Ask & Answer Information Online

Daydreaming your way to performance and profits.

Like many of my clients, I am always looking for ways to speed things up - to produce more results with the same or even fewer resources. We probably agree on this. The key is certainly not about working harder; it may not even be about working smarter. But there are definitely ideas which work, and those ideas need to be uncovered. Often you can find them through analytical thinking. In my last article I discussed this: a process of asking deliberate questions, and in a disciplined, even rigorous way, coming up with answers. Asking and answering, that’s the analytical thinking process. Do it enough and you will likely come up with something useful.

But there is a whole other process, a “something” that goes on in the mind. Many people call it intuition. Others call it “gut feel,” or “tapping the universal spirit.” In contrast to rational, linear left-brain thinking, it is sometimes called “right-brain” thinking, synthetic, or holistic thinking. I’m going to call it unconscious thinking. What I mean by this cumbersome phrase is that this kind of ideation is based on removing the linear, rational, questioning, conscious thinker from the equation, and tapping into the results when they come.

How do you do that? Everybody has their favorite way. Several people, responding to my last article’s caveat that I was not referring to the thinking that goes on in the shower, wrote that their best ideas occur in the shower. For others, unconscious thinking occurs while driving their car. Or working out in the gym, riding a bike, or jogging. Gardening seems to be a hot spot for hot ideas. And sybarites I know report getting great ideas while being massaged and sipping wine in the hot tub.

Some people put themselves in a trance state via meditation or actively listening to music. Others go into a trance watching TV. I get great ideas when I’m at the movies. (Curiously, it doesn’t work while watching a movie on videotape — I think the level of concentration is too low — which may be a key to the way these processes work. For the car people, it only works while driving — not as a passenger. The logic behind this is similar.)

What is this spontaneous generation of unconscious ideas? I must confess that, really, I have no idea. But I do know how to make it happen. Spontaneously. The key is to loosen the grip of consciousness on the mind, and get the logical, linear, Q&A thinking process out of the way.

Spontaneous generation comes in two basic flavors –fortuitous and deliberate, both of them “unconscious”. An example of the fortuitous kind is what happens when you are driving your car, and an incredibly useful thought just “comes” to you. If you are not prepared, you are likely to lose it as quickly as it came. On the other hand, if you keep a voice recorder or notepad handy, you can capture this potential gem. Plus, being prepared to capture these “fortuitous” intuitive pearls, seems to be a very important part of having them more often.

An example of the deliberate version is when, upon retiring for the evening, you tell yourself (with feeling and conviction) you want to dream the solution to a particular problem. If you get lucky (back to fortuitous), you will. If you do this repeatedly — program yourself with a problem — you will start to dream solutions regularly.

Analytical types may scoff at this “telling yourself” bit. But recent research in cognitive science indicates a possible model for the mind as a series of unconnected agents, each with its own limited function set. Some of these agents may be linked by well-worn pathways. Others, however, have never communicated, and as yet have no way to do so. “Telling yourself” what you want to think about has the effect of sending a broadcast signal throughout the agent population, which may enlist them in your unconscious thinking process.

Whether by happenstance or intention, the available techniques, if you can call taking a shower a technique, are interchangeable. The only difference is whether you set out to generate a specific idea or whether random ideas comes unbidden.

Two habits will make unconscious thinking work more effectively for you. First, prepare your environment to capture ideas as they come. I put 3×5 note cards and pens everywhere — in my car, my night-table, the medicine cabinet, next to my favorite reading chair, my suit pockets, gym bag, even my under-the-seat bike storage pocket — just about everywhere I am, I can find a note card. Plus, I carry a voice recorder in my briefcase. The new one has a digital interface to my computer and transcribes notes automatically.

The second habit is to deliberately plant seeds of ideas in my unconscious mind. I regularly “re-mind” myself of the areas where I could use a creative flash. For instance, if I am working on a book chapter or an article, or if I need a new solution for a client’s business problem, I put that into my mental hopper and let it sit. Often ideas come to me, and if I am prepared to capture them — voila!

So — what are some ways to stimulate unconscious thinking?

We’ve mentioned a number already. One way to stimulate unconscious thinking is to engage in physical exercise. Jogging, swimming, biking, hiking, weight-lifting — all of these activities are great for idea generation. The key is they are all sort of mindless - not requiring much detailed thought. This may seem paradoxical — if you are trying to shut down your conscious mind, wouldn’t you want to distract it with a conscious thought process? No — it seems you want to have the opposite effect– you want to lull the conscious questioning thinker to sleep, and simple repetitive physical work seems to do that. Likewise, playing a rhythm instrument like drums or bass, or any sort of rhythmic chanting or dancing, will produce a similar result.

These activities, along with morning showers, afternoon massages, and evening hot tubs, may be considered strange in the corporate setting (except in California.) Here are some more corporately flavored, “structured” ways to generate unconscious thinking.

Mind mapping is an excellent technique for tapping the unconscious. Tony Buzan, the inventor of mind mapping, has a book called The Mind Map Book which details this technique. Mind mapping seems to unlock certain expressive mechanisms not available by writing. Drawing representations of your problems and possible solutions, however crudely, also works well. For truly graphically challenged, try collages made from cutout images. Sometimes just flipping though magazines will stimulate ideas. Get a big stack of publications — ones with good pictures — and start flipping.

There are activities which you can do in groups. You can play word association games. The game will usually have a context — the idea you’d like to explore. Start with a list of words which relate to your central idea, and free associate. Speed matters in this process, so record these games on audio tape. Another version is to use one of those magnetic poetry kits. Give people the kits and let them go to work. Also, you can mind-map in groups. Or gather a bunch of great images on a projector and let your group play off them.

I mentioned this in my last article: you can use structured information sources in an unstructured way. Use the Oxford English Dictionary (really any dictionary will do, the OED just seems better.) Pick words at random and establish connections with your central ideas. Or use a Tarot deck, or the Taoist I-Ching. You used to be able to do this with fortune cookies but the message quality has gone downhill. Pick a passage from your favorite inspirational literature such as the Bible or Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and invent a connection to your central idea — see what new things come up.

Try attending a seminar when you need new ideas. The seminar need not even be on the subject of concern. Just being in the seminar room, removed from your controlled environment, can cause your conscious mind to let go a little — just enough for spontaneous ideas to creep to the surface and make themselves available. And for those of you who don’t - read some books. On anything. Reading books always stimulates random thinking if you let it. Remember to keep note cards and pens handy.

Bring in outside speakers or consultants to spout off their ideas. (I know this might seem like a shameless plug.) Or cross-over people from departments who normally don’t work together. That always gets the juices flowing. Take these mixed-up groups and do any of the above.

Try game playing — simple things like checkers, go fish, touch-tackle football, Lego, plastic model building, even pickup sticks. Even home or office renovation work, which is simply another game to play. Try something community minded -a neighborhood cleanup program: lots of sweeping, lawn mowing, and trash pickup. All of these “games” distract the conscious mind. Do a session, gather everyone together, and ask what ideas came up. They will.

Do you get the idea? Do you have any other ideas?

Here then are your first two assignments. One: Make a mind map of all the ways you currently do this. Two: Focus your intention on developing some new unconscious processes. Walk around for a few days with this thought deep in the back of your mind. See what you come up with during the week.

The steps are:

Identify the area in which you want new ideas.

Create a diversion for your conscious mind. Lull it to sleep using any of the above methods, or one of your own.

Keep handy a way to record your ideas. This is critical. Use a pocket recorder or note cards. It’s a good idea to always carry one or the other.

Take your unconsciously generated ideas seriously. Pay attention to them: you may not use every idea, but at least evaluate it. Your unconscious mind likes that and you’ll get more.

Visit www.paullemberg.com/toolsandtips.html to download a list of more “methods” to stimulate unconscious thinking.

Paul Lemberg is the president of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world’s only fully systemized business coaching program guaranteed to help entrepreneurs rapidly create More Profits and More Life

Share This

How much time do you spend just thinking? Take a guess - how much during any given day, week or month? I’m don’t mean the kind of thinking you do while driving in your car, commuting on the train, during your morning run, or even in the shower. I’m referring to the kind of thinking you do ensconced in your office, or your den, or perhaps your garden. You are not reading a book or a magazine, nor watching TV, nor listening to music. You are simply thinking.

How much time do you spend doing that? Most of you will answer little to none. Many people consider spending time “just thinking” to be a luxury. After all, you have real problems - customers, employees, investors - all wanting some of your time, all wanting you to do something. And in our action driven society, we need to be doing something - much of the time we seem to be doing two or three things at once. But thinking?

It seems silly to rhetorically ask why this is so important. Thinking is the process by which companies and people create intellectual capital and knowledge. Thinking is the way we actively develop new ideas, rather than reacting to our current circumstances. Thinking is how we invent strategy. Thinking is one of the hardest things there is for people to do, let alone do well. But to figure out how to make the most of your precious resources, to leap ahead of your competition, and to master the ever-accelerating pace of change, you have no choice. You have to think about things.

There seem to be two broad categories of thinking. One category consists of free-form activities like daydreaming and meditating, and I will address these in a later column. The second category includes the disciplined process of asking questions and trying to answer them. This is the practical side of thinking and is the perspective of this article. Does it make sense to write a brief article about thinking? Not a learned, academic treatise on cognitive science - but a short pragmatic missive, practical and prescriptive. I think so. I think clarifying the concept of thinking gives people a way - a process - and perhaps provides greater access to thinking.

When I think about the issue of thinking, what am I really doing? I am asking a question - I actually say to myself - “what is thinking?” I might further ask, “what does my mind do when I try to think?” Or maybe, “How can I think without asking a question?” And so on. I don’t get very far with all of this, because no matter how I try to direct my thoughts, I discover that I am always asking a question. Every single time.

This would be hard enough if all there was to it was asking good questions. But for the process to be of real value, I have to consider answering the questions as well. Or at least I have to consider possible answers. So my simple definition of thinking is: asking questions and considering possible answers.

Why don’t I just say answering questions rather than considering possible answers? Because generating definitive, single-pointed answers is only one kind of thinking. The second, perhaps more powerful kind of thinking - particularly in the realm of strategy - is known as inquiry. In the process of inquiry, you ask questions and look at possible answers. Your goal is not a definitive answer, for that would bring the inquiry to a close. Rather you peel back the question, like the leaves of an artichoke, revealing more questions, and more possible answers, and so on. At some point, you get to the heart of the matter, just as you get to the heart of the artichoke.

To think about an issue, focus your mind by asking one or more germane questions. Each question should be designed to elicit a response driving your mind in a particular direction. You can ask questions serially, answering each in turn, or stack your questions one on top of another, attempting to answer the whole lot of them at once when the time is right. Sometimes your answers will give birth to more questions. Even your unanswered questions will sometimes yield more questions.

When do you cease asking questions? When you have thought the thing through - when you have developed sufficient ideas that profoundly illuminate your original question.

There are other criteria for stopping your questioning. You might decide to inquire into an issue for a fixed period of time, say thirty minutes, or seven days. Or, you might ask a question with the intent of coming up with fifteen or twenty new and provocative answers. You might decide to keep asking questions until your answers yield no further questions, or until your questions yield no further answers. You might not decide any of these things and simply stop when it feels right - when you feel you have the “right” answer. Or you might not stop at all, instead engaging in the question continually.

Then there is the issue of answers. I’ve always liked those 8-Ball fortune geegaws which offer the same answers no matter the question. But what distinguishes thinking from mere questioning is developing answers authentically and responsibly. I think it is the commitment to come up with a useful answer, rather than saying “I don’t know” or simply trotting out some time-worn old bit you know will fit, but not really add anything.

Many times you have no idea as to what an answer might be. What do you do then? One of my favorite perspectives is, “Well if you did know the answer, what would it be?” Another useful perspective is to simply invent an answer. Make one up and see if it fits. Trust your subconscious. Access all of your stored knowledge and experience - it just might come through for you. I think that is thinking.

What kind of questions should you ask? I have no idea, but it’s a good question. Since I am unable to answer it, I have decided instead to offer 16 questions about strategic direction. I think these questions are worth asking. Please substitute we for I, our for my, my company for I and me, as appropriate.

What is my purpose?

What do I want (to be, to do, to have) that I do not already (be, do, have)?

What am I thinking is the real thing, when “the real thing” is simply substituting for something that can really make a difference?

In what ways am I being effective? In what ways am I not being effective?

What isn’t getting done that needs to get done?

What doesn’t exist in our market, which people want, and we could deliver?

What other ways would people like to get what we give them?

What are we doing that we want to stop doing?

What would make us happy?

What did I forget?

When will we be ready?

How hard are we willing to try to make it easy?

What aren’t we taking on because we don’t think we know how?

What is the most important thing, right now? What will be the most important thing next month?

Who could help us?

Where are we looking for answers, and where not?

I hope these questions get you thinking.

Visit www.paullemberg.com/toolsandtips.html to download a list of twenty more questions and some thought generating exercises.

Paul Lemberg, author of Faster Than the Speed of Change, troubleshoots companies and helps them increase cash, build repeat customers and invent a secure future. Paul is a business leadership coach and public speaker. He is also the President of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world’s first fully systemized business coaching program designed to create More Profits and More Life

Share This