Think Like a Kid (to improve your technical genius)

Introduction

Many technical jobs, such as designing or building web sites, are as much exercises in creativity as they are just applying technical knowledge. We have some real constraints of current technology, and are usually given some definition of goals, but then our challenge is to create something fresh and impressive. Additionally, we often find ourselves working on something new in an industry or line of business we know little about. Our lack of knowledge is often a hindrance to ending up with the best solution.

It turns out that the majority of adults are naturally challenged in two fundamental ways that can interfere with reaching the highest potential combination of knowledge and creativity necessary to be the best at our jobs. Let's explore the first.

Problem One: Overconfidence

I've had some fascination with psychology and physiology of how the brain works. Some of my favorite television ever was the National Geographic show Brain Games. One episode, What You Don't Know, explored the first adult limitation I want to discuss. Participants were asked a series of questions and asked to give an answer as a numeric range that covered the correct answer. For example, a question might be "How many planets are in our solar system?" You might not be sure of the current status of Pluto, so wanting to give yourself a little cushion, you might correctly answer "7 to 10."

I'll avoid the spoiler alert here, in case you want to watch the episode and try the test yourself, but the exercise demonstrated what is referred to generally as the overconfidence effect, or illusion of knowledge. It is the tendency most adults have to overestimate their knowledge or accuracy. Some psychologists suggest it is a defense mechanism your brain uses to shield you because of experiences where you learned it is painful to appear dumb. We can also consider that we have learned that society values people that are knowledgeable and confident.

In 1999, two psychologists studying this described what became known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is the phenomenon that people with low competency or knowledge in a certain area tend to overestimate their ability. Note this is entirely unrelated to intelligence - it is only in reference to ability in a particular area. Various explanations have been proposed, but for the purpose of this article I think it is good to consider that if you have a small amount of knowledge in an area you lack information to discern how much more there is that you don't know.

Solution?

• Reassess your knowledge/skill level. If you are less than an expert in an area, you may be even less knowledgeable than you tend to think of yourself.
• Ask more questions. If you are overconfident, you are likely asking less questions than is warranted by your true ability. My mom passed on the mantra her father had taught her - what I call the Grandpa Trent philosophy - "The only dumb question is the one you don't ask."
• Reevaluate environments where it is "unsafe" to ask questions. If you work in a field where knowledge or skill is important (I think that covers every employed person) and are afraid to ask questions, you may want to consider that is not a healthy work environment. This also applies to other environments, such as relationships or classrooms.

Problem Two: Learning Non-creativity

Psychologists have labeled two categories of thinking:

• Divergent - Imagination, thinking of new possibilities
• Convergent - Evaluation, judgment

We can think of divergent thinking as the accelerator when it comes to imagination, while convergent thinking is the brake. As we grow up, we learn to think both ways simultaneously. As we imagine each new possibility, we immediately begin analyzing it and finding its flaws. If you doubt the reality that we are taught this, consider how many times you've heard someone say, "We don't teach enough critical thinking in our schools any more," or something similar.

One classic example of this at work is to ask people to imagine uses for a paper clip. You probably immediately imagine holding papers together, and possibly how a paper clip seems to be the perfect size for pressing the reset button on electronics. Most adults can think of 10 or 15 uses. But it would not be unusual for a young child to imagine many times as many. Some of these are pretty imaginative, like a paper clip as high as the ceiling, or one made out of rubber. As you read that last sentence, you may have thought to yourself, "Well, that wouldn't be a paper clip then." That is your convergent thinking at work!

In the late 1960s, as NASA was trying to land a man on the moon, it became interested in finding innovative people, beyond mere masters of a slide rule or physics. George Land was a psychologist that developed a test for this purpose. He thought it would be interesting to administer the test to children, and did so on a sample of around 1,600. They scored an average 98% on the creativity scale of the test, whatever that meant in that context. He then thought it would be interesting to follow the same kids and give them the test again. The decline in their creativity score was dramatic. He eventually administered the test to several hundred thousand adults, which scored an average of just 2%. You can watch George Land himself discussing this here. George Land is often quoted as writing, "What we have concluded is that non-creative behavior is learned."

There are many critics of Land's conclusions about the effects of education, but most agree, at least in essence, with the base findings about creativity in children vs. adults. Anyone that's spent time around 5-year-olds is probably not surprised by this.

Solution?

Find your inner 5-year-old...  or learn to temporarily switch off your critical convergent thinking. Ask yourself (or, better yet, your team) what are ALL the ways we might solve this problem? There are no bad answers, because there is no critical convergent thinking applied to them. Just stream-of-consciousness spewing out ideas.

Real-World Illustration

Let's examine how this might manifest itself in our real-world experiences. The scenario is that we have a technical problem to solve. Often, our process is something like this: We think of option A. We quickly analyze option A and realize it's probably not viable. We imagine option B, with immediate subsequent analysis leading us to conclude it would likely work. And off we go to implement it.

Now consider the alternative approach. We first just start listing out options A, B, C, D, E, F, and so on through P. We might chuckle as option C comes out of our mouth because we can't help seeing its ridiculousness, but we continue. Then, after listing the options, we switch back into critical mode and consider them. Yeah, C is pretty silly, but it is interesting to consider one novel aspect of it that could be very beneficial. Option E would probably get us fired, so let's scratch that one off the list. It turns out that B is probably the most viable, so off we go to implement it, along with that one aspect of option C.

We already arguably have a better solution. But now imagine what happens if, after a few hours of work, we realize there's a blocking and insurmountable problem with option B. Consider where that leaves us in those two scenarios. In the second one, we not only immediately have other options to consider, but we might still be able to salvage the option C detail on our new path.

With an Asterisk

I will note that some psychologist and researchers define creative as both novel (new, original) and useful (of value). While children may easily outscore adults in the first category, it is adults that are generally more able to produce things society finds useful. There is certainly no shame in critical, practical thinking. The goal is to find the balance, and as an individual that may seem extremely out of balance at first. You can also see the value of diversity in personalities and approaches when it comes to teams.

In Summary

1. Accept that you may need to ask more questions that you naturally feel comfortable asking, especially in areas where you are less than an expert.
2. Seek environments that are safe places for asking questions, and work to influence those you find yourself in to that end.
3. Learn the value of more wildly imaginative, less convergent thinking, and encourage it in those around you. (Have fun imagining a 10-foot high rubber paperclip!)