APPRECIATION #75: UNEXPECTED ADVANTAGES OF COPING WITH A LITTLE MESS

Raise your 5 a.m. coffee to the difficult font, the random stranger, and the awkward move. Here’s a dash of mess, and why I like the word catalyst.

You should see my desk right now. It’s ridiculous. There is a story in the typewriter: “Ballerinas LOVE elk chili”, a microscope with an oak leaf, a handful of acorns, three open notebooks, a puzzle map of Africa, a manila folder of important paperwork I should have filled out, three drafts of future lessons, racquetballs, and a dozen other things.

Last night I had this dream. I walked into a room where James Thurber, Dick Cheney and Yogi Bear (Bear not Berra, the cartoon not the Yankee catcher) are sitting around a table. They are making smalltalk. It was clear that they weren’t close friends. They seem pleased when I walk in. I look from one of them to the next. What is the connection here? I don’t say anything. One of them speaks. “So, you called this meeting…”

“I did?” This is all I could say. “Not again,” they all mumble. They start to fidget and get up from their chairs. Again? I’ve done this before. I want to say wait. I want to ask them to sit down. I want to know. I don’t know why.

The first mess is my mind. I’m trying to figure out where to start and where to continue with some of my classes. How do you plan your lessons? Well, some of them come to me in dreams. I love the TED talk “How frustration can make us more creative” by Tim Harford.

He gives examples from classical music, cognitive psychology, social science, complexity science, and rock and roll. The best selling piano album of all time was made because someone was willing to play a strangely tuned, inappropriate for the room piano. He was handed a mess, and he embraced it. “His initial instinct,” Tim explains… was to not to do it. And, “His instinct was wrong.”

I love this:

I think we need to gain a little appreciation for the unexpected advantages of coping with a little mess.

Tim (can I call you Tim?) describes a study where high school students did better on tests when their handouts were harder to read. It “slowed them down, forced them to work harder, to think a bit more, to interpret.”

He described studies where people with weak or porous attentional filters (that let a lot of information in), people who were constantly being interrupted, achieved more (creatively). “These distractions were actually grist for the creative mill. They were able to think outside the box because their box was full of holes.”

He talked about complexity science. How do you solve a complicated problem? Making a jet engine, etc. Some suggest a step by step process. Tweak, test, improve, receive marginal gains. What could make it better? A dash of mess. Add randomness. “Try stupid things that shouldn’t work” and that will tend to make problem solving better. The problem with step by step (sometimes) is that “it might walk you to a dead end.” Tim suggests that we “add a dash of mess.”

In a social science study students were asked to solve murder mysteries. There were two groups.

1. Four friends
2. Three friends and a stranger.

The four friends had a better time, and they thought they did a good job.

The group with the stranger didn’t have as good a time, didn’t know if they did a good job, and were full of doubt. BUT… they did better.

Tim explains:

“Because, yeah — the ugly font, the awkward stranger, the random move …these disruptions help us solve problems, they help us become more creative. But we don’t feel that they’re helping us. We feel that they’re getting in the way … and so we resist.   (11:13)ish

And then he describes Brian Eno the composer, the catalyst, the awkward stranger, the producer, and the creator of the oblique strategies.

What does he do? Tim explains:

Well, he makes a mess. He disrupts their creative processes. It’s his role to be the awkward stranger. It’s his role to tell them that they have to play the unplayable piano.

What’s awesome about this is that musician after musician hate the strategies. BUT! What’s also awesome is that it has worked in album after album.

This sums it all up quite well:

JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE IT DOESN’T MEAN IT ISN’T HELPING YOU.  (14:00) ish

Tim concludes his talk with this:

“..all of us, from time to time, need to sit down and try and play the unplayable piano.”

I love this so much. I first heard this talk last year before I went to a publishing conference to pitch a few of the books I was writing.  I needed business cards and I typed them out on my typewriter. Jonathan Ellingson: writer, teacher, catalyst. I was surprised at how many people asked how long I had been in the cattle business.