Innovation and Problem Solving in Both Focused and Diffuse Thinking Modes
Steve Nash
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I love the quote from Edison about finding what doesn't work as a way of finding or creating something that does work. There is a deepening body of brain research that is beginning to shed light on why failure is an important part of the problem solving process.
Edison would often experience failure in his laboratory in what brain researchers now called the "focused mode" of learning or problem solving. Focused mode is simply an area of intense concentration on a particular problem. When Edison came to a creative impasse he would then leave the problem behind and take a brief nap and awaken finding he had new ideas about how to solve the particular innovation problem facing him at the moment. Researchers call how we think when we take a nap, garden, take a walk or conduct a different activity and stop thinking intently about a problem "diffuse mode" thinking. In diffuse mode our brains continue to work on problems even when we've consciously stopped addressing them.
Brain researchers recommend that we work in shorter bits of time when working through difficult problems in the "focused mode" so that our "diffuse mode" can supply ideas and become part of the two part mode that our brains are built for when it comes to problem solving. I am sure as a write this that anyone who reads this has experienced this phenomenon of both brain modes helping solve particularly thorny problems.
What do you think about this subject?
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