Notes from Robert Green's talk at Google about his book titled "Mastery"
Min 27:00
Fear and anxiety generates a "fight or flight" response, even in an intellectual realm. It is a physiological response: our minds naturally narrow our focus into what is immediately present.
When confronted with new problems, new circumstances, or when we begin work on a project, learning something new, we're unconsciously plagued with insecurities and anxieties, and we don't like it. Mysteries, any contradiction, situations that are unfamiliar and ambiguous, and elude immediate understanding, all makes us uneasy.
We hastily rush to come to a conclusion, to make a judgement, to explain what is happening. Being able to do so soothes our insecuries and anxieties, makes us feel confident and consistent. We can explain and express an opinion before other people. In this way, our egos become enmeshed in our creative work, our interpretations of the world.
Admitting that we are wrong or that we don't know, should be a sign of intelligence, a questioning nature, a willingness to re-assess our own ideas. Instead, we hold on to our ideas with double the tenacity, if we're made to feel doubtful or insecure about them.
Mysteries, uncertainties, ambiguity, has the same effect as a physically frightening set of circumstances: the mind tightens and narrows its focus--a fearful reaction.
The top performers of the world cultivate "negative capability", to negate the ego and its anxieties. They're not in a rush to come to a conclusion about the world, or any new phenomenon. They're completely open to entertaining any ideas, even opposing ones, while continuing to observe what is going on the world.
They can look at contradictory or ambiguous evidence and not be disturbed, or feel the need to explain them away. This ability to withstand what seems mysterious, to manage the lack of knowing something with certainty, is the primary quality of all creative people, no matter their profession.
Because they feel less anxious and a need to rush to a conclusion, they consider more possibilities, when confronted with a problem, which allow for greater possibilities, greater range of connections of creative associations.
Negative capability will help you push past the impatience and anxiety that make you come to conclusions too early on in the process.
How to adopt negative capability in your life:
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Practice at micro daily level. In personal relationships, counter the tendency to label and categorize people. Goal is to judge them less, observe them more. People are infinitely complex and never fit neatly into the categories we have. Your goal: try to see the world from their POV, get nuanced and individualized sense of who they are. This will instantly make you less anxious, less judgemental and more perceptive.
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Now, apply this to your work. Before you begin your project, know that it is difficult, but you throw out as many assumptions as possible. It may be difficult, but you open yourself up to other possible theories, interpretations, the kind you usually never entertain. You speculate and think about the information in front of you, but you control that constant desire to rush into some kind of conclusion.
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You learn to embrace uncertainty and chaos. Life is inherently chaotic and never fits into our tidy formulas. Not only does this not make you anxious, but you find chaos and uncertainty, deeply exciting and stimulating.
Slowly adopting this as an overall philosophy will naturally loosen the mind up and give it greater creative flow. You will naturally consider more possibilities.
Some of the most important innovations and inventions come from outsiders. Why do outsiders have a creative advantage?
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They're less steeped-in and burdened by the field that they're attacking. They ask a different set of questions. They approach problems from unconventional angles
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They're often trained in totally unrelated fields, so they make interesting and creative connections between two very different forms of thinking
Thinking like outsiders loosens up the mind.
They search wider to generate possibilities others don't think of, then they work to verify what they came up with.
E.g. Henry Ford: How to make workers get to cars faster? Solution: Instead, make cars go to workers. The assembly line was born.
Difference between regular vs. active imagination: Latter is used consciously to reach very practical results. Not imagination for the sake of imagination.
Active imagination = creative "muscle" you're developing.
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Start with what Charles Darwin calls "Fool's experiments". Give mind free reign, any possibility imaginable. Fun / play part. Use notebooks, sketches, prototypes to externalize the products of your imagination.
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Serious part of the process. Choose 1 or a few of the more promising possibilities from previous step. Now, actively work to test, verify and confirm it. E.g. launch beta version
Our minds tend to fall into certain habits, patterns, grooves, that severely limit what we consider as possible. Top performers have the ability to move against, actively subvert their own patterns, thereby expanding what they consider.
One pattern we often fall into and rarely realize, is to always focus on the end result e.g. the finished product. How do we make that product as perfect as possible? We live in a goal-oriented culture. A culture where when there's a setback or glitch, we naturally focus on the end result. Sometimes, the root cause is more systemic: due the process, structure, organization.
Another habit we have is to be mesmerized by patterns, trends, paradigms themselves. Top performers notice anomalies that don't fit into patterns; anomalies that cannot be assimilated. Anomalies indicate new paths, new ways of thinking, problems that should not be ignored. Paying attention to anomalies will expand what we normally consider.
Another pattern bias: our fixation to what is immediately present to our eyes and mind. We focus on what happened instead of what didn't happen. Top performers think about the invisible--what is absent.
E.g. Instead of focusing on what external threats (germs, bacteria) caused scurvy, Gowland Hopkins asked what the body was not producing and receiving: vitamin C.
Creativity = ultimate synthesis between the child and adult within you.
Child = more imaginative, explorative
Adult = risk averse
We only let our inner child out when we're socializing, on vacation, sports, parties. Our minds are freeier, less productive, but more fluid.
The adult mode dominates our work world, our overall general world. Our minds become tighter, as we try to fit the narrow world of whatever our careers and life demand of us.
By rigidly separating our inner child and adult world, we dry up our creative potential.
Goal: Find a way to incorporate playful exploratory spirit of child into our discplined experienced work. Not about alternating between both, but fusing both into one inseparable whole.