In The Medici Effect (here is my review), there’s a term I’m interested in: the Intersection. It’s a place where ideas and experiences from different fields meet and form new ideas. It’s a fascinating place to be because excitement from different fields come together at one place. Even more, you can get a lot of fresh ideas that make your and other people’s lives better.

Living in the Intersection has always been a dream of mine. The question, of course, is how. One good way to answer it is by learning from those who are already there. Specifically, there is a certain kind of people with Intersection experience I want to discuss here. They are the polymaths.

Polymaths are people who are extraordinarily intelligent in multiple fields. They live and thrive in the Intersection. Perhaps the most famous one is Leonardo da Vinci but there are still many others. Two examples of modern polymaths are Nathan Myhrvold and Jared Diamond.

I’m not saying that we should be polymaths but I believe we can learn from them about how to live in the Intersection. Here are several lessons I learn:

1. Be curious

Curiosity is perhaps the most obvious characteristic of a polymath. It’s their deep curiosity that fuels them to explore many different fields. They want to know about the world from different perspectives. They want to experience new adventures.

So build your curiosity. Don’t take things for granted. Keep an open mind and be on the lookout of interesting things.

2. Be enthusiastic

One thing I notice when watching polymaths speak is their level of energy and enthusiasm. Often their energy and enthusiasm are so contagious you can feel a fire ignited within you. They don’t do something because they have to. They do something because they love it.

So find things that make you excited. Find things you are passionate about and follow them.

3. Focus on one field before moving to a new one

I especially notice this with modern polymaths. Nathan Myhrvold got his doctoral degree in quantum physics and worked on cosmology. Later he moved to information technology until he became Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer. Jared Diamond, whose book Guns, Germs and Steel requires deep understanding of multiple disciplines to write, has similar story:

After graduating from Cambridge, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties, he also developed a second, parallel, career in the ornithology of New Guinea, and has since undertaken numerous research projects in New Guinea and nearby islands. In his fifties, Diamond gradually developed a third career in environmental history, and become a Professor of Geography at UCLA, his current position.

A polymath is like a serial entrepreneur who focuses on one business and makes it successful before creating a new business. By doing it this way, he doesn’t spread his effort too thin. He has the focus necessary to gain deep understanding of the field.

So dig deep into a field before moving to a new one. This will later help you connect the different fields better.

4. Connect different fields

This a big advantage the polymaths have over many other people. While specialists usually just see from the perspective of their field, polymaths can connect one field with another. When they approach a field, they bring their knowledge and experiences in other fields with them. This enables them to see things with fresh eyes. They can see things that other people can’t.

You should do the same. When you are dealing with a field, bring your experiences and ideas in other fields with you and find connections. This is how you get fresh ideas.

Photo by OliBac

Recently the idea of personal analytics hits me more and more. What is personal analytics? It’s a way of making decisions in someone’s life based on numbers. You measure certain aspects of your life, analyze the results, and make decisions based on them.

Over time I find more things pointing to this direction. All these make me wonder: is personal analytics the next big thing in self improvement?

It started about two years ago when I read an excerpt of the book Super Crunchers. The book talks about how smart companies “act by numbers.” Instead of making decisions based on intuition, they make decisions based on what they measure and calculate. For instance, they use mathematical models to accurately predict how the customers will behave in certain situations and adjust their operations accordingly. This way the companies can directly make the right decisions without wasting their resources. The book even says that those companies know about your preferences better than you.

Reading that made me think: is it possible to apply that at individual level? Can individuals live by numbers? Can someone make decisions for his life not based on intuition but based on facts? If we can apply that, that will be a great leap forward. Just like the companies, you will be able to optimize your life to get the most out of it.

As it turns out, some people already do that. They already live by numbers to optimize their lives. My favorite example is Jim Collins, the author of Built to Last and Good to Great. Here is what The New York Times wrote about him:

And in a corner of the white board at the end of his long conference room, Mr. Collins keeps this short list:

Creative 53%

Teaching 28%

Other 19%

That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.

These aren’t ballpark guesstimates. Mr. Collins, who is 51, keeps a stopwatch with three separate timers in his pocket at all times, stopping and starting them as he switches activities. Then he regularly logs the times into a spreadsheet.

That’s not all. From the same article:

Oh, he sleeps with vigor, too. He figures that he needs to get 70 to 75 hours of sleep every 10 days, and once went to a sleep lab to learn more about his own patterns. Now – surprise, surprise – he logs his time spent on a pillow, naps included, and monitors a rolling average.

“If I start falling below that,” he says, pointing to the short list on his whiteboard, “I can still teach and do ‘other,’ but I can’t create.”

Isn’t that amazing? He carefully measures certain parts of his life in order to improve them. He makes his decisions not based on memory or intuition but based on numbers. Jim Collins is the best example I’ve found so far of someone who is living by numbers.

But will personal analytics be a common phenomenon?

Well, there is one difficulty here: the data-gathering process. A company has a lot of resources to measure almost anything in its operation. It can set up a separate division to do just that. But an individual has limited resources. You have only yourself to do everything. I’m sure many people won’t be patient and diligent enough for that. Even those who do must be careful not to spend too many resources on it at the expense of the real, productive work. Because of these difficulties, only a few people like Jim Collins apply personal analytics effectively.

Fortunately, it may change in the future. There are new products coming out that make it easy for you to gather data. One good example is the Nike+ system:

Veronica Noone attached a small sensor to her running shoes and headed out the door. She pressed start on her iPod and began keeping track of every step she took. It wasn’t a long run – just 1.67 miles in 18 minutes and 36 seconds, but it was the start of something very big for her.

Since that day, she’s run 95 more times, logging 283.8 miles in about 48 hours on the road. She’s burned 28,672 calories. And her weight, which topped 225 pounds when she was pregnant, has settled in at about 145.

Noone knows all of that thanks to the sensor system, called Nike+. After each run, she can sync her iPod to the Nike+ Web site and get a visual representation of the workout – a single green line. Its length shows how far she’s gone, and the peaks and valleys reflect her speed.

Products like Nike+ make data gathering effortless. We can expect more and more products like that emerge in the future. When that happens, you can easily measure many aspects of your life and use them to optimize your life.

Photo by Hexadecimal Time

In A Simple Guide to Finding Good Ideas I wrote that to find good ideas you should produce a lot of ideas. You can get quality out of quantity.

I recently realized that similar principle also applies to finding success in life. While to find good ideas you should produce a lot of ideas, to find success you should do a lot of experiments.

This quote by Thomas J. Watson now makes perfect sense to me:

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.

What this quote means is that you should increase your rate of experiments. Many of your experiments will fail, but some of them will work and a few will work very well. It’s just like finding good ideas: the more ideas you have the more likely you will find good ones.

But you might wonder: what about focus? Doesn’t doing a lot of experiments means that you don’t focus?

Of course, focus is necessary. Without focus you won’t achieve anything valuable. But focus alone is not enough. You need to balance it with diversity. Focus without diversity will make it difficult for you to adapt to changing environment. Even worse, you might later realize that you focus on the wrong things. Everything you achieve may become obsolete when the environment changes.

There is a good way to balance focus and diversity. This is also a good way to achieve success:

Do a lot of experiments. Strengthen the winners.

This principle balances focus and diversity. You allocate a lot of resources to the winners (focus), but you also allocate some resources to many experiments (diversity).

Here are some tips to apply this principle:

1. Have side projects

Having side projects is the best way to increase your rate of experiments. Since you have a main project you can count on (such as your day job), you can freely try new ideas in your side projects. Later one of the side projects could become your main project.

2. Set an experiment quota

How many experiments do you want to do in a certain period of time? Setting a quota helps you keep experimenting. Thomas Edison is a good example here. He had a clear quota for his experiments: one small invention every 10 days and one major invention every six months.

3. Shorten your feedback cycle

To increase your rate of experiments, you should quickly get feedback on what you do. The sooner you get the feedback, the sooner you can make necessary improvements.

That’s why it’s important that you test your idea in the real world as soon as possible. Don’t wait until something is perfect before you release it to the real world. You can make better improvements through the feedback you get than through planning.

4. Diversify

It’s risky if all your experiments are similar in nature. While they may work in the short term, they could fail to adapt and become obsolete in the long term. Diversity ensures that at least some of your experiments will survive. Regularly try something different and fresh.

5. Allocate more resources for the winners

Of all your experiments, there will be some that are promising and some that aren’t. The better something performs, the more resources you should allocate for it. You should keep giving it more resources until you reach the point of diminishing returns. This way you take it to its fullest potential.

***

What experiments have you done lately? Increase your rate of experiments and strengthen the winners.

Photo by Mykl Roventine

I recently watched the movie Red Cliff II. It’s about a famous battle in the Three Kingdoms era in China. The battle was between Cao Cao who had about 800,000 soldiers and Liu Bei – Sun Quan alliance who had less than 100,000 soldiers.

Despite being greatly outnumbered, Liu Bei and Sun Quan eventually won the battle. One reason for their success was the role of an advisor named Zhuge Liang.

Again and again, Zhuge Liang devised tactics that cleverly turned the situation around. One of my favorites is when he was asked to provide 100,000 arrows for the alliance. He was given ten days to complete the task but he confidently asked for just three.

After two days, he didn’t make a single arrow. All he did was sitting beside the river, watching the weather, and waiting for some boats he asked.

When the boats arrived, he took them to attack the enemy. The river was foggy so the enemy couldn’t see clearly how many boats were attacking them. Zhuge Liang attacked first with some archers, but the enemy – being far stronger – fought back fiercely. They overwhelmed Zhuge Liang’s boats with arrows.

Guess what? All Zhuge Liang’s boats were covered with straw so he got all the arrows shot to him. When he eventually went home after “losing” the fight, he brought with him 100,000 arrows as requested – and he didn’t make even one of them.

Watching this movie makes me understand what a difference being smart can make. Those who are smart can achieve much more – with much less effort – than those just work hard.

Photo by Esparta

Do you want to have good, high-quality ideas? In this age of knowledge, having good ideas can separate you from others and put you ahead of the pack.

But how can we get high-quality ideas? As it turns out, a great way to get high-quality ideas is to have a lot of ideas. The Medici Effect (here is my review) says it clearly:

The strongest correlation for quality of ideas is, in fact, quantity of ideas… Pablo Picasso, for instance, produced 20,000 pieces of art; Einstein wrote more than 240 papers; Bach wrote a cantata every week; Thomas Edison filed a record 1,039 patents.

Here is a study cited in the book that proves the relationship between quantity and quality of ideas:

Simonton verified that the relationship between quantity and quality indeed holds true. The number of papers a scientist publishes, for instance, is correlated with the number of citations the scientist receives for his or her top three works. In other words, the best way to see who has written groundbreaking papers is to look at who has published the most.

So here is a tip for finding good ideas:

Simple, isn’t it? The more ideas you produce, the more likely you will find high-quality ones.

Here are several ways to produce more ideas:

1. Capture all ideas

A basic way to increase the quantity of ideas is simply to avoid losing ideas. Don’t let an idea slip by once it comes to you. Whenever you get an idea, capture it as soon as possible. Write it down or record it with a recording device. Read 4 Simple Ways to Never Lose Your Ideas for more tips about it.

2. Don’t filter your ideas

By definition, filtering your ideas will reduce the number of ideas you have. Even if an idea doesn’t look good, let it sit for now. Later you might see it from a different perspective which shows the usefulness of the idea. If it doesn’t, you can always trash it later.

3. Find more ideas than you need

If you need five ideas, find ten. If you need ten ideas, find twenty. Finding more ideas than you need is good because you can then choose the best out of them.

4. Produce ideas consistently

Keep producing ideas regardless of your mood. If you are a blogger, keep writing posts. If you are a designer, keep creating new designs. If you are a programmer, keep writing codes. Allocate time for it and make it a habit.

5. Set an idea quota

Related to the previous point, one good way to ensure that you keep producing ideas is to set a target for your output. A writer, for instance, may aim to write at least 1000 words every day. A designer may aim to create one new design each week. Setting a target pushes you to be more productive.

6. Avoid perfectionism

One thing that may hinder you from producing a lot of ideas is perfectionism. If it takes one week to take an idea to 80% quality, it may take one month to take it to 90% and one year to take it to 100%. This is the law of diminishing returns at work. Perfectionism could make you spend the whole year on just one idea while you can actually produce 51 other ideas. It’s better to produce a lot of ideas first, test them, and only then devote more resources to improve the winners.

***

This tip works well for me, but I’m sure there are a lot of other tips on finding good ideas. Do you have any? I would love to hear it.

Photo by re_birf

Since I’m in the business of creating ideas (mainly for this blog), I’m always interested in books about idea creation. Recently I found a book on this topic entitled The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation by Frans Johansson.

Medici Effect is the name given by the author for the explosion of remarkable innovations at the place where different fields meet. The place itself is called the Intersection. Here is the main idea of the book:

The idea behind this book is simple: When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas.

It’s definitely something that interests me. Let’s dig deeper into the book.

Inside The Medici Effect

The book is divided into three parts with a total of fifteen chapters.

Part One. The Intersection

1. The Intersection—Your Best Chance to Innovate

There are two kinds of innovation: directional and intersectional. Directional innovations take a particular direction as results of combining ideas within a field. Intersectional innovations, on the other hand, leap to new directions as results of combining ideas from different fields.

Intersectional innovations happen in the Intersection. That’s why the Intersection is the best place for us to innovate.

2. The Rise of Intersections

There were a lot of Intersections in the Renaissance era that produced people like Leonardo da Vinci. But the world then changed and people became more and more specialized. Recently though, the world changed again and Intersections rise. There are three forces behind this rise:

• The movement of people
  Globalization makes more and more people move between nations.
• The convergence of science
  The previously separated fields of science converges and creates combinations like bioengineering.
• The leap of computation
  The increasing power of computation frees people to be more creative and increases communication between them.

Part Two: Creating the Medici Effect

3. Break Down the Barriers Between Fields

Whenever we think about an idea, we usually associate it with other ideas. A knife, for instance, is normally associated with cutting. But most people only see the obvious associations.  It’s difficult for them to associate knife with, say, music. This difficulty is called associative barrier and it inhibits creativity. If you want to be creative, you should break the barriers between fields.

4. How to Make the Barriers Fall

How can you break down associative barriers? The key is diversity. You should expose yourself to different cultures, learn differently, and see from multiple perspectives. The more you have diversity, the more likely it is for you to associate different ideas.

5. Randomly Combine Concepts

A creative idea has two important characteristics. First, it’s a combination of different concepts. Second, it’s random which is why it’s difficult to trace the origin of an insight. Like it or not, luck is an important factor of innovation.

6. How to Find the Combinations

Luck is essential for innovation. But is there anything you can do about it? Fortunately, yes. While you can’t completely control random factors, you can increase the chance of succeeding.

There are three ways to do it: by diversifying occupations, by interacting with diverse groups of people, and by introducing randomness into your thinking pattern.

7. Ignite an Explosion of Ideas

Here is a defining characteristic of successful innovators: they produce and realize a huge amount of ideas. Though it may seem counterintuitive, the strongest correlation for quality of ideas is quantity of ideas. Linus Pauling said, “The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” It has been proven that scientists, artists, and writers with the best ideas are those who produce the most ideas.

This is an important insight for me. I’ve been thinking about increasing my writing skill by writing more but I was afraid that it will lead to lower quality writings. This insight confirms the opposite.

8. How to Capture the Explosion

There are three things you should do to capture creative ideas at the Intersection. First, you must have deep enough understanding of the fields involved. Find the balance between depth and breadth. Second, you must generate many ideas before evaluating them. One way to do this is through brainstorming. Third, you must have enough time for evaluating the ideas. Research shows that, contrary to common belief, being under time pressure actually inhibits creativity.

Part Three: Making Intersectional Ideas Happen

9. Execute Past Your Failures

Getting creative ideas is one thing, but realizing them is another thing. This is the difficult part for many people. Since innovative people pursue more ideas, they also fail more. The key here is to execute past your failures.

10. How to Succeed in the Face of Failure

Since failure is part of innovation, you must plan for it. You must be ready to change your execution plan and don’t think that you will get it right on the first try. To be able to do that, you should reserve resources for trial and error and have intrinsic motivation to remain motivated.

11. Break Out of Your Network

To execute intersectional ideas, often you need to break out of your existing network. Why? Because the network - which consists of your current colleagues, mentors, and customers – often inhibits you from executing intersectional idea. They want you to stay within the field and execute directional ideas that are more predictable.

12. How to Leave the Network Behind

Leaving your network doesn’t mean alienating them. You should keep your relationships with them. Leaving the network means stop relying on them. But, in case you face opposition from them, you should also be prepared to fight.

13. Take Risks and Overcome Fear

Executing intersectional ideas involves taking risk. A logical way to overcome it is by acquiring more resources (time, money) to minimize risk. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to take. Acquiring more resources doesn’t reduce risk. The reason is because someone’s behavior becomes riskier when the environment is safer.

Therefore, don’t try to minimize risk. Once you have enough resources to execute your idea, do it without waiting for more resources.

14. How to Adopt a Balanced View of Risk

To find the courage to execute your ideas, you should avoid behavioral traps relating to risk. One such behavioral traps is the tendency to stay within a field when things are going well. The reason is because we fear losing. Being aware of the traps is an effective way to overcome them. Another effective way to overcome fear is by  acknowledging your fear.

15. Step into the Intersection . . .

This chapter reminds you of the main idea of the book. The future lies at the Intersection. It’s where breakthrough ideas are. If you want to help create the future, find your way to the Intersection.

Conclusion

For me, The Medici Effect is a surprisingly good book on idea creation. It covers practically every aspect of idea creation from getting creative ideas to realizing them. I especially like the fact that The Medici Effect supports its tips with relevant studies. That way, the tips are scientifically proven.

In my case, I will focus on applying the tips in chapter 4, 6, and 7. Breaking down associative barriers (chapter 4), increasing the chance of finding good combinations (chapter 6), and getting quality ideas through quantity (chapter 7) are particularly relevant to my current situation.

Do you want to get the most out of your time? I’m sure you do. But for it you must do two things: you must focus on a project while exploring new opportunities.

I learned something from the way Google’s developers work. At Google, the developers have the so-called “20 percent time” policy.  It allows the developers to use 20 percent of their work time to work on informal projects of their own. The developers can use the time to work on whatever crazy ideas they have. While giving away 20 percent of their work time may seem counterproductive for the company, it has produced a lot of innovative new projects. Google News, for instance, came from the 20 percent time.

In my opinion, this 20 percent time idea is good to implement personally. While you should have a main project to work on, you should also have a side project.

Why You Should Have a Side Project

There are some reasons why you should have a side project:

1. It gives you time to refresh your mind

Working continuously on only one project may cause burnout. You may work longer hours but get only few results since you lose your creative energy. By working on other project, you will have time to refresh your mind so that you can go back to your main project with enthusiasm.

2. It allows you to explore growth opportunities

Having 20 percent project allows you to explore growth opportunities that will otherwise be ignored. These opportunities may open the way to the next level in your career. While working on your main project will mostly give you incremental progress, exploring new opportunities could give you breakthroughs.

3. It challenges you to be creative

Finding what to do with your 20 percent time pushes you to be creative. You need to find new ideas you may want to explore as opposed to just doing things normally. It pushes you be on the lookout instead of just being passive.

Choosing a Side Project

To implement this idea, the first step is to choose the side project to work on. Since 20 percent is a significant amount of time, you must choose the project carefully. Here are some ideas on how to choose a side project:

1. Know what you want

First of all, you should have a goal. What is it that you want? It starts at the highest level from your life purpose. You can then move down to your long-term and short-term goals. If you don’t know what you want, not only will you spend more time on choosing project, you may also waste time working on the wrong project.

Knowing what you want acts as a filter that makes it easy for you to spot the right opportunities.

2. Subscribe to many, diverse feeds

One of the best ways to spot growth opportunities is by subscribing to many information sources. It’s easy to do this thanks to RSS. Of course, you must find the number of feeds you can manage, but having many sources will give you more exposure to good ideas. Subscribe to sites in your field, related fields, and unrelated fields that interest you. Diversity is important since it helps you develop your ideas exponentially.

3. Find potential new projects

In your feed reading, look for potential opportunities. If you know what you want, even seemingly unrelated information can give you fresh ideas. Write down every potential projects you find.

4. Assess the potential projects

To choose what project to work on, you should carefully assess each of the potential projects. There are two kinds of projects you could choose:

• Low-risk high-reward: If you have potential projects that fall into this category, then they are the obvious choice. They may be projects that leverage your main project or extend it in a creative way.
• High-risk high-reward: When you have no projects that fall within the low-risk high-reward category, you should choose a high-risk high-reward project. While this kind of projects may give you nothing for your time, it may potentially give you a breakthrough. This kind of project is especially attractive if you feel that your main project has reached or almost reached its full potential.

Implementing the Side Project

Here are some tips on implementing the side project you choose:

1. Set aside time for the side project

Of course, “20 percent” here doesn’t mean that you must literally give it 20 percent of your time. It could be 10 percent or 30 percent. Just find a proportion that works for you. Find a balance where you can still manage your main project while sufficiently exploring the new opportunity. One way to implement this is by setting aside one day in your week for the side project while leaving the other days for the main project.

2. Fail fast to learn

To make sure that you get the most out of your side project, you should fail fast. The reason is you learn most through failures. People who don’t fail are usually those who don’t try. Find ways to speed up your learning process. Here are some ideas:

1. Set a deadline
   Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. When you give yourself pressing deadlines, you will automatically ignore the less important details to focus only on the important. You can apply this principle for simple tasks as well. Set a deadline of 15 or 30 minutes and try to accomplish a task within the time limit.
2. Find role models
   To make sure that you learn fast, you should find role models. These role models will save you a lot of time since you can directly adopt their best practices and avoid many pitfalls. Each failure you get will then be quality failure since you have avoided the common mistakes.
3. Enter the real world.
   To fail, you must work on something real. Just reading the theory without practicing won’t make you learn fast enough. Don’t be afraid to directly get involved in the real world.

***

One word of caution: be careful not to spread yourself too thin. You must have the necessary focus to achieve results both in your main project and side project.

This idea is definitely something I’d love try. In fact, I just started a side project and I feel good about it.

Do you have thoughts about it? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Photo by frischmilch

Is there are a better way to learn about high-quality mind other than from the great minds themselves? Perhaps not. That’s why I watched a video from Google Tech Talks entitled On Getting Creative Ideas. It’s a lecture that features Murray Gell-Man who won Nobel Prize in physics in 1969 for proposing a fundamental particle called quark. Since theoretical physics is one of my interests (though I’m just an amateur), I know Gell-Man’s reputation well. He is one of the greatest minds currently live and learning from him about developing creative thinking skills is a too good opportunity to pass.

I learned a lot from the video. Despite being 78 years old, he explained his ideas clearly and sharply. The lecture gives me insights on how people with breakthrough ideas like him work. I recommend you to watch the video yourself, but here are the top lessons I learned:

• There are three stages to getting creative ideas.
  The three stages are:
  1. Saturation: Filling our mind with the problems.
  2. Incubation: Conscious mind seems to no longer work here.
  3. Illumination: Ideas suddenly turn up. It often happens when we are doing something unrelated to the problems.
  A fourth stage can be added: verification. Here we verify that the ideas do work in reality.
• Often there is no reason for conventional wisdom. It’s just something people tell one another.
• We should always ask why not, but we should also understand that there is usually a very good reason why not.
• Problem formulation is usually much more important than problem solving.
  In many cases, it’s also more difficult. To formulate problems, we must ask: what are the real requirements? What are the real conditions the solution must satisfy? What rules are we allowed to violate?
  One place where problems are formulated for us is school. In fact, it’s almost the only place in the world where problems are formulated for us.
• To get creative ideas, take an existing idea and build on it. Take it more seriously than its original proponent did and use it for some other purposes.
  Einstein did it for his theories. Special relativity for instance, was built on the idea of a physicist named Lorentz. Einstein took Lorentz’s idea more seriously and further than Lorentz himself did.
• In everyday life, one way to be creative is using the things around us beyond what they are originally purposed.
• When we try to solve problems we should try to use something random in addition to logical, rational, and reasonable inputs to our thinking.
  The randomness helps us get out of the “shallow holes” (situations where we get good but not great ideas) so that we can eventually reach the bottom of a “deep hole” (situation where we get great ideas).
  Here is an example of randomness: look at the last noun of today newspaper’s front page and use it to solve your problem.

Of course, there are examples and other materials in the video I do not mention here. Furthermore, since everyone’s situation is different, what you learn from the video might be different from me. So, again, you’d better watch the video yourself.

If you have a chance, you might also want to read my post 9 Lessons Richard Feynman Taught Us About Creativity. It highlights creativity lessons from Richard Feynman – another great mind in physics.

This article is part of May 2008 theme: Mind

Knowing what we shouldn’t do is just as important as knowing what we should. In fact, it could be easier to see something wrong in things we already do than to see something right in things we haven’t done. In mind development, it means that we should see how we do things and find what’s wrong with them. We can then take the necessary actions to remove those problems.

The 9 mind development killers I’m about to share are something all of us should be aware of. To be honest, there are some of them I’m dealing with myself. I use this list as a checklist to warn myself if I have done something harmful for my mind development.

Here are the 9 mind development killers you should avoid:

1. Saying that something is boring

Saying that something is boring is a sure way to kill your curiosity and – along with it – your mind development. When you say that something is boring, you create a belief that it’s something negative you should avoid. Unfortunately, that could be a door to new opportunities. You might not understand nor need it now, but someday you might. Whenever you say that something is boring, you have closed one more door of opportunity.

2. Always reading the same kinds of books, blogs, or magazines

You need to branch out to new fields. Again, curiosity plays a big role here. If you aren’t curious, there is little motivation to read something new beyond what you usually read. On the other hand, if you are curious you will be glad to read something different because it’s fun.

3. Only wanting to do the easy stuff

Often we just want to do things that do not require significant effort. While this may make you feel comfortable, it won’t do you much in developing your mind. You should be willing to try something challenging that takes you out of your comfort zone.

4. Feeling good enough

If you feel that you are already good enough in something, you won’t have the drive to improve yourself. At best, your improvement will only be modest. It’s especially dangerous when you feel that you are successful. Steve Jobs gave us good advice we should all remember: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

5. Stop asking why

Often we are to busy doing things that we forget to ask why. We forget to ask why we do it in the first place. We forget to ask why we do it that way. Are you sure you need to do that? And even if you do, must it be done that way?

Just accepting conventional wisdom without asking why is a common mind development pitfall. It could kill the mind development of not only one person but also the entire community.

6. Saying “I’m not creative”

If you think that only certain people can be creative and you are not one of them, you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your belief is your limit. You won’t be creative if you think you aren’t. But the fact is everyone is creative. You are creative. So stop creating self-imposed limitations and start using your creativity.

7. Only having people who agree with you

If the people around you always agree with you, you miss a chance to develop your mind. While we can learn from people who agree with us, I believe we will learn much more from people who disagree with us. So expose yourself to more diverse kinds of people that have different perspectives.

8. Afraid of dreaming big dreams

Perhaps you failed in the past. Or perhaps people said that you won’t succeed. All these could make you afraid of dreaming big dreams. But if your dreams are small, your challenges will also be small and you won’t learn much. Only by dreaming big dreams can you stretch your brain muscles and achieve your full potential. So have the right mindset about failure and enlarge your dreams.

9. Not having role models

Role models act as pacers whom you try to pursue. They are concrete examples of the qualities you want to achieve. Without having concrete examples, it would be difficult for you to know whether and how something can be achieved.

In mind development, you can find people who have big dreams and beliefs despite being in difficult situations. You can also find people who have good intellectual discipline (e.g. reading one book one week) or generate ideas productively. Whatever trait it is you want to emulate, find your role models.

***

As I said above, this list can be used as a checklist to check whether or not you have done something harmful for your mind development.

Do you know of other mind development pitfalls? I would love to hear them.

This article is part of May 2008 theme: Mind

Photo by R’eyes

Creating ideas is essential to thrive in this fast-changing world. It puts you ahead of the pack. The problem is: how do we create ideas? The New Yorker has an excellent article about it entitled In the Air. I highly recommend you to read it if you haven’t done so. It’s an enjoyable read, and it sheds light on how people create genuine ideas.

The article talks about a company called Intellectual Ventures which aim to generate new ideas, patent them, and license the patents to other companies. Unlike other companies that work based on existing ideas, this company works to create ideas. And how is the result? Each year the company files five hundred patents. That’s more than one patent a day!

The conclusion of the article is that big ideas are not rare. It’s just we don’t know how to find them. If we do, we will never experience scarcity of ideas. In fact, there will be so many ideas that we will have hard time choosing and prioritizing them.

There are a lot of lessons in the article that can be applied at individual level. Here I try to extract them along with relevant quotes from the article. By applying these lessons you are on your way to becoming a productive idea generator:

1. Look hard for ideas

People weren’t finding dinosaur bones, and they assumed that it was because they were rare. But—and almost everything that Myhrvold has been up to during the past half decade follows from this fact—it was our fault. We didn’t look hard enough.

This lesson resonates with me. I do look for ideas, but I don’t look hard enough. It’s easy to expect big ideas to come with only moderate effort, but that is unlikely to happen.

2. Ask challenging questions

One rainy day last November, Myhrvold held an “invention session,” as he calls such meetings, on the technology of self-assembly. What if it was possible to break a complex piece of machinery into a thousand pieces and then, at some predetermined moment, have the machine put itself back together again?

Self-assembly is a challenging problem. Personally I don’t have the slightest clue of how it could be done. But such challenging problems are where big ideas reside.

I think this point goes hand in hand with lesson #1: we must look hard for ideas and one way to do so is by asking challenging questions.

3. Find partners

‘But you had eight people in that room who are seasoned inventors. Weren’t you expecting a multiplier effect?’ … ‘Yeah, but it was more than multiplicity.’

You will generate much more ideas when you brainstorm with other people than when you are alone. It increases the number of ideas exponentially. Of course, it’s important to brainstorm with the right people (see lesson #10).

4. Do your homework

“Nathan sent over a hundred scientific papers beforehand,” Gates said of the last such meeting. “The amount of reading was huge. But it was fantastic.”

I’ve learned about the importance of preparation before, but I underestimated the amount of preparation required to create big ideas. Bill Gates was sent over a hundred scientific papers just for one meeting. That’s a whole new level of preparation! This is also an application of looking hard for ideas (lesson #1).

5. Be observant

How did Wood come to this conclusion? He had run across a stray fact in a recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Wood looked at just one fact overlooked by many other people and that fact led him to a brilliant idea. Similarly, we should always be observant. Things that look trivial on the surface may actually contain the seed of big ideas.

6. Expect ideas anytime

“It was a long dinner. I thought we were lightly chewing the rag. But the next day the attorney comes up with eight single-spaced pages flagging thirty-six different inventions from dinner. Dinner.”

Even the most unexpected moments can give us big ideas if we are attentive enough to recognize them. So open your eyes in the unlikely moments as well.

7. Know the giants

This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery—what science historians call “multiples”—turns out to be extremely common… the sheer number of multiples could mean only one thing: scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place.

You must familiarize yourself with the current intellectual climate so that you are well-positioned to invent the ‘inevitable’ new ideas. This is why doing your homework (lesson #4) is essential.

As Newton said, you should “stand on the shoulders of giants”. You’d better know the giants well so that you can stand on their shoulders.

8. Be flexible

“There really aren’t any rules,” he told everyone. “We may start out talking about refined plastics and end up talking about shoes, and that’s O.K.”

Ideas often come from unexpected directions, so it’s important to be flexible enough to change course as necessary. If we insist on taking the direction we want, we may lose big opportunities that pass us by.

9. Have diverse interests

Nathan Myhrvold – one of the main characters in the article – is a person who has interests in as diverse fields as quantum cosmology, computer, paleontology, and cooking. No wonder he is so rich with ideas. Ideas from all those diverse fields can cross-pollinate to create something new. Besides, having diverse interests can help you look at things with fresh perspectives.

10. Meet people from different backgrounds

They had different backgrounds and temperaments and perspectives, and if you gave them something to think about that they did not ordinarily think about—like hurricanes, or jet engines, or metastatic cancer—you were guaranteed a fresh set of eyes.

While having diverse interests yourself is good, meeting people from different backgrounds is an even more effective way to increase the cross-pollination of ideas. As stated in lesson #3, the effect could be more than multiplicity.

11. Move on when ideas fail

If ideas are cheap, there is no point in making predictions, or worrying about failures, or obsessing, like Newton and Leibniz, or Bell and Gray, over who was first… If I.V.’s design wasn’t the best, Myhrvold had two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine other ideas to pursue.

Why should you waste your time defending a failing idea when you still have so many other opportunities to pursue? The opportunity costs are significant here. Since ideas are not rare, the time you use to defend a failing idea can give better results if you just move on to other promising ideas.

***

These lessons have been proven by great inventors throughout the history. Applying them is not easy, of course, but the few people who apply them achieve great results.

What do you think?

This article is part of May 2008 theme: Mind

Photo by Computer Science Geek