Hi guys and welcome back to brain friendly thinking.
A lot of the techniques which I introduced in my past videos help you to become more
knowledgeable in an area, to become an expert and by that to help you to become more creative.
But is it even necessary to become an expert in order to be more creative?
Let’s look at the connections between creativity and expertise in more detail.
Usually when we think about creativity, we think it’s all about getting ideas. And
while this is an important part, this is not the be all and end all of creativity.
When Apple introduced the original IPhone back in the day, they didn’t just combine smartphone
technology with a better user interface. They had to understand the problems of their customers,
the shortcomings of their competitor products, the opportunity that a new direction would offer.
And then they had to take potential solutions and evaluate them how well can they fulfil the
need of the customer? And all of that is what made the IPhone such a success and changed the
way we think what a smartphone is. All of the above requires that we’re able to recognise
patterns. Take this painting for instance. Even if you’re not from a European country,
you’re probably able to recognise that this is The Last Supper. You know that the bloke in the centre
is Jesus Christ. And that the other people around him are his disciples.
If you know anything about the story behind the last supper, you can probably also guess,
from the agitated look on the faces and the way in which people speak to one another, that it is very
likely that Jesus just announced that one amongst their midst is going to denounce him.
You probably think that this is the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. However,
if you were an art historian, you would know, from a hundred tiny details, that this is in fact not
the famous painting by Leonardo, but a copy of that painting by another renaissance painter
called Andrea Solari. On the other extreme, if you had never been exposed to Western culture before,
you might not even recognise that this is a religious painting. The only thing you’d be
able to see is there’re a couple of people talking to each other and sharing a meal. Maybe you can
tell that the guy in the centre is important. But all the other level of detail is completely closed
to you. From that we see that recognising patterns is not about whether we recognise it or we don’t
recognise it, but rather, it’s a continuous line. And the more we know, about a certain subject,
the more we can read out from our data. And data is all around us in what we read, what we see,
what we hear, what we feel. But how can knowledge help us to see patterns?
Thinking, for the most part, is association.
We’re bombarded every second of our life by a myriad of information and stimuli from all around
us. And every stimulus which we perceive with one of our senses our eyes, our fingers, our ears,
sets in motion a cascade of associations. It basically, as it travels through the brain,
goes through several stations and each of the stations is specialised
in a particular type of pattern recognition. We have another set of modules in our brain
which are tasked with creating patterns. And the patterns they create are, the way in which we move
our body the words we speak, even the decisions we make. But in order for each of these brain areas
to operate, it is necessary that they receive input from other areas. And that they compare that
input with what is already known in the brain. And the great thing is that we can change it.
As we learn new things about a specific topic, we’re getting better at recognising patterns.
We’re able to recognise patterns we could not recognise before. And our brain changes itself
in such a way that working with patterns in this specific topic becomes more and more efficient.
But that’s a change that’s not abrupt, it’s rather a gradual transition.
This let Gary Klein to coin the metaphor of the rhodopsin effect.
Rhodopsin is the chemical compound in our eyes that allows us to see in dimly lit conditions.
Experts are able to
see structures and patterns that non-experts are not able to see,
because they accumulated rhodopsin in their specific area if interest. And, as you know,
if you go from a well lit room to a dimly lit room, your ability to see shapes and structures
in this new room does not suddenly change from not-at-all to everything. But it’s a continuous
process that takes several minutes to complete. And as the rhodopsin accumulates in your eyes,
more and more of the shapes in the room become visible. Which means that our ability to perceive
pattern is not a general ability that is just better in some people than in others.
It highly depends on the topic we’re talking about. So where does that leave us? It tells
us a couple of things. First of all, it does not make sense to talk of a creative person. Whether
a person is creative or not always depends on what topic we’re talking about. And from not creative
at all to highly creative there is a continuum in between. Secondly, specialisation is good. I know,
very often we think about specialists as people who know more and more about less and less.
But really, if you want to do something great, if you want to be really creative and if you
want to change something, you need to pick an area of expertise and you need to start digging
deeper. The deeper you go, the better you are at working with patterns and the more likely it is
that you will come up with good and with creative solution. I would even go so far as
to say that even people we generally consider to be generalists are actually specialists as well.
It just so happens that their area of expertise cuts across the mental silos we usually think in.
So, if you want to become highly creative, what can you do? First of all you need to select one
or a handful of topics where you want to be creative.
Secondly, you need to accumulate knowledge or skills within this particular topic or topics.
Then you need to play around with the contents of that topic
so that the topic always stays fresh in your mind and that you see that there’s more than one way
how you can combine the individual sub parts of the topic with one another. This will prevent
you from falling into expert blindness and it gives you that edge that if a problem,
or an opportunity, presents itself to you, you can recognise it, seize it and work with it in such a
way that you’ll be able to produce a pattern which might be creative, but it is certainly
very relevant to the problem or the opportunity you’re trying to solve. So, what’s you’re focus
topic. Make sure you spend enough time during the day working with that topic to make sure that you
can also produce creative solutions. And that’s how you can harness the power of being an expert.
If your area of expertise is knowledge based, there are a couple of tools that can help you.
You might be interested at checking out the concept of a zettelkasten which is a method
for personal knowledge management. Or you might be interested in a couple of games
which you can play to make working with your knowledge fun and at the same time
it allows you to make new discoveries about your area of expertise.
If you found the video useful, please don’t forget to give the like button a high
five. Consider subscribing if you haven’t already. And until next time: keep thinking!