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Thinking About Thinking
Thinking about my thinking.
Let’s say your sweetie is feeling anxious or stressed or blue or just plain cranky. Would you help her?
Of course, you would. You might start by asking simple, straightforward questions, like: What’s going on? Why are you feeling down? How can I help? Simple, direct questions are effective because they’re thought provoking. They can cover a lot of mental territory. Ambiguous questions help as well. They allow your sweetie to frame her response based on her needs, not yours.
Now, let’s change the frame. If you were feeling anxious or stressed or blue or just plain cranky, would you ask yourself the same questions? I’ve asked this of many people and the most common response seems to be: I don’t think I would think of doing that.
The trick here seems to be the ability to convert a monologue into a dialogue. We all have a little narrator in our heads who comments on what’s going on around us. I call mine the play-by-play announcer because he (she? it?) serves the same function as a sports announcer – narrating the action.
When I watch a sporting event on TV, I just want the narrator to explain what’s going on and why. I want the same of my internal narrator. I don’t normally question the sports narrator; I just go with the flow. I do the same with my internal narrator.
The narrator – whether sports or internal – is in a monologue. It takes an act of imagination to question the narrator. When I’m speaking to my sweetie, it’s natural and obvious to create a dialogue. When I’m speaking to myself, it’s not at all obvious. I don’t naturally think about my thinking.
I’m trying to change that. I’m trying to teach myself a new trick. When I notice certain cues, I ask myself simple, direct questions to better understand the experience. What are the cues? There are at least three clusters:
Cue 1 — when I’m feeling anxious or stressed or blue or just plain cranky. I’ve learned to take note of this condition and use it as a prompt to ask a simple question: Why am I feeling this way? This helps me bring my feelings and desires to a conscious level and sort them out logically. In Daniel Kahneman’s terminology, I’m using my System 2 to check on my System 1.
Cue 2 – when I’m feeling really good, energetic, or enthusiastic. I’d like to feel this way more often. So, when I’m in a great mood, I prompt myself to ask: How did this happen? I’ve discovered some interesting correlations – not all of which I’m going to share. The best correlation may be obvious: Suellen is often around.
Cue 3 – when I have a good idea. I like having good ideas. I feel productive, creative, and smart. So, when I have a good idea, I prompt myself to ask: What was I doing when this idea popped into my head? Again, I’ve discovered some interesting correlations. Most frequently, I’m moving rather than sitting still. I don’t know why that is but I know it works.
I could probably apply the same introspection to other cues as well. At the moment however, I’m just trying to master the trick under these three conditions. What about you? When do you think about your thinking?
Creativity and Sex
Hey sexy.
Why are we creative? Other animals don’t create much and yet they’re often very successful. The horseshoe crab, for instance, has been around for 450 million years. That’s a pretty good success story – I hope we humans can stick around that long. Yet nobody accuses horseshoe crabs of being creative.
Some researchers argue that creativity derives from competitive, evolutionary pressures. If we can develop creative solutions to problems, we can out-compete other animals. We might even out-compete other humans, like the Neanderthals.
Other researchers suggest that creativity has more to do with mate selection. The basic argument: creativity is sexy. Geoffrey Miller, for instance, suggests that creativity is not so very different from a peacock’s tail. It’s an advertisement to lure a mate.
If that’s true, it raises a different question: what kinds of creativity are the sexiest? Fortunately, Scott Barry Kaufmann, Gregory Feist, and their colleagues looked into that very question in a recent article (“Who Finds Bill Gates Sexy?”) in the Journal of Creative Behavior. (You can find less technical descriptions of the study here and here).
Feist had previously proposed that there are three forms of creativity and that they might vary in their degree of sexiness. In the current paper, Kauffman and Feist and their colleagues, tested this hypothesis on 119 men and 696 women using a variety of cognitive and personality tests. Feist’s three general forms of creativity are:
- Applied/technological – such as engineering projects and technical developments.
- Ornamental/aesthetic – such as the fine and performing arts, including painting, sculpture, music, and dance.
- Everyday/domestic – innovations in our daily living, including interior design or innovations in cooking, etc.
Which of the three do you find sexiest? In the study, both men and women found “… ornamental/aesthetic forms of creativity … more sexually attractive than applied/technological forms of creativity.”
Further, the sexiest creative behaviors included playing sports, playing in a band, making a clever remark, writing music, dressing in a unique style, and writing poetry. The least sexy creative behaviors included interior design, writing a computer program, creating a website, growing and gardening, creating scientific experiments, and creating ad campaigns.
In an earlier post, we learned that men who do more chores around the house have less sex than men who do fewer chores. With the new research, we now have a more complete picture of what’s sexy and what’s not. What to do? I don’t know about you but I’m going to sell the vacuum cleaner and start taking guitar lessons.
Are We Done Yet?
Is it done yet?
A few years ago, I asked some artist friends, “How do you know when a painting is finished?” By and large, the answers were vague. There’s certainly no objective standard. Answers included, “It’s a feeling…” or “I know it when I see it.” One friend confessed that, when she sees one of her paintings hanging in a friend’s house – even years after she “finished” it – she’s tempted to take out her brushes and continue the process. The simplest, clearest answer I got was, “I know it’s done when I run out of time.”
I thought of my artist friends the other night when I heard Jennifer Egan give a lecture at the Pen and Podium series at the University of Denver. Egan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, A Visit From The Goon Squad, spoke mainly about her craft – how she develops her ideas, characters, and plots. While she’s probably best known for her novels, Egan also writes long-form nonfiction, mainly for the New York Times Magazine.
Interestingly, Egan uses different writing processes for fiction and nonfiction. For nonfiction, she uses a keyboard. For fiction, she writes it out longhand. She said, “I write my fiction quickly and in longhand because I want to write in an unthinking way.” It sounds to me that she writes her fiction from System 1 and her nonfiction from System 2. I wonder how common that is. Do most authors who compose fiction, write from System 1? Do authors of nonfiction typically write from System 2? (For the record, I write nonfiction and I write in System 2; I’m not sure how to write from System 1).
Egan went on to say that she follows a simple three-step process in her writing: “Write quickly. Write badly. Fix it.” She captures the essence of her idea quickly and then revisits it to clean and clarify her thoughts. I wonder how she knows when she’s finished.
I thought of Egan the other day when I was reading about Google’s management culture. One of Google’s mottos is, “Ship then iterate.” The general idea is to get the software into reasonably good shape and then ship it to customers. (You may want to call it a beta version). Once the software is in customer hands, you’ll find out all kinds of interesting things. Then you iterate with a new release that adds new features or fixes old ones. The point is to do it quickly and do it frequently. It sounds remarkably similar to Jennifer Egan’s writing process.
There’s a corollary to this, of course: your first draft or first release is not going to be very good. Egan told the story of the first draft of her first novel. It was so bad, even her mother wouldn’t return her calls. In the software world, we say something quite similar, “If you’re proud of your first release, you shipped it too late.”
Software, of course, is never finished. You can always do something more (or less). I wonder if the same isn’t true of every work of art. There’s always something more.
While you could always do something more, the trick is to get the first draft done quickly. Create it quickly. Think about it. Fix it. Repeat. It’s a good way to create great things.
Should You Talk To Yourself?
Speak to me, wise one.
The way we think about the world comes from our body, not from our mind. If I like somebody, I might say, “I have warm feelings for her.” Why would my feelings be warm? Why wouldn’t I say, “I have orange feelings for her”? It’s probably because, when my mother held me as an infant, I was nice and toasty warm. I didn’t feel orange. I express my thoughts through metaphors that come from my body.
We all know that our minds affect our bodies. If I’m in a good mood mentally, my body may feel better as well. As I’ve noted before, the reverse is also true. It’s hard to stay mad if I force myself to smile.
The general field is referred to as metaphor theory or, more generally, as embodied cognition. Simply put, our bodies affect our thinking. Our brains are not digital computers, after all. They’re analog computers, using bodily metaphors to express our thoughts.
As it happens, I’ve used embodied cognition for years without realizing it. Before giving a big speech, I stand up straighter, flex my muscles, stretch out and up, and force myself to smile for 30 seconds. Then I’m ready. I didn’t realize it but I was practicing my bodily metaphors. I can speak more clearly (stand up straight), more powerfully (muscle flexing), and more cheerfully (smile), because of my warm-up routine.
My warm-up routine actually changes my hormones. As Amy Cuddy points out in her popular TED talk, practicing “power poses” for two minutes increases testosterone and reduces cortisol. The result is more dominance (testosterone) and less stress (cortisol). My body is priming me to give an exceptionally good speech. As Cuddy notes, it could also make me much more successful in a job interview.
I’m growing accustomed to the thought that the way I hold or move my body directly affects my thinking and mood. But what about my internal monologue? I talk to myself all the time. Is that a good thing? Do the words that I use in my monologue affect my thinking and behavior?
The answer is yes – for better and for worse. My “self-talk” affects how I perceive myself and that, in turn, affects how I behave. It’s also important how I address myself. Do I speak to myself in the first person – “I can do better than that.” Or do I speak to myself as someone else would speak to me – “Travis, you can do better than that.”
According to a recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the way I address myself makes a world of difference. If I speak as another person would address me, I gain more self-distance and perspective. I also reduce stress and make a better first impression. I can also give a better speech and will engage in “less maladaptive postevent processing”. (Whew!) In other words, I can perform better and feel better simply by choosing the right words in my internal monologue.
So, what’s it all mean? Take better care of your body to take better care of your mind. As my father used to say: “Look sharp, be sharp”. Oh… and watch your language.
(For an excellent article on how the field of embodied cognition has evolved, click here).
Coincidence? I Think Not.
Coincidence? I think not.
It’s a tough world out there so I start every day by reading the comics in our local newspaper. Comics and caffeine are the perfect combination to get the day started.
In our paper, the comics are in the entertainment section, which is usually either eight or twelve pages long. The comics are at the back. Last week, I pulled the entertainment section out, glanced at the first page, then flipped it open to the comics.
While I was reading my favorite comics, a random thought popped into my head: “I wonder if I could use Steven Wright’s comedy to teach any useful lessons in my critical thinking class?” Pretty random, eh?
Do you know Steven Wright? He’s an amazingly gifted comedian whose popularity probably peaked in the nineties. Elliot was a kid at the time and he and I loved to listen to Wright’s tapes. (Suellen was a bit less enthusiastic). Here are some of his famous lines:
- All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
- I saw a man with wooden legs. And real feet.
- I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
- Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don’t have film.
Given Wright’s ironic paraprosdokians, it seems logical that I would think of him as a way to teach critical thinking. But why would he pop up one morning when I was enjoying my coffee and comics?
I finished the comics and closed the entertainment section. On the back page, I spotted an article announcing that Steven Wright was in town to play some local comedy clubs. I was initially dumbfounded. I hadn’t seen the article before reading the comics. How could I have known? I reached an obvious conclusion: I must have psychic powers.
While congratulating myself on my newfound powers, I turned back to the front page of the entertainment section. Then my crest fell. There, in the upper left hand corner of the front page, was a little blurb: “Steven Wright’s in town.”
I must have seen the blurb when I glanced at the front page. But it didn’t register consciously. I didn’t know that I knew it. Rather, my System 1 must have picked it up. Then, while reading the comics, System 1 passed a cryptic note to my System 2. I had been thinking about my critical thinking class. When my conscious mind got the Seven Wright cue from System 1, I coupled it with what I was already thinking.
I wasn’t psychic after all. Was it a coincidence? Not at all. Was I using ESP? Nope. It was just my System 1 taking me for a ride. Let that be a lesson to us all.
(For more on System 1 versus System 2, click here and here and here).
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