The Aha! Moment: A Scientist's Take on Creativity

3 Thoughts on the Random Ideas Generator

48 3 Thoughts on the Random-Ideas Generator C reativity of any kind is rare. To be reading this book at all, you will probably have more of it than usual. But we can all hope to improve. So here are some thoughts on how a variety of factors interact with the Random-Ideas Generator, or RIG. I reckon we all have an RIG, and I at least depend on it for ideas. I am not a psychologist, so my guesses about the RIG are purely personal. But here are some of them. Time and the RIG How much time does the RIG need to have an idea, and how long does it wait before pushing it upstairs? Psychologists call this delay “incubation .” I vaguely feel that a complex problem, or one for which the RIG has little stored data, goes with lengthy incubation. Simple problems, such as deciding how to remodel the kitchen, seem not to need much incubation. The RIG sends ideas up very quickly; the Censor lets through those that seem feasible. The Observer-Reasoner checks them against reality. I reckon the RIG is always playing with ideas, and the current bother (such as rearranging the kitchen) is just one of them. Rapid results are usually rare. Indeed, even a few hours of delay often pays—as when you have struggled unsuccessfully with a crossword puzzle. Give up for a few hours. Writer Madeleine L’Engle recommended playing the piano as a way of “breaking the barrier.” Such a complete change may help the RIG to relax. You come back with a “new mind.” Thoughts on the RandomIdeas Generator 49 A day of delay can be even more valuable. The business manager Robert Townsend recognized that a valued colleague got “negative and defensive” if pressed for an instant decision on anything.1 Townsend advocated holding a second business meeting the next day. It allowed the slower deciders to“sleep on it.”I suspect that actual sleeping is important. The unconscious mind is highly active in sleep (perhaps dreams stir it up). The physicist Frank Offner once woke up in the middle of the night with an idea about ear membranes—he was concerned with them at the time. His wife guessed what was bothering him, and said,“Now get your mind off membranes and go back to sleep.” I have had the same sort of experience. Several times I have woken up in the night with the conviction that something will or won’t work. Once I even went downstairs at 2 a.m. to check that something would fit! And wherever possible, I halt a project overnight. In some way the sleep experience brings a new insight to a problem, maybe allowing the unconscious mind to contribute to it. Things feel different and clearer in the morning. Some of yesterday’s options now seem closed; others seem obvious. More troublesome problems take more time. Bertrand Russell recounts his long agony of 1913.2 He had to give the Lowell Lectures in Boston in 1914; but despite endless cogitation he could not see how to avoid counterarguments and exceptions. Finally, in despair, he arranged for a stenographer to take down a book on the topic. As she came in the door, he suddenly saw what he had to say and dictated the whole book without hesitation. So he decided that it was silly to go on worrying about a problem. “Order the work to continue underground and wait for the result to pop up,” said he. But how long should you wait? Probably Russell’s RIG was sorting out the whole matter for much of 1913, unconcerned by his conscious agony. If he had hired that stenographer earlier, say after 9 months rather than a year, his RIG would have responded to the sudden challenge with what it had then—which might have been entirely adequate. Hence the value of crises. They stimulate the RIG to push stuff upstairs, even past the Censor. My model has the RIG playing with ideas all the time. Indeed, it may have some sort of solution ready on demand. In an emergency it reacts instantly and pushes upstairs whatever it has. The idea may or may not work, but you want it now! This crisis reaction fits my story of Bowers 50 The Aha! Moment in the crevasse and my own instant instinct to pump the brakes of...