
Think Like a 5-Year Old - treskot
http://www.inc.com/jeff-hoffman/innovative-leadership-power-of-childlike-wonder.html
======
speeder
It is funny, how "adults" think that this behavior is not acceptable.

I am... very curious. I am all the time curious, I keep researching about
everything.

Sometimes I just stop, and keep looking at something, wondering how it works.

One day for example, I remember that I was looking at the rain, seeing it
splashing on a roof that I could see from where I was. I kept looking at how
the raindrops shattered when hitting the hard surface.

My then-girlfriend approached me, and asked: "what you are looking so much?"

I explained to her my wonderings about the raindrops.

Her reply was: "this is useless, drop it."

The thing is, this was not a single incident, and not only with her, many
times in my life, people tried to convince me to be LESS curious.

I wonder why.

I wonder why the sense or wonder, curiosity, wanting to learn, is viewed as
childish or a thing to be hated, or as a time wasting activity.

~~~
thejteam
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I
had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I
became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness
and the desire to be very grown up.”

CS Lewis

~~~
pjungwir
No one is so jealous of their dignity as people trying to grow up.

------
krenoten
Assumptions are a funny business. Think of them as a kind of cache. We
absolutely must cache most of our beliefs about reality. It would quickly
overwhelm us to compute every thought response to everyday stimuli.

Many people think of the neocortex as a big computational device. In reality
the data structure contributes more to our intelligence. In half a second we
can easily recognize a familiar object. In that time, a signal can traverse
perhaps 100 neurons. A cpu takes several orders of magnitude more. It is much
more likely that we are retrieving most reactions rather than computing them.
I highly recommend Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence" if you want to learn
more about this fascinating subject.

But many of these cached computations have a timeout that we fail to honor. In
fact everything that goes into the cache is information about a reality that
no longer exists as it did. We nevertheless get so much utility from the old
cache that it can be easy to forget to prune and update it. If it ain't broke
don't fix it.

Which leads to another interesting thing about assumptions. Your assumptions
are always wrong. They probably yield a good amount of utility for you, but on
some level they are incomplete at the very least. All of the items you pull
out of your cache are improvable.

Another way to look at it is that nearly all of our potential lies in the set
of things that we currently reject.

~~~
ZoFreX
A possibly related concept which your comment reminded me of is "the half-life
of facts": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4967344>

------
jonnathanson
Someone once told me that a great way to find industries or competitors ripe
for disruption is to play the childlike "Why?" game with them. You know, the
one where you start with a broad proposition, then ask "why," and continue
narrowing down until you're satisfied with the subsequent answers. When you
reach a "Why?" for which there's no good explanation, you might be onto
something.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Asking the "why" isn't the valuable part; it is answering that question. The
effort to break down and understand the problem is what leads to the insights.

~~~
jonnathanson
Yes, but I think you're slightly misunderstanding me. The "asking why" is the
breaking-down-the-problem process. I didn't mean _literally_ just asking
"Why."

~~~
stephengillie
5-whys is a common root-cause algorithm.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys>

------
nakedrobot2
I certainly wouldn't like to suggest that drugs are the answer to everything,
but they are the answer to _some_ things...

In this case, the author might be interested in smoking a HUGE JOINT and
stepping into his office. He might find the same sense of curiosity as the
five year-old. Magic mushrooms could also do this, but, like the five year-old
for the day, might be a bit "more than you bargained for".

Note: just as it's not a good idea for a five year-old to run a company, it is
also not advisable to run a company while stoned/drunk/etc.

~~~
knowtheory
Being curious and thoughtful is not the same thing as being stoned.

The point is not just the endless asking of questions, but rather not skipping
the analysis of things you take for granted (or don't even realize you take
for granted).

The point is not to _be_ a 5 year old, the point is to ask questions like a 5
year old and use that to better inform how you act.

~~~
nakedrobot2
I beg to differ. Drugs, specifically the hallucinogenic types (and for this
case I am also including marijuana in that category) or meditation (for the
more enterprising and diligent) are the easiest way to extract yourself from
the tunnel vision with which you see the world.

In fact, I think most (say) 50 year old people who are "set in their ways"
would find it VERY difficult to see the world with "new eyes" without some
very strong outside stimulus, whether it is drugs, meditation, or some
traumatic event.

~~~
Nursie
_"(and for this case I am also including marijuana in that category)"_

Really?

I've noticed weed makes a lot of people incurious and just sort of drift
through things.

~~~
roc
Indica vs Sativa.

~~~
Nursie
Seriously?

I have severe doubts that that makes as much difference as... well anything.

It's like whisky drunk vs. beer drunk, they're different because of the speed
you take them in, their concentration absorption speeds and a variety of
subjective feelings.

Now I know it's a little more complicated than the ethanol picture, with a
variety of active compounds in different quantities, but I am very skeptical
that a different strain of the plant can make the change from 'stumbling
through life apathetically' to 'deep psychedelic self-realisation'.

Not that I'm convinced deep psychedelic self-realisation is much other than
brainfart either.

~~~
roc
Admittedly I'm not swimming in data. So it could certainly be suggestion or
selective reporting or whatever else.

All I was really trying to point out was that there are clearly different
'states' of high: introspective (to the point of paranoia), inquisitive,
giggly, zoned, etc.

Just as there are different states of drunk: 'tipsy', 'hyper-active',
'depressed', 'blotto', etc.

So just as not everyone who hits a beer bong is going to streak across the
quad to the gymnasium, not everyone who gets high is going to necessarily
question the universe nor necessarily sit on the couch and watch the world
pass by.

You can't gauge marijuana from the actions of a handful of stoners any more
than you can gauge alcohol from the actions of a handful of stumbling drunks.

------
lifeisstillgood
When I saw the article headline, my first thought was the five-year-old trait
most likely to find in most leaders ... I want, I want, mine, mine, mine.

And to be fair leadership is not about rediscovering child-like curiosity - it
is about applying objective thinking rigorously and without ego - try looking
at Poor Charlies' Almanck

~~~
davidw
> I want, I want, mine, mine, mine.

I was picturing suddenly turning to one of my colleagues, giving him a good
push, grabbing his computer and saying "MINE!".

~~~
bitwize
I thought of the seagulls from _Finding Nemo_...

------
RyanMcGreal
I'm reminded of the old story about the guy who always cut the ends off the
ham before putting it into the roasting pan. His wife asked him why, but he
just said his mom always did it. She, in turn, said that her mom always did
it. Finally, the wife got hold of her husband's grandmother and found out that
she cut the ends off the ham because she only had a small roasting pan.

------
eitally
I'm pretty certain this article is a ripoff of Ricardo Semler's "3 Whys"
technique he described in his book from 1995 ([http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-
Success-Behind-Unusual-Workpl...](http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-
Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0446670553)). Not that this is a bad thing, but
there are many more, better articles describing this using more clinical
language and providing guidance for real management application.

Here are a couple of top Google results:
[http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/forget-empowerment-
ai...](http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/forget-empowerment-aim-
exhilaration)

<http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/personal/ebihari/>

and even a version of The Art of War:
<http://www.worldmarkacademy.com/moodle/file.php/1/3.pdf>

------
j_baker
One thing I've noticed: people who present themselves as old and wise aren't.
The _truly_ old and wise haven't forgotten what it's like to be young and
naive.

------
isalmon
>> Exasperated, I silenced her questions with a bag of Cheetos.

Is anybody still surprised that more than 66% of this country is
overweight/obese?

~~~
bitwize
Now that he appreciates her questioning, that may be one less fat kid.

I've noticed that here in Murka, increasingly, people can't be arsed to engage
with their kids. Kids are expensive, gaudy accessories, as anyone with
(particularly female) Facebook friends who go through that "LOOK AT MAH NEW
BABBY" picture posting stage can see; but actually engaging with them and
treating them like humans is... well, it's too much work and hassle.

So they shut them up with Cheetos or cookies or sketti or go-go juice and get
on with what's really important, whatever that may be.

~~~
icebraining
The keyword in the first paragraph is "niece".

------
javajosh
Why do some articles make the front page of HN, and other ones don't? Or the
front page of Google News? How was it that Vine was getting so much attention
for a few days, and then the buzz just...died? Did someone orchestrate that?

~~~
nollidge
Do not contemplate the whims of the Hackertariat. A curious pinpoint of
darkness soon grows closer, eventually enveloping you in its yawning black,
chilling the marrow and ensnaring the wits. Artifacts and whispers float by
but become dust in your grasp, slipping out and past your knuckles, carried
away by the soft, silent wind.

It was ever thus and shall never not be.

------
JVIDEL
TL;DR: don't be like the old farts from Xerox that discarded PARC's Alto and
the mouse as a novelty.

------
rodolphoarruda
There is an excellent book on the subject. It's really worth reading:
[http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Sandbox-Childhood-
Rediscover-B...](http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Sandbox-Childhood-Rediscover-
Business/dp/0809224380)

------
pbhjpbhj
>" _When we got to the office, my niece did what all kids her age do. She
questioned everything._ "

Never really had this with our son, will wait and see if it comes with second
child - when we're out I'm in a semi-continuous state of explaining as much as
I know about interesting things around us and asking questions - "well what do
you think?".

I do wonder sometimes if my modus is destructive to curiosity but generally
he's pretty questioning in terms of things.

------
adamnemecek
Sounds similar to the Zen Buddhist concept of Shoshin or beginner's mind.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin>

------
loahou04
i still act like i'm 5 all the time...i just bang on things until they work
and then try and figure out what i banged on

------
saddino
Use Stock Photo of a 2-Year Old

