What is half of 8? Most people would immediately think that the right and only answer is the number 4. Why? Because we all learn mathematics in school, and it teaches us that half of 8 is 4. But what if we look at the number visually? We can cut or fold the number 8 into two equal parts. If we cut or fold 8 horizontally, we would get the number 0 or the letter o, depending on whether the number or the alphabet come to mind first, as the half of 8. And if we cut or fold 8 vertically, we would get 3 or , depending on which way we look at it. And if we fold randomly (not horizontally or vertically) from the middle of 8, we could get even more answers.
Now look at this for a moment: O. What is it? Again, most people would think about the number 0, the letter O, or a circle. How many of you would come up with answers like an egg, a top view of a cup, the earth from outer space, a coin, a snake eating away at its own tail? Not many maybe, and if you are one of the few who saw possibilities beyond a number, letter or…a cirlce, consider yourself lucky as you have retained the ability to think beyond the obvious.
If you are one of the majority, don’t feel bad either, as most of us have been conformed either by what we have learnt in school and how we think people (our boss, our teacher from school, the society) expect us to answer the question. Humans are social beings who follow external expectations to various extents. The tighter our relationship is with other people and the tighter the society we live in, the more pressure we seem to get to fulfill others’ expectations.
Here’s a story that will highlight both how most of us have become conformist thinkers, and how we can break out of that mold to become creative thinkers.
In 1905 Niels Bohr sat a physics exam at the University of Copenhagen, in which he was required to answer a question on how to use a barometer to measure the height of a building. According to Arthur J. Cropley in “Creativity in Education and Learning” (2001), the expected answer was “to use the barometer to measure the air pressure at ground level and at the top of the building, calculating the height of the building from the difference between the two.”
Bohr’s response to the question was to attach the barometer to a long string, and lower the barometer until it reached the ground. By measuring the length of the string and the height of the barometer, one could obviously get the height of the building. Not a wrong answer, but not the answer expected by the teacher. Bohr failed the exam. Upon Bohr’s appeal at the outcome, it was determined that although Bohr’s answer was not incorrect, it “showed no knowledge of physics”. Bohr was given a few minutes to demonstrate such knowledge.
Apart from giving the right answer expected by the teacher, Bohr gave other alternatives that demonstrate his knowledge of physics. One of the alternatives was to “throw the barometer off the roof and count the seconds until it hits the ground. Calculate the height of the building with the formula s=1/2at².” Another alternative was to “measure the length of the barometer and of its shadow and calculate the ratio of the two. Measure the length of the shadow of the building and multiply it by the same ratio.”
He even mentioned several other alternatives unrelated to physics. They include “climbing up the fire escape and marking off the height of the building in barometer lengths (using the barometer as yardstick)”, and “offering the janitor the barometer as a bribe to reveal the height of the building (using barometer as an object with monetary value)”! (Cropley, 2001.)
Other than being amusing, this story draws our attention to three issues. The first issue we would like to highlight is the type of education most of us went through: we were always expected to come up with one right answer determined by the teacher. None of Bohr’s responses were wrong per se, but only one met his teacher’s expectation of a predetermined answer. This issue shows how most of us become accustomed to coming up with the ‘right’ solution, thus directing our thinking to what is expected by others – be they our teachers and our parents (when we were young), our boss, or the society at large.
The second issue we would like to emphasis from Bohr’s example is that there are actually many right answers to a problem (even in a field as exact as physics!), but most of us are used to stopping at one solution. We limit ourselves by coming up with only one solution – we consider the solution we have thought of is the one right solution for the problem and stop exploring what perhaps could be more exciting possibilities.
The third issue we would like to underline is the fact that although Bohr knew how he was expected to respond to the problem, he challenged and entertained himself in finding what other possible solutions there were to solve the problem. In other words, he knowingly challenged the system of ‘one problem, one solution’ conventionally used in many schools.
Bohr’s inquisitive mind had enabled him to make fundamental contributions to human understanding of the atomic structure and quantum mechanics that won him the Nobel Prize for physics in 1922.
So we have seen how when it comes to thinking, external expectations, or rather, what we perceive as external expectations, can be very limiting. James L. Adams in “Conceptual Blockbusting” (2001) calls this as the “tendency to delimit the problem area poorly”, defined as our inclination to impose too many constraints upon solving the problems we are facing (p.25).
Going back to the examples at the beginning of this article, the most common answer to “what is half of 8?” is still 4, even when we are no longer in math class. The most common answer to “what is: O?” is still the letter O, the number 0, or the shape circle – answers that appeal again to what we know as the right answer back when we were in schools. The problem is, we are no longer in school.
In real life situations, no one actually gives us problems just for the sake of testing our ability. As such, no one has predetermined solutions for real life problems that have been handed out for us to solve. Yet, most of us are still confined by looking for ‘the one right answer’. So how do we challenge ourselves to find other possible solutions to a problem? How do we break away from conformist thinking?
The answer is to be aware of the limits that we are imposing on ourselves when finding solutions to a problem. Are they actually there? Outside of the school context, no one expects us to limit the answer to “what is: O?” to resemble a known letter, number, or shape. Once we realize this, we can move away from the expected answers and come up with answers like the steering wheel of a car, an eyeball, an unsharpened end of a pencil, etc.
So far, so good; but our responses are limited to the visual realm. Once we realize that we do not have to stop at one answer, we can think of more exciting possibilities, such as O as a sound. It’s the sound one makes when one finally realizes something, as in “Oh, I see.” It’s the sound people use in yoga (Om). It’s the sound of disbelief, as in “Oh no! What have you done!. Like Bohr, it takes courage to give unexpected answers, are you ready to break away?
In James L. Adam’s words, “limits are negotiable”. Expand your limits!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Choose to be Creative!
Who do you think are creative? Most people would probably think about Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Affandi, Basuki Abdullah, or some of the lesser-known artists they like. But are artists the only people who can be considered as creative? And does one have to be well-known to be labeled as creative?
Some time back, we were putting together a presentation to explain, among other things, that creativity isn’t “a gift doled out sparingly by the gods” (Ulrich Kraft, Scientific American Mind) and that creativity isn’t confined to the realms of the arts.
We set out to find examples of people who represent creative achievements in different fields. We listed Bill Gates as the creative businessman who envisioned the use of the personal computer in every house. Maria Montessori as the creative educator who thought that children should be allowed to handle and access real materials as means for learning. Andy Warhol as the creative artist who turned everyday things like Campbell’s soup cans into art.
Gandhi as the creative politician who insisted that independence could be gained without waging a war. Thomas Edison as the creative inventor who persisted until he reached a solution to his problems. Albert Einstein as the creative scientist who saw how the world operated in a new and radical way.
Only one artist among all the creative people.
We also listed Bono (U2’s lead singer) as the creative humanitarian. Granted, Bono’s reputation as a gifted singer and songwriter has earned him world-wide reputation and can be labeled creative in itself, but we listed him as the creative humanitarian because he used his reputation as a bargaining power to gain support for humanitarian causes.
What were the common traits of these creative people? They saw things that others didn’t (Gates, Warhol, Montessori), they imagined (Einstein, Gandhi, Gates), they were not afraid to stand out as different (Warhol, Gandhi), they had the courage to act on their ideas (Gandhi, Bono), and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed (Edison, Einstein).
Looking for eminent creative people from different fields was easy, but what about examples of creative people who are not our obvious creative type? When we set out to look for less eminent examples of creativity (or what the literature terms “everyday creativity”), we were enlightened indeed.
We found a scavenger who tugged excessive cartloads of rubbish by reining himself to the cart he was pulling, similar to the way human rein an ox or a horse (see picture). Why was the scavenger creative? Well, we figured that he had to solve the problem of “How to lug heavy loads around the streets of Jakarta?” in order to maximize his trips on foot. Horses and oxen can carry heavy loads. Most likely, the scavenger stretched his imagination from this piece of knowledge and used the same principle to help him pull his cart.
We found a man who sits in a corner on the street down the road from our office who sells pre-packed rice boxes. Maybe he couldn’t afford to knock up a kaki-lima but that didn’t stop him from selling food. He prepares the food at home. Seeing his problem from a different perspective, from “How to find money to knock up a kaki-lima?” to “How to sell food on the streets?”
We found Kayee’s domestic cook, Mery, who can whip up a meal no matter what scant ingredients are left in the fridge. She is able to deviate from the instructions from cookbooks, to substitute the ingredients that she doesn’t have, to combine recipes when she only has a bit of this and that, and to dare to test her employer’s palate. Kayee, being used to salad dressing being eaten straight out of the bottle, was shocked then pleasantly surprised when Mery actually used it to cook a meat sauce! Mery doesn’t do things just because books tell her to. She thinks. She looks for alternatives. She seeks possibilities.
Then there is Dewi’s dad who found he had freezing cold hands during a vacation to New Zealand. Rush out to buy gloves? That’s probably a solution that doesn’t challenge the creative mind enough. Dewi’s dad put maroon socks on his hands instead. Not afraid to stand out from the crowd, seeing socks in a new way and simply believing that there must be a solution with the resources he had. Persistent and optimistic in finding a solution.
We also found our colleague Petra, who managed to see through our array of work problems and summed it up in one sentence for us. During a series of team meetings, we explored issues that held back performance in the past year and concluded on a few issues. Examples include the communication gap between the different departments, people working on projects with different expectations and harbored feelings over time leading to compromised work relations.
Just as the team was about to embark on how to resolve these issues, Petra piped that the real problem was the lack of honest communication! True, if we had communicated honestly about how we feel about people, relationships and projects, most of our problems could have been ironed out on the go.
What were the common traits of these ‘everyday’ creative people? Again, they saw things that others didn’t, they imagined, they were not afraid to stand out as different, they had the courage to act on their ideas and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed in resolving their everyday problems.
Big problems or small problems. Solutions that impact the world or solutions that solve the small hiccups in your work or personal life. When we are faced with problems or challenges that we haven’t encountered before or that we have no known solutions for, if we are optimistic that a solution can be found, if we think, imagine, and take action, then surely we can find solution to the problem. That is what we call creativity.
If you think back now to some problems that you have faced, problems that you didn’t have known solutions for; how did you react? Did you forget about the problem? Did you leave it as a problem for someone else to solve? Did you tell yourself that nothing can be done about it? Or did you amuse yourself in finding a solution?
Based on how we define creativity, we believe that everyone can be creative. Based on how we define creativity, we also believe that creativity is a choice. In all the examples that we have given, perhaps except for the scavenger and the food seller (whom we think had no choice but to think up solutions for survival), people were faced with a problem or a challenge: the choice was theirs to make in how to react to the situation.
This availability of choice often prevents us from taking the creative route because it’s easier to opt for the alternative: don’t think about it and do nothing about it. However, we can assure you that by taking the creative route, your everyday living will be like walking out of a manhole in to a vast expanse - possibilities begin to open up.
Kayee’s favorite example of her own everyday creativity occured when a small object fell down the plug-hole in her bathroom basin. The object was too wide to retrieve with fingers or tweezers. Kayee’s solution was to use a ‘stick and retrieve’ strategy: turn a glue stick upside down, stick it onto the object and pull the object up. Not quite the same as winning a Nobel Prize, but the feeling of solving the problem made her day.
Dewi’s favorite example of everyday creativity is exemplified by a group of children, Tiffani, Matthew, Kenzie and Patrick, who like to play in our studio. Led by the eight-year old Tiffani, every week they come up with new games. In the past few weeks, they have worked on an idea to create a new kind of pen. Their first pass was to put ink inside a straw that was covered with cloth on one end. It didn’t work too well as the diameter of the straw was too small for the ink not to spill all over.
Their second pass was to use a cut-up hose with cloth cover on one end. This one worked better as they could fill the pen without spilling any ink, but the cloth was too porous and the ink ran really fast. Their next passes were a set of experimentations with the type of cloths to use, trying to figure out which ones work better for making what kind of mark. Their last attempt as of a week ago was to put cloth on both ends of the hose, making a pen with double end. They even came up with a name for it: lipstick pen.
As our motto goes: Dare to think. Dare to imagine. Dare to persist. That is what we call creativity.
Some time back, we were putting together a presentation to explain, among other things, that creativity isn’t “a gift doled out sparingly by the gods” (Ulrich Kraft, Scientific American Mind) and that creativity isn’t confined to the realms of the arts.
We set out to find examples of people who represent creative achievements in different fields. We listed Bill Gates as the creative businessman who envisioned the use of the personal computer in every house. Maria Montessori as the creative educator who thought that children should be allowed to handle and access real materials as means for learning. Andy Warhol as the creative artist who turned everyday things like Campbell’s soup cans into art.
Gandhi as the creative politician who insisted that independence could be gained without waging a war. Thomas Edison as the creative inventor who persisted until he reached a solution to his problems. Albert Einstein as the creative scientist who saw how the world operated in a new and radical way.
Only one artist among all the creative people.
We also listed Bono (U2’s lead singer) as the creative humanitarian. Granted, Bono’s reputation as a gifted singer and songwriter has earned him world-wide reputation and can be labeled creative in itself, but we listed him as the creative humanitarian because he used his reputation as a bargaining power to gain support for humanitarian causes.
What were the common traits of these creative people? They saw things that others didn’t (Gates, Warhol, Montessori), they imagined (Einstein, Gandhi, Gates), they were not afraid to stand out as different (Warhol, Gandhi), they had the courage to act on their ideas (Gandhi, Bono), and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed (Edison, Einstein).
Looking for eminent creative people from different fields was easy, but what about examples of creative people who are not our obvious creative type? When we set out to look for less eminent examples of creativity (or what the literature terms “everyday creativity”), we were enlightened indeed.
We found a scavenger who tugged excessive cartloads of rubbish by reining himself to the cart he was pulling, similar to the way human rein an ox or a horse (see picture). Why was the scavenger creative? Well, we figured that he had to solve the problem of “How to lug heavy loads around the streets of Jakarta?” in order to maximize his trips on foot. Horses and oxen can carry heavy loads. Most likely, the scavenger stretched his imagination from this piece of knowledge and used the same principle to help him pull his cart.
We found a man who sits in a corner on the street down the road from our office who sells pre-packed rice boxes. Maybe he couldn’t afford to knock up a kaki-lima but that didn’t stop him from selling food. He prepares the food at home. Seeing his problem from a different perspective, from “How to find money to knock up a kaki-lima?” to “How to sell food on the streets?”
We found Kayee’s domestic cook, Mery, who can whip up a meal no matter what scant ingredients are left in the fridge. She is able to deviate from the instructions from cookbooks, to substitute the ingredients that she doesn’t have, to combine recipes when she only has a bit of this and that, and to dare to test her employer’s palate. Kayee, being used to salad dressing being eaten straight out of the bottle, was shocked then pleasantly surprised when Mery actually used it to cook a meat sauce! Mery doesn’t do things just because books tell her to. She thinks. She looks for alternatives. She seeks possibilities.
Then there is Dewi’s dad who found he had freezing cold hands during a vacation to New Zealand. Rush out to buy gloves? That’s probably a solution that doesn’t challenge the creative mind enough. Dewi’s dad put maroon socks on his hands instead. Not afraid to stand out from the crowd, seeing socks in a new way and simply believing that there must be a solution with the resources he had. Persistent and optimistic in finding a solution.
We also found our colleague Petra, who managed to see through our array of work problems and summed it up in one sentence for us. During a series of team meetings, we explored issues that held back performance in the past year and concluded on a few issues. Examples include the communication gap between the different departments, people working on projects with different expectations and harbored feelings over time leading to compromised work relations.
Just as the team was about to embark on how to resolve these issues, Petra piped that the real problem was the lack of honest communication! True, if we had communicated honestly about how we feel about people, relationships and projects, most of our problems could have been ironed out on the go.
What were the common traits of these ‘everyday’ creative people? Again, they saw things that others didn’t, they imagined, they were not afraid to stand out as different, they had the courage to act on their ideas and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed in resolving their everyday problems.
Big problems or small problems. Solutions that impact the world or solutions that solve the small hiccups in your work or personal life. When we are faced with problems or challenges that we haven’t encountered before or that we have no known solutions for, if we are optimistic that a solution can be found, if we think, imagine, and take action, then surely we can find solution to the problem. That is what we call creativity.
If you think back now to some problems that you have faced, problems that you didn’t have known solutions for; how did you react? Did you forget about the problem? Did you leave it as a problem for someone else to solve? Did you tell yourself that nothing can be done about it? Or did you amuse yourself in finding a solution?
Based on how we define creativity, we believe that everyone can be creative. Based on how we define creativity, we also believe that creativity is a choice. In all the examples that we have given, perhaps except for the scavenger and the food seller (whom we think had no choice but to think up solutions for survival), people were faced with a problem or a challenge: the choice was theirs to make in how to react to the situation.
This availability of choice often prevents us from taking the creative route because it’s easier to opt for the alternative: don’t think about it and do nothing about it. However, we can assure you that by taking the creative route, your everyday living will be like walking out of a manhole in to a vast expanse - possibilities begin to open up.
Kayee’s favorite example of her own everyday creativity occured when a small object fell down the plug-hole in her bathroom basin. The object was too wide to retrieve with fingers or tweezers. Kayee’s solution was to use a ‘stick and retrieve’ strategy: turn a glue stick upside down, stick it onto the object and pull the object up. Not quite the same as winning a Nobel Prize, but the feeling of solving the problem made her day.
Dewi’s favorite example of everyday creativity is exemplified by a group of children, Tiffani, Matthew, Kenzie and Patrick, who like to play in our studio. Led by the eight-year old Tiffani, every week they come up with new games. In the past few weeks, they have worked on an idea to create a new kind of pen. Their first pass was to put ink inside a straw that was covered with cloth on one end. It didn’t work too well as the diameter of the straw was too small for the ink not to spill all over.
Their second pass was to use a cut-up hose with cloth cover on one end. This one worked better as they could fill the pen without spilling any ink, but the cloth was too porous and the ink ran really fast. Their next passes were a set of experimentations with the type of cloths to use, trying to figure out which ones work better for making what kind of mark. Their last attempt as of a week ago was to put cloth on both ends of the hose, making a pen with double end. They even came up with a name for it: lipstick pen.
As our motto goes: Dare to think. Dare to imagine. Dare to persist. That is what we call creativity.
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