Educating the Creative

 
At this moment, I have maybe 15, maybe 7 or 8 ideas that are going through my head, each of which is focused in on an idea. Those Ideas are coming from an article I read about a year old in a US. News about adult adhd. Of those ideas I will now chose one and focus it in. However, as I have learned about myself, in order to be able to write about the one idea, I will also write somewhere else about the other ideas, and how frustrating my conclusions are about that. But in a future post, you will get to read these as well.

So what am I choosing to write about? The positive, constructive things that someone could apply today to help them tomorrow. And I am illustrating my first principle as we speak. Learn how to focus on one aspect of the many. For any subject, there are an inordinate amount of perspectives one could take, but which are appropriate? This takes discipline to learn, but it is pivotal to the learning experience to do just that, learn which ideas are relevant. And it is almost never one. But what I chose to do is limit it to one, then allow my mind to branch out from there on the aspects of that particular idea, like right now, what would help a parent with a child with adhd right now.
-Guiding questions
Again I just illustrated it by asking myself a question that I can answer in may ways, as I ponder this question I almost always come up with several other questions before I am able to answer the first. This is where I failed in school, the teacher would ask a question, and I would start thinking of her warped perspective on the subject, her bias, what were other relevant questions. These were all valid thoughts, I just have do learn to focus them. So I will just write several questions down on the paper, and go back and answer them later, or not. Sometimes just thinking through that logical process I come to a new revelation about the topic and I realize my original perspective was warped or not on topic. My initial questions were not failures, they helped to guide me to the more relevant topic. It is all about failing towards success. But how can you allow a child to do this? Still working on that idea.
-A channel for off topic ideas.
I get some of my best revelations while I am trying to do something else. So what I do now is to keep a journal with me basically every where I go, and write down random ideas, words I like, things I want to do when I am 60, whatever. This has helped to focus my ideas, and to utilize the creativity that is pent up in my brain. As I drive I have a tape recorder in my car that I can talk to and capture my ideas. Now I have yet to go through and document those, but nevertheless they are there for me when I have a dry moment of inspiration to draw from.
-Physical release of energy
I have a hard time sitting in one place for very long. Despite this I spend up to 6 hours in coffee shops every day studying, reading books, hanging out. I bring juggling balls with me, my unicycle, toys I call them. If I am very creative, I will need to take an energy break more often, but sometimes I will just go out side and walk around for a little to release some energy. Also by being in the coffee shop environment I get constant visual input and small breaks from what I am doing. These small breaks help me to refocus on what I was doing.

Well I am reaching my max for sitting here, and I have even taken several breaks, will write a several more editions to this though, and It is kind of an ongoing thing learning what works, what doesn't, and all that stuff.

What is genius

 
This is not expert opinion, just me thinking out loud.

It is impossible to see everything that is happening around you at once. It is also impossible to interpret all of the signals that we receive in sensory input, like what we are seeing, hearing, smelling... Examples of abilities associated with interpreting signals are that some people are able to read others responses like a book, others can play chess really well, still more can apply their huge database of knowledge to the appropriate situation at any given time.
For an extreme example of this, think of the movie Rain man. Dustin Hoffman's character was not able to interpret the social situations that they encountered, yet he was a "genius" at numbers. But not at every aspect of numbers, at memorizing numbers, and at doing arithmetic with them. Point covered, on to the idea.
What is this "genius" ability? I think there are many different abilities, and some of them combined together form a strategy for comprehending the world. Lets make some assertions, then see which prove out.

-one person can not have every ability.

-If your ability is to focus in on one ability, you lose out on the opportunity to have it's opposite.
(If you don't agree with me yet, see where we go, hold on for a little and try me)

-These abilities combine to form a strategy unique to that individual, but through different strategies can come to similar results, with differing successes in speed, and accuracy.

and the last assertion (no drum roll please)
-Being a really realy good genius ( not evil or anything) comes from having the ability to instantly and continually decide if the ability you are using or focusing on is the one needed for the situation.

I will edit this to actually talk about it when I am not so tired.

Learn how to succeed through Failure

To preface this, it is not my own idea. I have read many books, and I got it from one, but now that I have applied the philosophy to my life, I have incorporated it in new ways.

The learning process is really about error correction. However it is not about reduction of errors, or trying not to make very many, learning something well can be about making as many error's as possible in the beginning. I will now use an example. There was a game called dance dance revolution. People walking by it in an arcade were drawn to the flashing lights and dance pad on the ground, wondering in amazement how it worked. Then an expert would walk up and make it all look so easy that no one else would want to try it.

The first time I did it, I knew I would look funny doing it, and that I probably would not be able to do anything about it. So I tried tons of different songs, watched others do it, and would hopelessly abandon all sense of coolness in my attempts to get my feet where the screen told me they should be. (as I am writing this, I am noticing the lack of point, or maybe meandering through it, will try to fix). So for the next several times, I tried to discover what I was having a problem with, and what I was already good at doing. Sometimes what I was good at doing would lead me into one of the things that I was awful at. But in the beginning there can be so many things that you are not doing well that you don't know where to improve or how.

The Point. Pick one thing, and get better at it. No one can improve in every area at the same time. Become aware of what is failing and what is working, and be willing to be bad at many things until you figure out what it will take. I think I noticed this most dramatically with the unicycle. I would say there were around 15 leaps of understanding that I had to go through to be able to ride it more than a few inches. Until I could do each of these, and be at least somewhat aware of them, I was not going to be able to ride it.

So my philosophy in riding the unicycle was, fail at as many things as possible, in order to discover what I was going to have to learn how to do. After those initial sessions, I could look for small areas where I was improving, even if they were subtle. I could have learned half of the things to get better at the unicycle the first day, and I still would not be able to ride it. So for a large learning curve like that, it takes just failing for a while, and for the unicycle quite a while.

Then one day, you don't feel like you have improved in the least since you got the darn thing(going from one inch to ten inches does not really count). All of a sudden, you do it for a good distance, everything just falls into place.

(So far, all of this was just cursory info that came to my head as I was thinking about what I was really wanting to say. And as an aside, I am speaking on the main idea at my Toastmasters group this Tuesday, in 2 days)((Alternate title: How to kill two birds with one stone, write about what you are thinking about for a blog, then speak on that topic in your public speaking group. Ha ha ha, I will include that advice in my book on how to take over the world)

Now what I was going to be talking about. The 1 % success rate. This is also not my idea, read it in a book a while ago. If you improve in something by 1 %, anything at all, after a year with compounding interest you will be 1000% better or more. So here is my take on this. I am energized by having new ideas and thoughts in my head. I was interested in cryptography recently for about 3 days, then something else caught my interest. I don't mind jumping around as long as I know that I will come back to this later at some point and learn more about it, or get better at it. In fact, sometimes just having these ideas not completed is exciting because I can take the concepts I did learn about in that brief time further. Then when I go back to the cryptography, I have context to put the information in, as well I have thought about it at random times for a while.

Another way to apply this philosophy would be to think about having a core set of competencies that you want to be able to do. I like to improve myself through reading, improving my motor skills through learning new manual skills like juggling or unicycling, learning how to improve my memory, many others. So lets say there are 10 of these things that can be relaxing and may or may not help me in the future. I go in cycles of doing some of these things and completely neglecting others. Lets break it down

I probably have a top three that I am always doing one of these. If it is juggling, I have all of that stuff in my car, and may always carry three balls around with me wherever I go. I may do this for an average of 20min a day, in between this class, during my break at work. I have the other 7 things that I do occasionally, like origami, where I keep some paper handy in my room or in my backpack, when I get the urge I will do it for a few days, then not do it again for 2 weeks.

At the moment I can only do 3 models of origami. You could call me a failure at origami. I learn one new model a month, if that. And soon It may drop off the radar screen as other things push it out of the way. But one day I will pick it back up, and It might be on the top of the list, in which case I will work on it in a creative frenzy learning two or three figures a day for several weeks.

I guess you could call this the 5min a day principal. Anything you want to learn, if you were to put in a little bit of time towards it every day, at the end of a year, you could be awesome at it. The other point I see in this, is that you could do several of these things, and let a natural flow develop as to which one is more interesting at the moment. This is a very exciting way to go about the day.

Everyone stands in lines, has to sit at stop lights, or wait for a meeting to happen. What could you learn while this was happening?

This question alone is exciting to me, almost blowing my mind. It conjures ideas like what are the limits of human potential? What would be possible if a person continued to get better at an increasing number of things through out their whole life?

Perfection is only attainable within Perfection

So I haven't posted in a while, because I was worried about formulating my ideas more clearly, aswell as making sure I made sense. Well it is a good idea to make sense, but I think seeing the process unfold can be a beneficial thing aswell. There is something to be said of keeping the aesthetic beauty of something intact by leaving some of it's original form in place. I am speaking of my writing style in this instance.

I am in a summer school art class at the moment, and it is so liberating and exciting. This class has added a filter of perception to my brain, that as I go about my normal things, I am seeing the world through a whole new set of eyes. I still have all of my old biases, but this is now an added one that plays with all of the others. (see right now I realize that my subject is a little fuzzy, aswell as my meaning, will try to clear this up). It is like when you read a book, you could look at it from the historical perspective, a feministic perspective, why did the author write it, so many ways. So I call these the filters through which we see the world. ( see I am bringing it back, slowly I know). Each of these gives context to the book, and allow us to experience it on a deeper level.

Well this filter of perception that is true for books, is also true for our interaction with others. All of this is covered in philosophy, so I won't delve into it too deeply, but it has major relevance. As I meet new people, many of these filters come to my head, and I question which ones apply to the current situation, and which are irrelevant. This ability to decide on appropriateness of these ideas is a factor of intelligence, but so is the ability to have many filters. (aha, another subject to discuss in a later blog, the idea of multiple intelligences, and what I believe are some of the factors). So what happens when, upon meeting a new person, wondering what their background is, where did that accent come from, how much of what you say do they understand based off of your analysis of their education level? These are all good ideas, but with too many of them, they become overwhelming, especially when people accidentally give off false clues, maybe use a high register word that is not normally a part of their vocabulary ( and here I could go off on all the false clues I have seen, or just misconceptions I had based upon a first impression.)

I have said how these multiple filters can be a negative in light of meeting a new person and trying to fit them into your understanding. But the process of allowing your mind to wander through so many ideas, and come to random conclusions can also be a good thing. For one, once it is refined, can allow for very deep insights without a lot of information, case in point, Sherlock Holmes. All of his assumptions always seemed to turn out right, but as I work at Starbucks and see inordinate amounts of people walk through the door, there is much information that can be gained from appearances. What I have learned from experience is how much weight to give to these. Everyone has inconsistencies in their lives. My room might be a mess while my car is spotless. Granted, this extreme is rare, but people are always in the process of changing and growing, and they do not grow at the same rate in every area ( this has been a recent acknowledgement for me, and a great relief to the personal internal inconsistencies I saw in myself. I can now realize that these are a part of the human condition).

Let me summarize what we have up to now, so we can go further. So we have perceptions through which we see the world, these allow us to put context to our experiences and interactions with others, and allow us to instantly gather a great deal of information about the other person, but we have to further the relationship to see how much of this initial information truly describes the person. There are many good and bad things about this way we see other people, but that is what happens. So on to my point. With adhd, these filters come pouring into my brain, without the ability to decide which are more relevant than others. Or if I chose to try to decide which are more important, I become overwhelmed with competing ideas and the degree of relevance each has in comparison to the other. You could call this getting caught up in the process without regard to the results. I have learned how to continually think about, why was I trying to do this, what was the point of this thinking process. By continually analyzing this, I am able to have a wide variety of ideas and still narrow them down into a cohesive idea or result.

An interesting by product of these multiple filters of perception and random associations, is the ability of memory. Because any experience, like meeting someone with an accent, has this huge database of ideas and thought experience surrounding the event. So I do not only have the one experience of meeting this person with an accent, I have what I was thinking about, the free associations and Ideas that were swirling around in my brain, aswell as the strange Sherlock like conclusions that my brain came to. Now these ideas my not be relevant to the interaction, but they serve to preserve it in my brain. If someone mentions accents and asks if I ever met someone with a strange one, I can recall a large portion of my meeting because of the volumes of information I associated with that meeting. I might remember what they were wearing, what we talked about, or more likely the ideas that came to my head as a result of meeting them. So learning how to control this process, or at least use it to your advantage could be a very helpful thing.