Dave Pollard offers “twelve methods that will exercise parts of your brain that rarely get it, and make you more creative and better able to understand the world.” Among them:
Analogies and Metaphors: “Science is Metaphor” said Timothy Leary. Analogies and metaphors allow you to ‘re-see’ something abstract as something concrete, something conceptual as perceptual. Lakoff points out that “We cannot think just anything – only what our embodied brains permit”, and analogies and metaphors permit us to think things we probably otherwise couldn’t. My recent “If the Shoe Were On the Other Foot” article was an example of this. Conversations and Interviews: A wonderful enabler for thinking differently is the shared context that comes from conversations and interviews. Several of my most popular articles have been conversations with myself or with other people, because they help people understand my thought process much better than analytical discourse. Like everything natural, they are inefficient but extremely effective. Interviews work the same way. Face-to-face and recorded conversations and interviews, if they are natural and probing and improvisational, are even better, because you learn more of the participants’ worldview from the vocal nuances and body language. Learning Something Outside Your Comfort Zone: If you’re an artist, learn about String Theory. If you’re a scientist, learn about the aesthetics of music. The more novel and uncomfortable and strange it is, the more it will liberate your calcified brain.
