ambidextrous thinking

 

Ambidextrous Thinking

Rolf A. Faste

Stanford University, Stanford CA  94305-4021

September 15, 1994

(selected TEXT)

This philosphy is based on McLuhan's saying, “The medium is the message.”  While there is a lot that can be said about this subject, this particular class is essentially about process.  Thus, words are less important than doing, and the way in which something is done is as important as what is done.

A related issue is that understanding is less important than getting it. “Getting it” in design can be compared with telling a joke. If people are told a joke and they don't understand it, they will ask to have it explained. After the explanation they will understand it, but they won't laugh. There is nothing funny about the explanation nor the understanding that accompanies it. The point of telling a joke is “getting it”──that is, experiencing the sudden juxtaposition of contradictory concepts and releasing the built-up tension with laughter. It is our intention that students “get it” regarding their ability to draw and to generate creative solutions to problems.  For further insight on this issue I highly recommend Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. 

To accomplish this we use a teaching strategy we call “bounce-hit”. In The Inner Game of Tennis, Tim Gallway describes a method for keeping left-side consciousness occupied with a task while letting the right side get on with it. He asks beginning tennis students to say “bounce” when the ball bounces and “hit” when the ball is hit. He says nothing about how to stand, hold the racket or swing.  Instead, the students consciousness is focused on a nice easy task while the body gets on with playing tennis. His approach makes it difficult to be thinking critical thoughts like “I swung to late” or, perhaps more importantly, “I screwed up”.  We try to incorporate this idea in all our teaching.  For example, I no longer lecture on perspective, we simply get on with it. Using this method, drawing correct circles in perspective can be taught in about a half an hour. An observer will hear the students saying a little mantra, “axle, ninety degrees, major axis, ellipse.”

   (Rolf A. Faste, Ambidextrous Thinking, 1994, )

   ____________________________________

Daniel Coyle, The little book of talent, 2012                               [ ]

p.7

Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint. 

pp.7-8

   A few years back, for the TV show 60 Minutes, the tennis teacher and author Timothy Gallwey assembled a group of middle-aged people who'd never played tennis before. He gave them a brief test of ability, and then selected the woman who showed the least potential. Then, without uttering a word, Gallwey began to hit a forehand while the woman watched. He directed her attention to his feet, his grip, and the rhythm of the stroke. The woman watched intently, then began to emulate his moves. Within 20 minutes, she was hitting a shockingly decent forehand. 

p.8

   Another example of engraving, which involves the ears instead of the eyes, is the Suzuki method for learning music. Each day, separate from their lessons, Suzuki students listen to a menu of songs, beginning with “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and progressing by degrees to more complex tunes. Hearing the songs over and over (and over), engraves the songs in the student's brains. The “listening practice” builds a strong, detailed mental map, a series of points from which the success or failure of each following attempt can be measured. 

p.8

   The key to effective engraving is to create an intense connection: to watch and listen so closely that you can imagine the feeling of performing the skill. 

p.8

For physical skills, project yourself inside the performer's body. Become aware of the movement, the rhythm; try to feel the interior shape of the moves. For mental skills, simulate the skill by re-creating the expert's decision patterns. Chess players achieve this by replaying classic games, move by move; public speakers do it by regiving great speeches complete with original inflections; musicians cover their favorite songs; some writers I know achieve this effect by retyping passages verbatim from great works. (It sounds kind of Zen, but it works.) 

   (Coyle, Daniel., The little book of talent : 52 tips for improving skills / Daniel Coyle., 1. ability., 2012, BF431.C685 2012, 153.9--dc23, ) 

   ____________________________________

[grooves]

[mental grooves]

John Hargrave, Mind hacking : how to change your mind for good in 21 days, 2016 

p.149

Repetition is key.  Also, repetition is key. 

   One of the best parts about living in Boston, besides the wealth of technology talent, is sledding in the winter, It's a thrill seeker's dream, because you can sled as long as you want, as often as you want, and, unlike roller coasters or hallucinogens, it's totally free. 

   I live near Wellesley College, the renowed all-women's college that has produced notable alumni like Nora Ephron and Hillary Clinton.  Wellesley has a sledding hill that is just phenomenally dangerous.  It has (what feels like) an 85-degree incline, where you attain (what feels like) speeds of up to 75 miles per hour.  On one side of the hill, a fifteen-foot oak branch spreads out across the snow, like a giant, deadly limbo stick.  If you don't press your body flat into the sled, you will be decapitated by the tree.  It's insane that they allow sledding on the hill at all, but even more insane is that the women of Wellesley college sled down the hill on plastic trays from the dining hall. (It's funnier if you picture Hillary Clinton on a tray.)

   As any sledding enthusiast knows, if you get to the hill after a fresh snow, it's just clean powder.  Then, as people sled down the hill, it creates grooves, or tracks, in the snow.  After a few days the Wellesley students have built snow ramps and moguls at the bottom, so that the sledding down one of these tracks will launch you into orbit. 

   A few days after a snow, you'll find one set of snow tracks that take you kunder the Oak tree of death, and another set that will shoot you off the Ramps into hyperspace.  Even if you start your sled on another area of the hill, you end up locking into one of those two tracks.

   Our minds are like that hill.  The constant repetition of our negative loops cuts deep mental grooves, and it's natural for our minds to “lock into” those grooves, even when the negative loops are self-destructive. 

p.150

   The good news is, through repetition, you can cut new groove.  When I take my kids sledding at the hill, we often have to cut a new track, packing down the snow where we want it to go, then physically slowing and redirecting ourselves to the new tracks.  The sled “wants” to lock into the existing groove, but by patiently working the new path we can eventually get the sled to lock into the new one instead. 

   ( Mind hacking : how to change your mind for good in 21 days / Sir John Hargrave., 1. thought and thinking., 2. change (psychology)., BF441.H313  2016

158.1--dc23, 2016, )

   ____________________________________