13
The second wall: common sense
To start with, pushing out the wall of common sense requires the insight that the first solution is not always the best. On the contrary, the rule of thumb is that it is never the best. In order to focus your attention on common sense, you should ask yourself questions of the type: ‘Could anyone have thought of this idea?’ If the answer is yes, then the solution is not a creative result, because someone has probably thought of it already, in which case your solution is neither unique nor meaningful.
Let us start with an exercise that probably feels familiar. Join the dots in Figure 13.1 with a minimum number of lines.
It is a fairly safe guess that you joined the dots with four lines in the form of an arrow, in the way that was shown on page 62. At best you remembered the solution and drew it from memory. At worst you looked back to Chapter 6 in order to reproduce the solution. In both cases, you have provided evidence of how we are inhibited by common sense, as this tells us that there is a certain given solution. Mental activity is therefore focused on finding the given solution as quickly as possible. It is implied by the expression itself, ‘common sense’, that the solution should be found quickly: ‘It must be like this, you can figure it out using common sense without complicating things.’
The first answer is often the right one, and the spontaneous thought as a rule is the best. These are two classic thought tunnels. The brain has its own rewards system, so that we do not overstrain ourselves unnecessarily. From my own research, as well as a number of other studies, it is clear that the earlier a possible solution enters their heads, the better people like it and the greater the probability that they will choose it. This rewards process is repeated in almost everything we do (we will return to this in the next part of the book) and has an enormously powerful effect on our thinking. The first thought becomes the obvious thought and becomes the logical thought. It is common sense.
But there are two problems with the thought tunnel. In the first place, we established earlier in Part III (Expanding the Box) that innovations that are too easy to produce are not perceived as particularly meaningful in the market. This is partly due to the fact that the innovation is in all likelihood not very unique; many others have thought of the same sort of solution, as it is within such easy reach. It is also partly due to people thinking that the innovation must have been so easy to think of that if it has not been on the market before now, it is probably not worth having. In the second place, the thought tunnel equates logic with one solution, roughly as in the description of the IQ test in the section on shaking the box in Chapter 10, where it was a matter of finding the appropriate pieces of the puzzle. Creativity is about using several pieces, without for that matter compromising logic. In the previous chapter we saw that there are a string of highly logical solutions to the physics problem of determining the height of a building with the use of a barometer.
Just as we are inhibited and tied down by the first solution we think of, we are limited by external solutions. This is why it is sometimes said that knowledge is inhibiting. We established earlier that this is because the box is too small, so that the pieces of the puzzle cannot be shaken about properly. Now we know that it is the wall of common sense that makes the box too small. In an American experiment, two groups of people were asked to build bridges with building blocks. The first group initially observed some people building other sorts of buildings using a variety of methods, whereas the second group did not see a demonstration before setting to work. Although the experiment was performed a number of times with different people and group compositions, the result was always the same. In the first group, 9 out of 10 bridges were built using one of the methods that had been observed before the start and, on average, less than two different methods were used for the work. The second group used, instead, an average of 10 different methods. While the first group did not see any need to use or develop any more methods – they already had the correct solution – the second group was not limited by anything that set their common sense in motion. As a final parenthesis, it is worth mentioning that the reason so many solutions were in fact reached was that the subjects were working in a group. A single individual would quickly have locked on to one ‘logical’ alternative.
To start with, pushing out the wall of common sense requires an insight that the first solution is not always the best. On the contrary, the rule of thumb is that it is never the best (for reasons we have dealt with earlier). The second requirement is an understanding that there are always several correct solutions to the same problem. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it is necessary to be aware of the fact that two contradictory solutions can be equally logical, and have the ability to express all solutions in logical terms. Humans have a great need to be logical, which is one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to mass-produce solutions: they do not seem very logical.
The lack of an equals sign between creativity and logic in many people's minds is a strong contributory factor to the under-use of the vast flora of books on creativity and creativity exercises in companies and business contexts. The purpose of Parts I and II in this book is to place an equals sign in your mind between creativity and logic: it is logical to be creative because you become a more successful business innovator. The exercises that follow in this chapter are also meant to illustrate how you can apply several parallel logics to the same problem, and four logical solutions must surely add up to more logic than a single logical solution. That is logic.
Before we start on the exercises, it may be worth keeping the following general recommendations in mind. In order to focus your attention and identify common sense thinking, you should ask yourself questions of the type: ‘Could just anyone have come up with this idea?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ then the solution is not a creative result, because someone has probably thought of it already, in which case your solution is neither unique nor meaningful. Also ask yourself whether you like your solution because it entered your head so quickly (it may not be the whole truth, but is in fact always a part of the truth) and challenge yourself by thinking: ‘Wouldn't a contradictory solution be just as logical?’
Man with bow-tie stuck in the elevator
Unfortunately you cannot do this exercise on your own, because it involves comparing people's results under two different sets of conditions. Both people and groups are shown the diagram in Figure 13.2. The instructions in both cases are: Explain what the picture represents! That is all the information given to the first person or group, whereas the second person or group is also told: You can for example write ‘man with bow-tie who has got stuck in the elevator’. Then let them list explanations for one or two minutes.
In all probability those who have only been instructed to explain what the picture represents will list more solutions than those who were given the example ‘man with bow-tie who was got stuck in the elevator’. When I have conducted this exercise with groups, the first group usually lists an average of about nine solutions, while the second group gets stuck around an average of five solutions. The first group also has more widely varying solutions (everything from ‘a foghorn on a pole seen from the side’ to ‘beak of an albino penguin looking at itself in a mirror’) while the other group's solutions are usually variations on the same theme (‘girl with rosette stuck in an elevator’, ‘boy with bow-tie hiding in a cupboard’).
The exercise is an effective eye-opener about common sense and our capacity to get stuck on a given solution. The first solution tends to become obvious and thus limit further thought by functioning as a yardstick that makes other solutions and ideas seem illogical.
The exercise teaches us, firstly, that it can be dangerous to give instructions and examples when introducing people to a task because you lock them in and reduce their capacity to take advantage of their own thoughts. Secondly, it teaches us that it can be a good idea to throw out a solution as quickly as possible (however crude it may be, and it might even be a good thing if it is obviously crude) and then move on without getting stuck in common sense. Thirdly, it implies that it can be a good thing to formulate some solutions yourself when you take on a new task, before turning to a possible ‘key’ in the form of a book of instructions or asking someone how it is usually done. In this way, you acquire a counterweight to taking conventions for granted.
The ‘key’ may be better than your own solutions. However, by trying to use your own angles as a starting point, you can more easily liberate yourself from the ‘key’ and increase your chances of making big or small changes to the key's solutions.
The rope round the Earth
Imagine that you encircle the whole Earth with a long rope. The rope is just long enough to go round if it runs along the ground. You think that the rope is rubbing a bit too much on the ground and are worried that it might break. To reduce friction and provide a bit of slack, you lengthen the rope with a piece of string 3 metres long. To stop the rope rubbing, you now lift the rope from the ground, evenly along its entire length (in itself a little test of your imagination, how to lift the whole rope simultaneously). How far above the ground do you think the rope will be? Think about it a bit before you look at the answer below.
The right answer is that the rope will be about half a metre from the ground. Did you get the right answer? Most people usually guess that the height will be about a millimetre, or even a fraction of a millimetre. The reason is, of course, that we are limited by common sense. Common sense tells us that 3 metres of extra rope must make a very slight difference in relation to the circumference of the earth, which is 40000 kilometres. But let us use the formula for the circumference of a circle (which is the form of the rope encircling the earth). The rope's length is the same as the circumference (C):
C = 2πr
where π is the constant 3.14 and r is the radius and the increase of the radius is equal to the distance of the rope from the ground. If we extract r from the equation we get:
When C increases by 3 metres, r = (C + 3)/6 and the actual increase is therefore:
The answer is mathematically logical and correct. But it is contrary to common sense! The first thing we learn from this is that you cannot trust your common sense: it is wrong. Secondly, the exercise teaches that logic and common sense are not the same thing. Common sense says ‘about a millimetre’ but the logical answer is ‘half a metre’. The exercise is useful if you want to prove to yourself or someone else that common sense can lead in completely the wrong direction: ‘What was that about the rope round the Earth?’
The tennis tournament
You must arrange a tennis tournament with 56 participants. The owner of the courts wants to know how many matches you want to book in. How many matches do you need in total for the whole tournament, including the final, semi-finals, quarter finals and so on? Think about it for a minute and write down your answer.
The correct answer is that you need to book 55 matches. Did you get it right? Most people make a rough estimate of how many rounds need to be played and the number of players, and guess too highly. Some people go through the wearisome task of dividing the number of players per round and adding up the answers. This gives the correct answer, but takes a long time. You can in fact arrive at the answer 55 matches in a flash by reversing the logic and thinking that at the end there is only one winner. This makes the rest of the players losers. Since every match has a loser and there are going to be 55 losers, this means 55 matches all in all.
This exercise is a good complement to the previous one about the rope round the earth. In the previous exercise we opened our eyes to the fact that common sense has a tendency to incorrectly simplify problems (‘it is obvious’) and lead you in the wrong direction. This exercise opens our eyes to the fact that common sense also has a tendency to falsely complicate things and lead you in the wrong direction for that reason.
The point is that we almost always have a ‘right and proper’ method for solving a task – common sense tells us to do it like that whether it is simple or complicated. So we start at once solving the problem without realizing that we are very often working in completely the wrong direction.
The letters
Below are the first letters of the alphabet. Some of them are placed above the line, and some below. Write a few of the next letters of the alphabet above or below the line, placing them logically.
How did you continue the series? Probably in one or more of the following ways. The solutions below are those that most often enter people's heads, but the number of solutions is unlimited.
The first solution is the simplest and follows the logical rule of continuing to alternate the number of letters symmetrically, above the line one letter is followed by two, which are followed by one and so on. Below the line three letters are followed by one which is then followed by three. The second solution obeys a mathematical rule: the number of letters above the line is doubled every time (1, 2, 4). The number of letters below the line is equal to the number of letters above the line multiplied by three (3 × 1, 3 × 2, 3 × 4). In the third solution the number of letters above the line increases by one (1, 2, 3) and the number of letters below the line is the sum of the number of letters above the line immediately before and immediately after (1 + 2, 2 + 3, 3 + 4). The fourth solution is based on shape, and orders the letters according to the logical rule that the letters containing only straight lines go above the line, and the letters with curves go below it. The fifth solution is based on pronunciation and follows the rule that the letters above the line begin with a vowel (‘a’, ‘e’, ‘eff’, ‘i’, and so on) and those below the line begin with a consonant (‘be’, ‘ce’, ‘de’, ‘ge’, and so on). In the same way the sixth solution sorts the letters according to the rule that soft letters are above the line and hard letters are below it.
This exercise illustrates the fact that there are many parallel solutions to a problem that are all equally logical. The insight that one can be perfectly logical and correct in a number of different ways comes as a real surprise to many people. Common sense usually asserts that there is one correct solution, and that is why it is so limiting for our thought processes. Because humans want to be logical, we hesitate to seek more solutions when we have found one that is logical. We then assume that any other solutions we come up with will only be ‘concocted or woolly’.
The exercise shows that one can discover a large number of logical solutions. In this way, it increases our inclination to think further and explore new solutions because we realize that we can be even more logical. Just as we said earlier in the chapter, several logics should add up to more than one single logic. The letters act as a good metaphor for motivating oneself to discover more and more logical solutions: ‘How can I order the letters in a cleverer way?’
The dots
We will now once and for all get to the bottom of the problem of joining the dots with straight lines. Common sense tells us that it can be done with four lines. Your task in Figure 13.3 is to join them with only three lines.
You will find the solution in Figure 13.4. The trick is to break the unconscious rule that the line must go straight through every dot, when it is in fact enough if it only touches every dot. This, combined with the insight that you can draw the lines far beyond the area between the dots (‘the invisible box’) makes the solution simple.
Now think some more about how you could connect the dots with only one straight line and see how many solutions you can come up with.
In fact there are many ways to join the dots with a single straight line. One solution is to use a very broad-nibbed pen or a paint-brush and draw a thick line over all the dots. A variant of this solution is to reduce the size of the dots in a photocopier until they are small enough to be covered by the stroke of an ordinary pen. Another solution is to fold the paper into a tube so that the edges meet and then draw a line at a slight angle through the first row of dots (in the same way as in the solution with three lines) so that after one revolution of the paper tube the line comes level with the second row of dots, and after another revolution with the third.
The solution can be varied in many different ways by breaking the unconscious rule that the line always has to stay on the paper. In the most extreme case you can draw the line right round the circumference of the earth and come back level with the dots on the second row. Or draw a line along the table, continue underneath the table and then up onto the other side of the tabletop back to the paper. Or put the paper on the surface of a ball and draw the line round it twice.
A third solution is to move the dots closer to each other so that it is possible to draw a line through all of them at the same time. The paper can be folded in many different ways, for example into a fan or a fortune teller (the origami kind you made as a child with names or questions on it) so that parts of all the dots (we have already said that it is enough if the line touches some part of every dot) meet at three points on the fan or at one point in the fortune teller. You could also fold the paper so that the dots are aligned beneath each other and stick the pencil through them in a very short line. (With a little more violence, you could simply fold the paper directly over the pencil so that it punches holes through the dots one after the other.) A fourth solution is to tear the paper, for example into three strips (one strip for every row of dots) which you then line up in a row and draw a line through. A variant of this is to tear or cut out every dot and then thread them over the pencil.
A fifth solution is of a more philosophical nature. If you enlarge the line or one of the dots to an enormous size it will have such a large mass that it will bend both space and time (ask Einstein). The huge line will attract all the dots, and the huge dot would attract the line and the other dots. You can also do the opposite and let the strange laws of quantum physics do their work. If the line is reduced to a minimum size, it will move through all the dots at the same time (ask Murray Gell-Mann)!
After training themselves to break rules and conventions, my students have started to produce ever weirder solutions, such as burning the paper with the dots, collecting the ash on the table with a credit card, rolling a bank note and snorting a line.
The solutions that we have looked at more closely are only a selection of all the ways in which it is possible to connect the nine dots with a single straight line. The exercise is the perfect way to practise breaking away from common sense. There is no end to the solutions, none of them is the ‘right’ one or the last. For this very reason it is suitable for use over a longer period of time, where you try again and again to solve the problem and find new solutions. It is an excellent warm-up exercise for creative work – an exercise that is never solved and never comes to an end. The exercise is also an excellent illustration of how we get stuck in conventions and rules. Several of the solutions above require you to break invisible rules such as only drawing on the paper and not changing the paper's shape.