I've always had the ability to observe. At 16, I was invited into a inventor's problem solving 'club' after I untangled a fisherman's line at Sunset Cliffs in the dark. I carefully observed and then pulled one thread and having the whole mess come apart. My function in that inventor's group was they used me to figure out how to present and explain what they were inventing by answering some of my questions.From that experience, and others, I realized that articulating properties and describing qualities is the stuff that you want to do when you're problem solving. Too often our assumptions are clumped up into concepts or conclusions that we don't remember ever deciding on. It can be tricky to extract the original observations that led to the assumptions, especially if they were accepted from someone else's conclusion in the distant past. It's tricky to be so caught up in the sequences you followed that you can't abstract or simplify them. Or you can't go in the other direction to analyse and break apart to discover or describe the crucial factors and say what they mean for other people.
Of course, the more flexible you are at discovering what you are leaving out, the more you don't need those other people who are good at other strategies to fill in where you are weak by using your innate assumptions. However, a group of people are invaluable for this reason, because there seems to be always something valuable that you didn't think of yourself. That's also why I love dialogue.
Suspension functions as a precursor to analysis for me and that's why it's so often valuable. Suspension is a sort of subtraction process where I wipe the slate of my mind clean and act "As If" I'm starting over, without some level of my conclusions about results. I imagine suspension as sort of an onion, where I can undo ever more complex levels of assumptions as far down as I want to go. Often it's not useful to start all the way back at square one - I usually need some level of functional assumption to be practical.
Sometimes I use a stepping stone to generate results in problem solving - some sort of way to break up my preconceptions and loosen up my attachment to gaining results - and then put the results together. For instance I find that reversing sequences is strange enough to get me to think about something differently enough. Essentially to mix up my thinking, I often would experiment with what I consider to be direction, qualities, sequences, timing of whatever I was dealing with.
In service of teaching Alexander Technique, I've made up those four categories that are useful for describing observations and I'm often struck with how they can be broadly applied as I so often do.
In AT we're dealing with observing motion - and as the teacher I would try and get someone to use them in a sentence as they described their own motion. (They can be used in any order)
- Qualities, (after describing them, what sort of value of quality do we prefer to apply and why prefer it? This is a sort of making of a hypothesis or question that helps us to have something to pay attention to when it changes.)
- Direction, (once we describe where we are, where do we want to go or what to do? Essentially, this helps to describe purposes or relative location.)
- Sequence, (how does priorty-making influence relative value, and how can grouping concepts influence results? This involves suspending expected results and crafting how the act of reasoning, constructing or adding or subtracting influences results.)
- Timing (after we've experimented some, spotting crucial factors that are valuable to pay attention to one after the other. These are our functionally bright ideas and when exactly to use them.)
Anyway, I love creative thinking and articulating how it can work easier. I imagine that the world could also benefit from some articulation of plain old functional thinking also.
