
Accidental Genius: How To Think - jirinovotny
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/07/accidental-genius-summary/
======
ThomPete
Hmm I am not sure what to think about this.

It is my experience that "The art of thinking" comes in many shapes.

Some people are very clear in their thinking others are very messy. Some
people need to speak rather than think, some people need to think rather than
speak. Some people need to Doodle, some do 100 ideas in 10 minutes other do 10
ideas in 100 minutes.

I appreciate the purpose and the methods of the book. I am sure it's a
fantastic way... for some people.

It's not necessarily for everyone.

~~~
mcav
Nothing's for everyone. No technique, workflow, programming language, business
methodology, or idea applies to everybody.

No post on HN will ever resonate with everyone. Take that as a given, because
every post could just as well have a disclaimer like this.

~~~
true_religion
A lack of resonance doesn't prevent some concepts from being universal.

You're taking it too far by saying that _no_ concepts are universally
applicable to _human beings_.

If I made a post saying "We need to eat to live a healthy life", would that
not be a universal truth? If it doesn't resonate with some people (e.g. some
quibble: "We can puree our food and drink it" or "intravenous injection works
for me", and ignore the serious disadvantages of both choices) is the
scientific truth of "we need to eat to live a healthy life" not true?

Relativism to an extreme degree is next to nihilism.

~~~
ThomPete
The problem with "We need to eat to live a healthy life" is that it opens up
all sorts of questions.

What do we need to eat? What is a healthy life? Who are we? etc.

It's not really about relativism it's about asking those questions.

Anyway, way to far from OT.

~~~
true_religion
I think you're taking it for granted that we know we need to eat to live a
healthy life.

If this fact were debatable, it would be a different story.

~~~
drieddust
We need to think is as universal as we need to eat is.

We need to eat 3 meats or 5 meals or meat or vegetable are specific
manifestation of universal facts that we need to eat.

This book tries to teach what author think can help you in thinking creatively
which is an answer to how question.

You may or may not like it and it may or may not be applicable to you.

~~~
true_religion
I'm sorry, we're not actually talking about the book. This thread is off-
topic.

------
ulisesroche
This kind of stuff is really important. I've done this for about a year now,
read about it somewhere, called them Morning Pages, or something like that.
It's really a daily brain dump, and I use Evernote to have the entries easily
searchable and taggable. I also write right before I go to sleep and for lack
of a better name, called them Evening Pages.

Once I got into the habit of doing them, I saw three other benefits: 1) I no
longer needed stupid to-do lists, 2) Because I did them right when I woke up,
before I was conscious enough to be self-conscious, I was brutally honest with
myself, and got rid of my obnoxious depression, and 3) The daily practice
really improved my writing.

Journaling really is a better form of meditation. I wish I'd gotten into the
habit sooner.

~~~
chubot
Yeah, I totally thought of "morning pages"! I came across that idea a couple
years ago.

I have always written a lot, but I never did it as religiously as morning
pages. I wrote a wiki in 2004 where I keep all my thoughts/notes -- it's about
1000 wiki pages now (probably 2000 without deletions). Before that I kept a
diary but it wasn't really for "ideas", more "complaints" :)

Right now I feel like I have enough ideas and it's about execution... but I do
think there is something valid to the approach.

It's also similar to what happens when you write down your dreams first thing
in the morning (or even during the night if you wake up after them). I tried
this when I was 15. My mind was blown.

I started remembering 7 or 8 dreams a night. I would go to sleep for 50
minutes and it would feel like I experienced 8 hours of time in my dream. It
was really disorienting (and interesting). I don't remember but I think it
took about 2 weeks of writing before that happened.

So this is another example of writing changing your brain. Your brain wants an
audience (or more accurately, your subconscious does, and the subconscious is
where ideas are generated). If you write down your dreams, you'll start
having/remembering more of them. If you write down more ideas, your brain will
generate more of them and follow more associations.

~~~
malingo
I had a similar experience writing a retroactive trip journal after a few
weeks through central Europe. In the month after returning home, I'd spend at
least 30 minutes (sometimes an hour or more) late at night just brain-dumping
everything I remembered from the trip in chronological order. I deliberately
wrote stream-of-consciousness style, in the dark, eyes closed, and I was
astounded at the level of detail recall I could achieve--not only minute-by-
minute, inch-by-inch recollection of events and places, but in slow motion (if
I so chose, replayed any number of times), allowing me to re-live the entire
trip.

Deliberately plunging my brain back into the places and situations I'd been in
recreated the super-stimulated "traveling brain" state. I think the act of
reliving and reinforcing the memories made them even more vivid now several
years later than they otherwise would have been.

I believe the key aspects of the process were both the deliberate memory
churning and the typing--the physical transfer of the brain activity. Maybe my
~80 WPM typing speed happened to be a good match/governor for my recall rate,
too.

Now this wouldn't be at all practical on a day-to-day basis since day-to-day
life details are so repetitive, but I could for sure see the benefits of
picking some out of the ordinary event or encounter and drilling back through
it to discover what else your brain has to offer. I can also see the potential
in trying it for a known future event for planning purposes.

~~~
chubot
Very cool, I'm going on a trip soon so maybe I'll try that!

------
Detrus
<http://750words.com/> is a cute tool for the writing exercises. I'm not a
writer, just checked it out for a few days and didn't read the Accidental
Genius book.

I got bored the second day. I didn't write down anything interesting, my free
writing was so boring I didn't bother to read it after. Maybe I need more
guidance like this book provides. Typically I write things down when I get an
idea during thinking, not to do a writing exercise.

~~~
filiwickers
That site is great! (And the original blog post)

Checked out the post and followed with 20 minutes of Freewriting on 750words.

I don't think it should all be interesting. Actually that is the point. If you
write down enough stuff most of it will be crap, just like most ideas. But
eventually something good will come out. Also, if nothing good comes out- at
least you have gotten better at writing and clarity of thought.

~~~
Detrus
Well, reading over my routine of writing down only interesting ideas, many of
the ideas are still interesting. Reading over my freewriting, it's just a lot
of "let me think of what to say, oh I bought a MacBook and played a game." I
wouldn't even bother writing down an idea during the exercise, I tried once
but I was tired by then and couldn't flesh it out.

That site has some cute charts that try to measure your mental state, I was
curious to see what they'd show. I lasted 7 days, at the end charts got way
off and I gave up.

------
dpatru
One good habit of thought not mentioned in the article is thinking in
analogies. Comparison and contrast seem to be fundamental brain operations.
Smart people express themselves in analogies, especially parables/stories.
Always be thinking, "What is this like?" or "What does this remind me of?"

------
wallflower
If you are interested in FreeWriting, I highly recommend Keith Johnstone's
"Impro"

In it he talks about doing a writing exercise while counting down from 100
simultaneously. That really preoccupies the limiting consciousness and lets
stuff come out.

------
ForrestN
It would be interesting to try this strategy with Workflowy. They talk about
it being a way to keep your brain online or whatever, and it certainly allows
for fast dumping of ideas. The question is whether its structure will cause
you to want to edit while you're writing. You could just produce a ton of
discreet notes as new lines, and then rearrange them later.

------
DharmaSoldat
I tried a bit of this just a moment ago. Came up with the answer to a problem
I've been thinking about for some time now. Additionally I thought of some
great ideas for weekend projects.

I'm suitably impressed to keep trying it out to see what else I can do with
it, if not to experiment a little - it is very much like monkeys at
typewriters.

Anyone else feel this is like "intellectual improv"?

------
rluhar
I have not read the book mentioned in the op, but I tend to use a somewhat
similar technique to declutter my mind. When focusing on a particular problem,
or topic I tend to scribble (or doodle) in my notebook without any
constraints.

Once I have a good enough start point, I try and write down my thoughts in an
email to (a possibly imaginary) a colleague who may be interested in what I
have to say. The very fact that I now have an audience acts like a filter and
helps me get to the crux of my idea very quickly. Writing for an audience also
makes you evaluate what ideas may be relevant and what irrelevant.

Its even better if you have somebody you can use as a soundboard to talk about
your ideas. Of course, thats not always possible (and is very obnoxious!), so
the email method works better for me.

------
da5e
The New Diary by Christine Rainer is another good book on exploring through
writing. It has many of the same techniques. The freewriting technique not
only gives you ideas, but sometimes a sense of peace about what worries you.

------
wccrawford
I'm going to disagree that 'how to think' should be an alternate title.
'Accidental Genius' is exactly what it is... You just pour out your thoughts
like monkeys at typewriters, hoping to get something good. Now, since we're a
little better at typing than monkeys, chances are that you'll happen across
some nuggets. But this should never be confused with actual logic which can be
used on command to get results consistently, rather than randomly.

For a fiction writer, the difference may be negligible. For a rocket
scientist, it's a matter of life and death. Literally.

~~~
ThomPete
I think you are underestimating how much accidental thinking goes into the
work of things like science. And providing a little bit of a strawman. I don't
think the author of the book nor the reviewer intends this to replace "logical
thinking" rather to support it for some people.

Sure there is a lot of logical thinking involved but some of the real insights
where not based on the logical progression of thought in fact they where based
on breaking them. Exactly to deliver insights outside the realm of the logical
axioms.

~~~
wccrawford
You're talking about the creative aspect of science. For that aspect, this
method may very well work. However, for turning that idea into an actual
process or product, it won't work well at all.

Randomness is not as valuable as logic when working towards a specific end.
That is, if you already know the beginning and the end, using randomness to
find the path between them is probably the slowest and least likely to bring
results.

~~~
ThomPete
It's not randomness it's "your thoughts on paper". That's not random, that
starting with you.

I am not sure why you think logic is so central here. Of course you need
logic, but it will only work if your premise is correct and IMHO if you are
trying to solve a problem then most of the time it's your premise that's wrong
not the logical reasoning that springs from it.

~~~
oskarkv
This is kind of interesting. Where does your thoughts come from? If I asked
you to think of a famous person, and say the first person that comes to your
mind, what determines whom you will think of? Presumably you were not thinking
of a person before I asked. Did you have any choice in what person you started
thinking about?

~~~
ThomPete
The point is that I am going to mention someone I know, not someone I don't
know.

But yes one of the questions is whether you have a truly free will (my guess
is no)

------
andrewflnr
Similar techniques have worked in the past for me, but I always wind up with a
bunch of paper or computer text that I have no idea where to put. How do you
organize all the data without interfering in its creation? Ideally, I'd like a
solution that also incorporates all the little inspiration bits I get at
various times, and other thoughts I'd like to keep.

~~~
freshfey
I suggest Evernote. Create a notebook called thoughts and a note for every
topic you want to write. Afterwards it's more or less organized (in the cloud)
+ searchable.

~~~
andrewflnr
I've toyed with it, but never really gone for it. I think I'll give it a real
shot this time. Thanks.

------
yojimbo311
I may have missed something, but this doesn't feel like a review, it feels
like he's rehashed and summarized every point in the book without adding any
original content, beyond how he's been using the techniques. A nice glowing
review with some choice summaries would have been plenty to get me to dig
deeper and purchase the original book. After reading this though, I feel I've
pretty much gotten everything I could have from the book and have no desire to
actually purchase it, beyond supporting the original author. I enjoyed the
material, and I think it's going to be really useful going forward, but maybe
a Spoiler Alert warning would have been appropriate.

~~~
jc123
Author intended to write a 'summary': _I decided to write a detailed summary
of it_. Haven't read the whole summary yet, but it looks well done, and agree
that it could work against the author's _PS: Go get the book._

------
astrofinch
Speaking for myself, I solve hard math and computer science problems best by
explaining my thinking aloud slowly and carefully to someone I want to impress
but I know won't be judgmental if I screw up.

~~~
blue1
"One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students
with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they
could speak to a human counselor." -- Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike

------
phyllotaxis
This is my favorite read all week. Thank you! As an "idea writer" with plenty
of notebooks around at all times to capture thought fairies, this is a freakin
beautiful way to extend that practice and take it to many levels I hadn't even
thought about. I will buy this book as thanks to the author and poster-
Cheers-

