à Picasso - was very interested in geometry - specifically non-Euclidian geometry.  They studied Poincaré's  La Science et l'hypothèse and Picasso found inspiration and started into sketching the mathematical abstractions as well he could.   He tried to think like Poincare ... halloweening.  I suspect method actors are great at this. 

 

There is evidence physical play of the rough and tumble variety is important. And, for some, it's inverse.  Last Spring I found myself talking to a volleyball coach at Stanford.  He thought one of the reasons why some of his players were creative in their sport came from the fact they were actively engaged in mentally challenging majors.  Sport can be mentally challenging - it's just that math or biochemistry is challenging in a different way and can grant the gift of thinking differently.  We ended up having a fantastic talk about creativity in sport.

 

Find someone who is very different from you and smarter in many ways.  Hopefully you can bring  something to the table for them.  Playful conversation can fuel creative thinking.  This is where HR is critically important in any company that needs to be creative.  Sadly I see a lot of failure given what seems to be an increasing tendency to hyperfocus on THE task.

 

I'll end with a comment on thinking differently.  There is a tendency to conform to certain modes of thinking.   I've been told my hodgepodge of technique is unusual, but it works for me.  I certainly wouldn't suggest anyone else try it, but rather recommend they find their own.

 

__________

¹ I was lucky enough to have been around Feynman a bit.  People characterized his problem solving style as

1. write down a problem
2. think 
3. write down the answer

His thought pattern was just different from everyone else.  He played a lot and with considerable delight.  His mind seemed to be in a chaotic state between focus and play.  Listening to him you came away with the impression that physics was really easy.  Later you'd try and crash.,  His ability to distort reality made Steve Jobs look like an amateur.

__________

Recipe Corner

 

Peach-Peppermint ice cream (you can figure out the flavor name as Ben & Jerry's is unlikely to)

 

First make a simple peppermint ice cream.  I've made this one during the holiday season for years.

 

Ingredients

 

° 1 cup white sugar

° 2 cups heavy cream

° 2 cups half and half cream

° 1 tbl vanilla extract

° pinch of salt

° 1/4 c of good crushed peppermint candies  use 1/2 cup if just peppermint, but we're modifying it (I didn't say this was remotely healthy)

 

 

Technique

 

° hand whisk the creams, sugar, vanilla and salt until fully mixed

° refrigerate for a couple of hours

° churn-freeze 'til thick ... folks like Karrie may want to use the LN₂ technique:-)

° mix in the peppermint 

 

now go for ImPeachMint...

° swirl in 1/4 c chilled peach syrup - I use Torani 

° serve liberal portions

  

 

 

Comments

[Jheri]

:-)

The shoes I use to see the world a little higher are called creepers. Heels would kill my feet if I wore them for a long walk. My lenses are bright orange, red and purple. I still chase color on my bike too! My best thoughts are during these times.