Mastery

by Robert Greene

  In general you must adopt a more analogical way of thinking, taking greater advantage of the associative powers of the mind. Thinking in terms of analogies and metaphors can be extremely helpful to the creative process. For instance, an argument people used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to prove that the earth does not move was to say that a rock dropped from a tower lands at its base. If the earth were moving, they argued, it would fall elsewhere. Galileo, a man who habitually thought in terms of analogies, saw the earth in his mind as a kind of sailing ship in space. As he explained to doubters of the earth’s movement, a rock dropped from the mast of a moving ship still lands at its base.

  These analogies can be tight and logical, such as Isaac Newton’s comparison of the falling apple from a tree in his garden to the moon falling in space. Or they can be loose and somewhat irrational, such as the jazz artist John Coltrane’s thinking of his own compositions as cathedrals of sound he was constructing. In any event, you must train yourself to look constantly for such analogies to reframe and expand your ideas.

  C. ALTERNATE THE MIND THROUGH “THE CURRENT”

  In 1832, as Charles Darwin voyaged around the coastline of South America and traveled into the interior, he began to take note of several strange phenomena—bones of animals long extinct, marine fossils near the top of mountains in Peru, and animals on islands that were similar and yet quite different from their mainland counterparts. In his notebooks, he began to speculate on what all this could mean. Clearly, the earth appeared to be much older than indicated in the Bible, and it became increasingly difficult for him to imagine that all of life was created at once. Based on these continuing speculations, he began to look more closely at the plant and animal life he was observing. In doing so, he took note of even more anomalies in nature and tried to find a pattern among them. When he visited the Galápagos Islands near the end of his voyage, he witnessed so much variety of life in such a small area that he finally saw the pattern—the idea of evolution itself.

  For the next twenty years Darwin expanded upon the process that he started as a young man. He speculated on how variety within species might actually occur, and to test out his ideas he began to keep and breed different types of pigeons. The theory of evolution he was developing depended on the movement of plants and animals across wide expanses of the globe. This was easier to imagine with animals than with plants—for instance, how did such rich vegetation end up on relatively young volcanic islands? Most believed it was from an act of God. And so Darwin began a series of experiments, soaking various seeds in salt water to see how long they could survive in such an element and still germinate. The results proved they could last longer than he had imagined. Considering ocean currents, he calculated that many varieties of seeds could travel more than 1,000 miles in some forty days and still germinate.

  As his ideas began to solidify, he decided to intensify his research by spending eight years studying many species of one type of crustacean, the barnacle, in order to prove or disprove his speculations. This research ended up validating his ideas and adding some new wrinkles. Certain that he had discovered something meaningful after all this work, he finally published his results on an evolutionary process that he called natural selection.

  The theory of evolution as formulated by Charles Darwin represents one of the most astounding achievements of human creative thinking, and is a testament to the powers of the mind. Evolution is not something that can be seen with the eyes. It depends on a powerful use of the imagination—to imagine what could happen on Earth in the course of millions upon millions of years, a period of time that is so astoundingly long we have no way of really conceptualizing it. It also required the ability to imagine a process that could occur on its own, without the guidance of a spiritual force. Darwin’s theory could only have been deduced by looking at evidence and making connections in the mind about what his findings could mean. His theory of evolution, devised in this way, has stood the test of time and has come to have profound ramifications on almost all forms of science. Through a mental process that we shall call the Current, Charles Darwin made visible to us all what is completely invisible to the human eye.

  The Current is like a mental electrical charge that gains its power through a constant alternation. We observe something in the world that strikes our attention and makes us wonder what it might mean. In thinking about it, we devise several possible explanations. When we look at the phenomenon again we see it differently as we cycle through the various ideas we had imagined to account for it. Perhaps we conduct experiments to verify or alter our speculations. Now when we look at the phenomenon yet again, weeks or months later, we see more and more aspects of its hidden reality.

  If we had failed to speculate on the meaning of what we had observed, we simply would have had an observation that led us nowhere. If we had speculated without continuing to observe and verify, then we simply would have had some random idea floating in our heads. But by continually cycling between speculation and observation/experiment, we are able to pierce deeper and deeper into reality, like a drill that penetrates a piece of wood through its motion. The Current is a constant dialogue between our thoughts and reality. If we go into this process deeply enough, we come into contact with a theory that explains something far beyond the capability of our limited senses.

  The Current is merely an intensification of the most elementary powers of human consciousness. Our most primitive ancestors would take note of something unusual or out of place—broken twigs, chewed leaves, the outline of a hoof or paw. Through an act of pure imagination, they would deduce that this meant that an animal had passed by. This fact would be verified by tracking the footprints. Through this process, what was not immediately visible to the eyes (a passing animal) became visible. All that has occurred since then is an elaboration of this power to increasingly higher levels of abstraction, to the point of understanding hidden laws of nature—like evolution and relativity.

  Most often in culture we see people who short-circuit the Current. They observe some phenomenon in culture or nature that makes them emotional and they run rampant with speculations, never taking the time to entertain possible explanations that could have been verified by further observation. They disconnect themselves from reality and can then imagine whatever they want. On the other hand, we see many people, particularly in academia or in the sciences, who accumulate mountains of information and data from studies and statistics but never venture to speculate on the larger ramifications of this information or connect it all into a theory. They are afraid to speculate because it seems unscientific and subjective, failing to understand that speculation is the heart and soul of human rationality, our way of connecting to reality and seeing the invisible. To them, it is better to stick to facts and studies, to keep a micro view, rather than possibly embarrassing themselves with a speculation that could be wrong.

  Sometimes this fear of speculation masquerades as skepticism. We see this in people who delight in shooting down any theory or explanation before it gets anywhere. They are trying to pass off skepticism as a sign of high intelligence, but in fact they are taking the easy route—it is quite simple to find arguments against any idea and knock it down from the sidelines. Instead, you must follow the route of all creative thinkers and go in the opposite direction. You then not only speculate, but are bold and audacious with your ideas, all of which forces you to work hard to confirm or disconfirm your theories, piercing into reality in the process. As the great physicist Max Planck put it, scientists “must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination.”

  The Current has applications far beyond science. The great inventor Buckminster Fuller was constantly coming up with ideas for possible inventions and new forms of technology. Early in his career, Fuller noticed that many people have great ideas, but are afraid to put them into action in any form. They prefer to engage in discussions or critiques, writing about their f
antasies but never playing them out in the real world. To set himself apart from these dreamers, he created a strategy of forging what he called “artifacts.” Working off his ideas, which were sometimes quite wild, he would make models of things he imagined, and if they seemed at all feasible, he would proceed to invent prototypes of them. By actually translating his ideas into tangible objects, he could gain a sense of whether they were potentially interesting or merely ridiculous. Now his seemingly outlandish ideas were no longer speculations, but realities. He would then take his prototypes to another level, constructing artifacts for the public to see how they would respond.

  One artifact he made was the Dymaxion car, which he unveiled to the public in 1933. It was meant to be much more efficient, maneuverable, and aerodynamic than any vehicle in existence, featuring three wheels and an unusual teardrop shape; in addition, it could be quickly and cheaply assembled. In making this artifact public he realized several faults in its design and reformulated it. Although it led nowhere, particularly as the auto industry put all kinds of roadblocks before him, the Dymaxion car ended up influencing future designers, and caused many to question the single-minded approach people had to the design of the automobile. Fuller would expand this artifact strategy to all of his ideas, including his most famous one—the geodesic dome.

  Fuller’s process of making artifacts is a great model for any kind of new invention or idea in business and commerce. Let us say you have an idea for a new product. You can design it on your own and then launch it, but often you notice a discrepancy between your own level of excitement for your product and the somewhat indifferent response of the public. You have not engaged in a dialogue with reality, which is the essence of the Current. Instead, it is better to produce a prototype—a form of speculation—and see how people respond to it. Based on the assessments you gain, you can redo the work and launch it again, cycling through this process several times until you perfect it. The responses of the public will make you think more deeply about what you are producing. Such feedback will help make visible what is generally invisible to your eyes—the objective reality of your work and its flaws, as reflected through the eyes of many people. Alternating between ideas and artifacts will help you to create something compelling and effective.

  D. ALTER YOUR PERSPECTIVE

  Consider thinking as an extended form of vision that allows us to see more of the world, and creativity as the ability to expand that vision beyond conventional boundaries.

  When we perceive an object, our eyes relay only a portion or outline of it to our brains, leaving our mind to fill in the rest, giving us a fast and relatively accurate assessment of what we are seeing. Our eyes are not paying deep attention to all of the details, but noticing patterns. Our thought processes, modeled after visual perception, use a similar shorthand. When an event occurs or when we meet a new person, we do not stop to consider all aspects or details, but instead we see an outline or pattern that fits into our expectations and past experiences. We fit the event or person into categories. As with vision, for us to have to think deeply about every new occurrence or perceived object would exhaust the brain. Unfortunately, we transfer this mental shorthand to almost everything—it is the main characteristic of the Conventional Mind. We might imagine that when we are engaged in solving a problem or realizing an idea that we are being highly rational and thorough, but just as with our eyes, we are not aware of how deeply our thoughts fall into the same narrow grooves and the same categorizing shorthand.

  Creative people are those who have the capacity to resist this shorthand. They can look at a phenomenon from several different angles, noticing something we miss because we only look straight on. Sometimes, after one of their discoveries or inventions is made public, we are surprised at how obvious it seems and wonder why no one else had thought of it before. This is because creative people are actually looking at what is hidden in plain sight, and not rushing to generalize and label. Whether such powers are natural or learned does not matter: the mind can be trained to loosen itself up and move outside the grooves. To do this you must become aware of the typical patterns your mind falls into and how you can break out of these patterns and alter your perspective through conscious effort. Once you engage in this process, you will be astonished at the ideas and creative powers it will unleash. The following are several of the most common patterns or shorthands, and how you can subvert them.

  Looking at the “what” instead of the “how”:

  Let us say that something goes wrong in a project of some sort. Our conventional tendency is to look for a single cause or a simple explanation, which then reveals to us how to fix the problem. If the book we are creating is not working out, we focus on the uninspired writing or the misguided concept behind it. Or if the company we work for is not performing well, we look at the products we are designing and marketing. Although we think we are being rational when we think in this way, most often problems are more complicated and holistic; we are simplifying them, based on the law that the mind always looks for shorthands.

  To look at the “how” instead of the “what” means focusing on the structure—how the parts relate to the whole. With the book, it may not be working out because it is organized poorly, the faulty organization a reflection of ideas that have not been thought out. Our minds are a jumble, and this is reflected in the work. Thinking in this way, we are forced to go more deeply into the parts and how they relate to the overall concept; improving the structure will improve the writing. With the company, we should look deeply at the organization itself—how well people communicate with one another, how quickly and fluidly information is passed along. If people are not communicating, if they are not on the same page, no amount of changes in the product or marketing will improve performance.

  Everything in nature has a structure, a way that the parts relate to one another, which is generally fluid and not so easy to conceptualize. Our minds naturally tend to separate things out, to think in terms of nouns instead of verbs. In general you want to pay greater attention to the relationships between things, because that will give you a greater feel for the picture as a whole. It was in looking at the relationship between electricity and magnetism and the relativity of their effects that scientists created a whole revolution in scientific thinking, leading from Michael Faraday to Albert Einstein and the elaboration of field theories. This is a revolution that is waiting to happen on a more mundane level, in our everyday thinking.

  Rushing to generalities and ignoring details:

  Our minds are always hurrying to generalize about things, often based on the most minimal amounts of information. We form opinions quickly, in conformity with our previous opinions, and we do not pay great attention to the details. To combat this pattern we must sometimes shift our focus from the macro to the micro—placing much greater emphasis on the details, the small picture. When Darwin wanted to make sure his theory was accurate, he devoted eight long years of his life to the exclusive study of barnacles. Looking at this intensely microscopic glimpse of nature, he saw a perfect corroboration of his larger theory.

  When Leonardo da Vinci wanted to create a whole new style of painting, one that was more lifelike and emotional, he engaged in an obsessive study of details. He spent endless hours experimenting with forms of light hitting various geometrical solids, to test how light could alter the appearance of objects. He devoted hundreds of pages in his notebooks to exploring the various gradations of shadows in every possible combination. He gave this same attention to the folds of a gown, the patterns in hair, the various minute changes in the expression of a human face. When we look at his work we are not consciously aware of these efforts on his part, but we feel how much more alive and realistic his paintings are, as if he had captured reality.

  In general, try approaching a problem or idea with a much more open mind. Let your study of the details guide your thinking and shape your theories. Think of everything in nature, or in the world, as a kind of hologram—the smallest part
reflecting something essential about the whole. Immersing yourself in details will combat the generalizing tendencies of the brain and bring you closer to reality. Make sure, however, that you do not become lost in the details and lose sight of how they reflect the whole and fit into a larger idea. That is simply the other side of the same disease.

  Confirming paradigms and ignoring anomalies:

  In any field there are inevitable paradigms—accepted ways of explaining reality. This is necessary; without such paradigms we would not be able to make sense of the world. But sometimes these paradigms end up dominating our way of thinking. We routinely look for patterns in the world that confirm the paradigms we already believe in. The things that do not fit the paradigm—the anomalies—tend to be ignored or explained away. In truth, anomalies themselves contain the richest information. They often reveal to us the flaws in our paradigms and open up new ways of looking at the world. You must turn yourself into a detective, deliberately uncovering and looking at the very anomalies that people tend to disregard.

  In the late nineteenth century several scientists noted the strange phenomenon of rare metals like uranium emitting luminescent rays of an unknown nature, without any exposure to light. But nobody paid much attention to this. It was assumed that someday a rational explanation for this phenomenon would come up, one that fit with general theories of matter. But to the scientist Marie Curie, this anomaly was precisely the subject that needed to be investigated. She intuited that it contained the potential for expanding our concept of matter. For four long years Marie, with the help of her husband, Pierre, devoted her life to studying this phenomenon, which she eventually named radioactivity. In the end her discovery completely altered scientists’ view on matter itself, which had previously been seen as containing static and fixed elements, but now was revealed to be much more volatile and complex.