Here’s this week’s 200 word idea from To Sell is Human by Dan Pink.
In an interesting 20 year study, researchers Jacob Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at the University of Chicago filled a room with about 20 objects and asked students studying art to paint something connecting a few of these objects.
Roughly one half (the “problem solvers”) took a quick look and went on to start painting. The other half (the “problem finders”) took a long time examining the objects carefully and figuring out the links between them before painting.
The paintings were then judged by people who hadn’t seen the artists in action; the “problem finder” paintings received higher scores.
Over the next two decades, a much larger proportion of “problem finders” went onto become successful as artists while many of the problem solvers ended up switching careers.
Our education trains us to take pride in our ability to solve problems. However, problem finding ensures we are solving “the” problem instead of just spending our energies on “a” problem. Maybe we should start sharpening our ability to find problems instead of just sharpening our ability to solve them.
Source and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com
‘The first group was trying to solve a problem: How can I produce a good drawing? The second was trying to find a problem: What good drawing can I produce?’ | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
A Learning a Day 