IdeaTree

The intuitive way for many to approach problem-solving is to go with the gut when time is short, then when there’s more time for data-gathering and reflection to bring all your rational tools to bear.

However, research has indicated that intuitive insight actually works better for complex problems with many variables, and rational thought for simpler ones. Past luminaries have spoken of this:

“When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters however . . . the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves.” —Sigmund Freud

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copybooks and by eminent people making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we’re doing. The precise opposite is the case” – Whitehead, A. N., 1911, “An Introduction to Mathematics”

“…to arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is that one needs to know.” – George Spencer Brown

The skill to develop, I think, is that of using the right process at the right time. There is a time of “loading up” with information, analysis, and linear thought. But the nonlinear aspects are a crucial part, and we can’t let ourselves fall into
the old dream that if we just had more information we could figure it all out.

“The mind does not grasp the whole, its focus is very narrow. It sees fragments onlly and fails to perceive the picture.” – Nisargadatta

Making the loading-up process more efficient is a goal of computing tools that gather and visualize data. Hopefully, they will also assist in the non-linear, perhaps in part by knowing when to get out of the way.

It’s like jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker said, “You learn your scales, then you forget all that s**t and just play your horn.”

It’s Teddy Roosevelt sneaking away from his entourage to go camping with John Muir in Yosemite for three days…Willie Nelson quitting music as a young man to return to his hog farm…biographies of famous people are replete with stories of
realization, problem solving or changes in direction coming after a period of decompression.

Dr. Irwin Shaw has found world literature full of references to this pattern and documented it in an interesting book, “The Paradox of Intention”.

But we habitually ignore our experience, because we hate to think that we aren’t in control of our own decisions and that in certain situations our reasoning power is not up to the task of figuring it out. Which is not to say that it won’t be figured out, just not by thinking harder or gathering more facts past a critical point. It’s an art. And we hate that.