There seem to be a couple of analogies to try and understand two types of thinking (focus time and diffuse time) – the pinball one, with either close pins or separated pins, or the two types of flashlight, either a tight beam or a wide beam. Of those two I prefer the flashlight one. I’m more used to it because of how I ride a bicycle at night – I use two torches. A wide beam mounted on my handlebars and a tight focus beam on my helmet. The wide beam gives me contextual information, and an overall view of the bike trail. The narrow beam floods a small area with light to help me see subtle details that can affect how I tackle the hazard that’s coming up. The beam also moves around as my head moves, so I’m gaining the maximum amount of information possible while maintaining contextual awareness.
When I’m “in the zone”, I’m focused on a rational line of reasoning. Observation leads to conclusion (usually via hypothesis but nobody’s perfect). I can follow a line of reasoning through some pretty large interim steps. Overall, it seems reasonably clear what the focus time thinking can do for you. It’s the algorithmic stuff. Rational problem solving, the kind that ends in “QED”.
So what does the diffuse time give me? Rest? A diversion? Daydreaming? The bits I can identify seem to be all related to one core concept – patterns. The detection of patterns; the use of these patterns as reference points to remember other themes/concepts/”things”, regardless of how unrelated, as long as they too exhibit these patterns. Sometimes not even based on memory, but the use of imagination to invent a plausible “thing” that could also exhibit these patterns. Basically, these are analogies. These can be useful, as it’s possible to use these patterns to influence focus time thinking to go places that aren’t always obvious. In any case, it seems to be a useful mechanism for keeping potentially useful thoughts churning in my mind, in case serendipity strikes.
This leads me to conclude that being creative(*) requires both, a bit like the analogy of the two beam types on bike lights. The wide beam diffuse thinking to generate a whole bucketful of ideas, and then the narrow beam focused thinking to see what each of these ideas can mean. But if that’s true, where do you start? Which idea needs the narrow beam focus first? Perhaps part of the analogy generation process is some form of weighting factor, that’s a guess as to how likely the idea will generate something useful. I suppose that “magic number” is dependent on past experience, skill, perhaps just blind luck. A bit like deciding which is the immediate obstacle that I need to ride over, while also paying some attention to the next one, and the one after that etc. Occasionally I’ll get it wrong and fall off.
Not too sure how this model of thinking will help me. Perhaps I can describe this stuff to one of my colleagues who seems to be stuck on a hard problem, who knows. The only thing I’m reasonably sure of is this aphorism:
All models are wrong. Some are useful.
Hopefully this model of “how creativity works” will be useful to someone else at some point. With practice, it becomes easier to either focus in or let my mind wander and daydream. Something like this also sounds like fun, though it may be “unpalatable” in some work environments…
http://www.creativitypost.com/create/salvador_dalis_creative_thinking_technique
(*) I think being creative has to be more than ideas – you’ve got to do something with them.
Amateur Coach 