Category Archives: Generating Ideas

Method Monoculture in Science

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: (1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long. (2) All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it.
Sir Arthur Eddington

I was also talking to scientists from very different disciplines today (pedagogy, computer science, philosophy, psychology, biology, …). I realized again how much I love interdisciplinary knowledge exchange despite the challenges: The stimulation, the different methods, perspectives, aims and success criteria. It shows you your own expertise (which is often invisible if you work and improve among peers) — and your strengths and weaknesses. The experiment might be the “royal road” to knowledge (in psychology!), but we are often blind that this “royal road” might not allow you to see the whole landscape. And “royalty” has its dark sides — incest, madness, and narrow-mindedness, rarely beneficial to progress.

Thus I can highly recommend interdisciplinary exchange — whether in formal interdisciplinary projects, or more informal in teaching courses or privately organized conferences (e.g., the MinD-Akademie [German, a student organized meeting under a specific topic, but open to students and scientists from all disciplines]).

Praxis — What is it good for?

“But what … is it good for?”
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM in 1968, commenting on the microchip

Talking to very different scientists today, I was remembered of an image I saw in my mind some time ago. That there are scientists who are content (and successful) by standing on an island of theory, counting grains of sand. They see the ocean of praxis as unforgiving, often tempestuous, full of unknown and possibly dangerous creatures, and with a deep and slick bottom. Occasionally they dip their big toe into the water, but the second something touches their foot, they retreat and bury their toe into the warm sand. If forced, they do swimming motions on the shore and theorize about praxis, but they refuse to dive into the water.

Of course, if you try to swim, you might get lost, injured, or even drown. But you can also reach interesting shores and discover new lands — strange, new places not directly connected to the one you came from.

I wonder, is this view correct? Does praxis pose challenges that help scientists to move forward? Or are there scientists who should avoid the praxis, because it distorts or obfuscates? Is it different for (sub-)disciplines? For stages in research? For stages in knowing?

Make sure you can do your To-Dos within any given day

Well, unlooking the secrets of the brain took a lot longer than I expected.
Lewis Robinson in “Meet the Robinsons”

One important advice regarding “to do” lists is that whatever you put on it, you should be able to do it in relatively short time. About 30 minutes. Otherwise, it’s not a todo-list, it’s a reminder. There is nothing wrong with reminders, but they serve a different function.

For example, imagine a todo like “read literature about topic x” or “grade essays in course y” — that’s a reminder. It is unlikely that you can do it in a day and it will stay on your todo list at the end of the day — very discouraging.

On the other hand, suppose there’s a todo like “read Goodwin, 2006″, or “grade essay: Miller” and “grade essay: Jenkins”. That’s a todo, providing Goodwin is short enough to be read within a normal work day.

Todos, whether you keep them on paper or in OmniFocus or Things, should be something you can do. There should be a lot of movement in your todos and at the end of the day, you should have done our todos for today.

So, never put something on your todo list that you cannot do in the given day — keep a separate reminder list for that and use your todo list only for your todos.

Stack Exchange — A great place to get answers to questions

“There are Lupines out there.”
“This may sound like a really stupid question, but is this a problem?”
“Considering they want to kill us, um, YES!”
MacGregor and Jonathan

stackexchangeA few different people recommended Stack Exchange recently. It is a very interesting “network of 82 question and answer sites” (including cooking, statistics, photography, and yes, also personal productivity). What makes it different from typical FAQ sites and forums is that it is community driven, allows you to edit your questions (and answers), and it uses voting to get the most helpful/best answers to the top. Very useful to quickly get a good answer to a question that bugs you — I used the predecessor site StackOverflow to solve programming questions and opening up this principle to different topics when enough experts are available is a really great idea.

So, if you are learning something (or if you have acquired substantial knowledge and want to contribute), I highly recommend Stack Exchange.

That part apart

“Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I’d fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, ‘So this is how it feels,’ and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own.”
William Shakespeare in Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman” (1996) (from Wikiquote)

Creative people are often chided as living “in their heads”, yet, as aptly put in the quote above. However, I think that a part of them is always apart from themselves, yet watching the world (including the one inside their heads) intensively. There is some kind of meta-process that is always running in the background, and that is pointing out interesting things. It is similar to metacognition (thinking about thinking), but also unconscious at times. This part apart watches, observes, makes notes, makes connections, and sees new things appear out of the old. It might even point out things about other people’s creative works, e.g., why a book managed to have the effect is has on you, how the author managed to build a huge story with only a few pages, what he did tell in a chapter, what he referred to, and what he only implied.

It does not seem like an ingredient for a happy life, it can spoil some situations. Personally, I find it hard to stop this background process, and only a few things like sleep, sex, (legal) drugs, or some kinds of music can stop it — for a moment. In this moment it becomes possible to live in the moment, until a part takes this observer role again. And I do not want to stop it too often, it provides a very useful perspective.

What do you think — is this something that creative people must have? All creative people, or only a selected subgroup? And are there other ways to be creative?

‘Unleashing’ Creativity

I never did anything worth doing by accident; nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
Thomas Alva Edison

I got an interesting comment today:

pls provide tips for unleashing creativity

It has always been my position in this blog that ideas ‘just come’ when you spend time working on a topic, and that the main problem is not getting ideas but getting good ideas that you realize. Organizing Creativity is all about that and as succinctly put in this poster, I believe it is not only possible but needed to achieve great works.

But what if you do not get ideas automatically? A colleague of mine once told me that he thinks that great artists recognize when something either is interesting from an artistic point of view or has the potential to be interesting. A musician who is inspired by some sounds in his environment for a great tune or a photographer who suddenly stops because he sees a great motif would be perfect examples. These people can benefit hugely by organizing their finds. But if you do not belong to these people — what do you do then?

Frankly, good question, I have no idea. I have included creativity techniques. You find them in the HTML version of the first book, or in its PDF, and they are also in the draft version of the second book. But whereas I think that these ‘techniques’ can give you ‘an excuse’ to spend time ‘just thinking’ about a problem, I also think that they are totally useless unless you really, really know the subject.

Heinlein coined the acronym TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). This is also true for creativity. You can’t imagine it as a wild dog that you simply ‘unleash’ and that will do the work for you. You have to work yourself first, to get the materials to work with, and afterwards, to implement the ideas you had.

Recommendation: How to Read a Book

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke

I stumbled upon a short text by Paul N. Edwards (School of Information University of Michigan): How to Read a Book (v4.0). It’s a quick and interesting read, although (as the author stresses) the implementation of theses recommendations will take a while. It is also very interesting for people who want to design a good reader, for iPads, Kindle or — I don’t know, for a reference manager (like Papers that could really need a good reader, Sente that has some interesting features but could improve, etc.). Seriously, it gives you the requirements on a silver platter. :-)

BTW, read past the table, the detailed (but still pleasantly short) explanations are more comprehensible.

Highly Recommended — Edwards, P. N. (2008?). How to Read a Book.

Poster: How to Organize Your Creativity?

I have translated the poster I did for the MinD-Akademie 2011 in English. I love it — it shows on one (very large) page the whole concept that I try to convey with “Organizing Creativity”. If you prefer it in German find the German version here.

I will probably do a similar version for the second version of the Organizing Creativity Book (still working on it) and use it as navigation help for the Organizing Creativity Wiki (likewise still working on it). But until both are ready, have fun with this poster (note: due to the size — DIN A0 — it is about 7 MB).

oc-poster-englishThe poster shows the different steps that are necessary in organizing creativity. While the process goes top down (yellow arrow in the horizontal center), each step is also another occupation with the topic (yellow arrows upwards to occupation with the topic), which leads to further ideas. I have left the footer for the moment — in case you are wondering it translates as “MinD-Academy 2011 — Future and Research”.

The Future of Your Research: How to organize (a) scientific work?

To put it differently: You are highly qualified people who should not be wasted in the wrong job. You are ambitious, in the sense that you want to accomplish something, be advanced, move forward. Choose the right environment if you can. PhD positions are qualification positions — it is not sufficient that you do your work well, the work must also allow you to move forward and improve/qualify yourself.
Presenter Note from “The Future of Your Research — How to organize a scientific work?”

I’ve finally translated the presentation I did at the MinD-Akademie 2011 regarding “The Future of Your Research — How to organize a scientific work?”. The slides include the presenter notes, which in turn include the script. It’s not my best translation work, so don’t be surprise to see a lot of “broken English” — but at least it’s readable, I think.

Note that due to copyright constraints, I cannot show the pictures I did show in the presentation. I have replaced these images with grayed out placeholders and an image description in square brackets.

mind-akademie-2011-english-grayed-out-picturesClick on the slides to see the presentation as PDF (about 5 MB).

If you have further points that should be included in a presentation like this, I’d appreciate a comment. :-) The recommended literature is also shown here as a separate posting.

Presentation: How to Organize a Scientific Work [German]

Kurz gesagt: Ihr seid hochqualifizierte Leute, die man nicht auf der falschen Stelle verschwenden sollte. Ihr seid ehrgeizig, im Sinne von ihr wollt etwas erreichen, gefördert werden, weiter kommen. Sucht euch das passende Umfeld genau aus wenn ihr könnt. Promotionsstellen sind Qualifikationsstellen — es reicht nicht, dass ihr die Arbeit für die Stelle gut macht, die Arbeit auf der Stelle muss euch weiterbringen und euch selbst weiter qualifizieren.
Vortragsnotiz aus “Die Zukunft deiner Forschung — Wie organisiert man eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit?”

Note: The following presentation (PDF with Notes, which contains the script) is about ways to organize a scientific work. I did this presentation at the MinD-Akademie 2011 in Hannover and thus it is in German. It was my best presentation ever. Loved the audience :-) . Regarding an English version, I’ll be doing a translation soon. [Update: Translation is online in this posting.]

mind-akademie-2011-vortrag-graubilder-mit-skript-cover-2Auf das Bild klicken um die PDF angezeigt zu bekommen (ca. 5 MB). Ein Teil der Bilder in der Präsentation sind ausgegraut, weil ich leider nicht das Copyright für diese Bilder besitze. Das mindert die Qualität der Präsentation, auch wenn sie nur zur Illustration eingesetzt wurden. Auf der anderen Seite sind alle wichtigen Informationen in den Notizen vorhanden. Das Design der Folien beruht zum einen auf ein Template von Apple’s Keynote (Cover), wobei die Seiten von den Aperture/iPhoto Photobüchern inspiriert sind. Die Angaben zur empfohlenen Literatur ist hier als eigener Eintrag verfügbar.