|
|
 |
| An
innovation guru speaks his mind |
| |
Enjoy daydreaming. Listen
to your intuition. Dare to be a little crazy. If
you follow this advice, you might well be striding
down the path to more creativity.
The advice might sound off tangent or implausible
to many, but that was the exact prescription Professor
Guy Claxton — a UK leading expert on learning
and creativity — offered.
Prof Claxton was in town as the keynote speaker
for the Global Conference on Excellence in Education
and Training 2004 held from 20 to 22 May. Organised
by the Singapore Polytechnic as part of the institution’s
50th anniversary celebration, the conference attracted
some 160 local and international speakers from 19
countries.
“Anyone can be more creative than he is. And
I teach people how to do that,” enthused the
affable 56-year-old.
Prof Claxton is the author of Hare Brain, Tortoise
Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think
Less. In it, he makes a differentiation between
“hare brain” and “tortoise mind”.
“Hare brain”, with its faster thought-processing
speed, is analytical, calculating and self-conscious.
It is apt for many situations, but not all. When
creative solutions are needed, the slower, meditative
strengths of the “tortoise mind” provide
the solutions. The tortoise mind is sometimes known
as intuition, the unconscious, and the id.
With such a quirky title and contents, should it
be any wonder that the book is fodder for controversy?
While admitting its controversial nature, Prof Claxton
let on — unabashedly and matter-of-factly
— that the paradoxical title holds much truth.
“In our culture, we have become so obsessed
with rational, articulate and deliberate thinking
that we’ve lost contact with other forms of
thinking that are equally important.
“In America and Europe, our minds have become
unbalanced. We over-emphasise that explicit, articulate
form of knowing and we’ve lost the value of
the quieter, more reflective way of knowing which
is equally important.”
Lest you think that what he said is some airy-fairy
statement to invite controversy, he emphasised that
there is real research to prove that quieter, reflective
thinking is essential to creative thinking. The
man — with a double First in Natural Science
from Cambridge and a doctorate in cognitive psychology
from Oxford — cites research and experimental
data to substantiate that much of a person’s
best thinking takes place below the level of consciousness.
When asked to debunk some myths on creativity, he
was all geared up to share his views.
“People think it’s about bright, pretty,
artistic stuff and that it’s a special province
of the arts. But it is as much a feature for an
architect, a surgeon, a product designer and an
engineer. It’s not just about music, painting
and the arts.”
To him, creativity is also certainly not a single
entity that can be separated from ordinary thinking.
Rather, it is like an orchestra that is made up
of many different instruments.
“The way to cultivate creativity is to cultivate
the different components and not treat it as something
exotic, or special.
“Being critical, attentive, playful, experimental,
curious and having imagination are all ingredients
of creativity,” he said.
Want to be more creative? Try these:
| • |
Learn to eavesdrop
on your mind while you’re not controlling
it. These are times when you’re falling
asleep, waking up, daydreaming and when your
mind is wandering around on its own. |
| • |
Learn to enjoy
paying more attention to real physical things
like flowers, traffic, the way a machine works,
etc. Be more in touch with the physical experience.
You need creativity when your normal thinking
doesn’t work. You need to find a way
of escaping from your normal thinking and
one way is to engage yourself with the details
of material. Designers, artists, scientists
engage themselves with real physical things.
Through playing with material, you often get
surprising insights which you will not have
gotten if you are thinking. |
|
• |
Learn to listen to your
intuition. Intuition is not always right,
but it’s sometimes valuable. |
|
• |
Dare to be a little crazy.
Let your mind think the unusual things. |
|
| |
| |
| Next: Galvanising
the spirit of PRIDE |
|
| |
|
|
