images

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.

—Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

A BRAIN ITCH

The quote above refers to one of the world's most groundbreaking flash revelations: the structure of the DNA molecule. In 1953, Francis Crick, a British scientist, was working with James Watson, an American, at the University of Cambridge in England. Although biologists knew by the 1940s what comprised DNA, they did not yet know much about its appearance. As Watson and Crick tried to envision it, Watson read chemist Linus Pauling's unpublished paper about DNA. He believed that Linus was incorrect about its structure but that Watson failed to figure out a feasible alternative. A few days later, he saw an X-ray of the DNA crystal. “The instant I saw the picture, my mouth fell open and my pulse raced,” he later wrote.1 The paired helix structure seemed eminently clear. Watson told Crick, and they commenced work on a model. Although they stalled a few times, they talked with colleagues who offered suggestions that helped spark several more revelatory insights. Things fell into place until they had a six-foot model that resembled a twisting ladder. This, they knew, was the appearance of that elusive molecule, DNA. In 1962, they received the Nobel Prize.

Their work demonstrates several important facets of the startling flash of full-bodied enlightenment that “floods the mind.” First, from years of immersion in that area of study, they were prepared for it. Second, they persisted. Third, they blended intimate isolation in a lab with collegial cross-fertilization. The dramatic pop of instant, fully formed knowledge that Crick described is a latent function of our brain's processing system. It needs preparation, but it's available to anyone. Although hard work is not required for “snapping,” experiencing “snaps” regularly and channeling them for specific purposes does involve training your brain.

Snaps or aha! moments often occur when, faced with ambiguity or a challenge, the brain clicks on something that instantly feels right. To try this process, read the following riddle and see if you can figure it out:

Gerald arrives at his local railway station to catch the Waterloo train, which departs hourly at exactly five minutes past the hour. Thinking he might have just missed it, he looks up at the station clock and sees that the hour and minute hands are both between 1 and 2. He's relieved that he hasn't missed his train. If the clock is correct, how does he know?

If you saw the solution right away, great! But it's often maddeningly elusive. The problem looks so simple that it should be obvious, and yet like other brain twisters, it can thwart your most determined efforts. When you do see it, whether quickly or after considerable effort, the solution will occur as a flash—you just “see” it. The clock's hands are both between the 1 and 2 of the 12, so it's exactly 12:00.

This is commonly called the “aha! moment,” the eureka experience, a brainstorm, a flash of genius, or an epiphany. It's a type of perceptual shift that some experience as an incandescent moment. The solution is obvious, even though you might not have found it. Trying to figure out such riddles is like looking for a specific book among many titles on a bookshelf. You know it's there, but you can't see it. Finally, you give up. Later, you go looking for another book, and the first one you originally wanted pops right out. It was there all the time. You just couldn't process it. That's how the brain often works with creative insight. It has resources that seem quite mysterious but are actually the result of how we prepare our minds.

A eureka moment can occur while working alone or during brainstorming sessions in groups. It could burst forth during isolated efforts or after seeing what someone else has done. There are so many applications for this magical link between impasse and enlightenment, whether in sports, business, art, science, industry, design, law enforcement, and even the military. We'll look at quite a few different applications in this book. In fact, the Nobel Prize itself came from a snap.

Alfred Nobel, the discoverer of the formula for dynamite, read a news article in 1888 that had confused him with his recently deceased brother. The reporter referred to Alfred as the “Merchant of Death.” This disturbed him. He did not wish to leave such a negative legacy. Pondering a way to be remembered for something good, the solution hit him. He could use the very thing that had inspired that dark moniker; he could apply the fortune that dynamite had given him to offer monetary prizes to people who had made a contribution to benefit the world. He made a will that bequeathed the money and died just a year later. On the third anniversary of his death, the first prizes were distributed in Stockholm, Sweden. The medal features a profile of Nobel.2

There are many such stories. It was the remark by William Marston's wife about her blood pressure rising when she got angry or excited that inspired the precursor to the polygraph. The way Italians stood at a bar to drink their espressos, lattes, and cappuccinos inspired the creation of Starbucks. It was an Internet search that Jeff Bezos undertook for his hedge fund employer that inspired him to recognize the Internet itself as a solid investment opportunity. His boss wasn't interested, so he left his job and launched into the sale of books online. Thus, the hugely successful Amazon.com was born. A sudden insight—a feeling of the right idea—triggered each of these ventures.

But let's be clear. This book is about more than just insight. It's about a specific type of aha! that I call a snap, because what I describe is closer to a spark that ignites action than to the mere recognition of the solution to a problem. A snap is insight plus momentum. Once the enlightenment occurs, it begs for action. It launches us forth, as it reportedly did for the renowned mathematician Archimedes.

THE FIRST AHA!

As the fable goes, in ancient Syracuse, Archimedes exemplified the “eureka” insight. For him, it was utter euphoria, an explosion of excitement that made him oblivious to the fact that he'd forgotten to dress before running through the streets proclaiming, “Eureka!” It was quite pressing—a matter of life and death. Although it's difficult to know if the details of this tale are actually true (and some experts have disputed it), we do know enough about Archimedes to believe that it could be true.

The earliest known account appeared two centuries after his death in 212 BCE, in a work about architecture. The author, Vitruvius, admired Greek geometers, and Archimedes towered above all others. He was a “master of thought,” a mathematician, scientist, and inventor. For example, he crystallized the principles of buoyancy, which affected travel by sea or air, and he refined the mechanics of irrigation. The Roman senator Cicero hailed him as a genius beyond what any mere mortal could achieve, and even today Archimedes is considered one of the world's greatest mathematicians. He studied physics, optics, astronomy, geometry, engineering, and the art of warfare. Even the Syracusan king Hieron II reportedly proclaimed that Archimedes “is to be believed in everything he may say.”3

So, back to the story: The king suspected that his royal crown maker had cheated him. He tasked Archimedes with determining whether a recently crafted gold crown, made to adorn a deity's statue, had been clandestinely mixed with inferior silver (thereby enriching the metal-working con man). However, there was a catch: Archimedes was not allowed to melt the crown or deface it in any manner. Although he was brilliant and knew as much as anyone back then about mathematical calculations and precious metals, he stalled. His very life was on the line, but try as he might to examine the problem from all angles, he failed to find the answer. The metal had been crafted into a series of leaves, and it wasn't clear to Archimedes, the genius, quite how to measure its exact volume.

Reportedly, he worked through every possible solution he could think of. But none was adequate. Then he took a break. Stepping into a full tub one day to take a bath, he caused the water to spill over the edge. He froze. In that moment, he snapped the solution: the volume of water displaced from the tub was equal to the space his body took up. “Eureka!” he shouted. (That's why it's called the eureka moment—meaning, “I found it!”) He realized that silver is lighter than gold, so a block of silver equal in weight to a block of gold would be larger and would thus displace more water. Therefore, a mix of silver and gold would displace more water than the same item made of pure gold.

“That one fact,” Isaac Asimov wrote, “added to all the chains of reasoning his brain had been working on during the period of relaxation when it was unhampered by the comparative stupidities of voluntary thought, gave Archimedes his answer in one blinding flash of insight.”4

Using his calculation, Archimedes proved what King Hieron suspected: the goldsmith had cheated him. Thus, Archimedes's brilliant flash has become the touchstone for the blinding sublimity of creative genius: the mind so caught in the illuminated moment it forgets all else in an effort to capture and apply the insight. Look again at the quote by Francis Crick that opens this chapter. He described it perfectly.

THREE STEPS TO MAGIC

Most people believe that aha! moments are whimsical and unpredictable. They have launched some amazing discoveries, the tales of which are entertaining, but they strictly concern people of great achievement or of genius. The great news is this: snaps can happen for anyone, and some people get these incandescent experiences quite often. The reason is simple. They've recognized the enormous potential of a eureka experience and have learned exactly how to prepare for it. That is, we can set up the conditions to spark an Archimedean flash of genius when we need it. And it is not exclusive to geniuses or the highly skilled. You'll meet several people throughout this book who not only experienced a snap and exploited it for great gain but who also articulated the experience well enough to benefit others. Some of these descriptions have assisted neuroscientists, and, thanks to some clever research, we now know a lot about the brain's mechanisms during sudden insight, which helps us to understand both how and why it occurs. Let me put it in simple terms: Approaching a problem that begs for insight most benefits from a type of immersion that forms three distinct processes:

  1. scanning the environment
  2. sifting through information
  3. solving the problem

Scan, sift, solve. Each step has specific nuances, but we'll keep them in mind as we move along. Here's an example of an insight inspired by a problem that produced an intriguing action-based solution. You can see here exactly how “scan, sift, solve” plays out.

At Harvard University's School of Medicine, thanks to the initial brainstorm of Drs. Joel Katz and Shahram Khoshbin, students engage in something that defies a long tradition of teaching. They go not just to a typical classroom for lectures about medical topics; they also go to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. This activity seems far afield from what they're in school to study, so why does Katz have them do it? He had an idea that led to an experiment, which opened up a new approach: visual literacy for doctors.

Medical schools are aware that, according to studies, observational skills among new doctors have declined. A physical exam is essential to making an accurate clinical diagnosis, but medical students seem less equipped these days to make visual assessments with critical thinking. While this sounds alarming, we can blame improved technology. New doctors use more laboratory tests and radiological exams, which can replace the need for clinical observation—but at a great financial cost and some unnecessary risk to patients. Thus, without regular practice, observational skills required to be a proficient doctor remain unpolished. However, visual acumen is still necessary for medical personnel who diagnose and treat patients, so its reported decline is certainly a concern. Doctors must not just look but also see; not just hear but also listen. These two skills are in great decline, as judged by patient surveys. Yet it's one thing to emphasize the importance of such a skill, and quite another to help students to acquire and improve it.

Katz, an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, was interested in curriculum innovations, so he pondered the challenge. This is the “scan” part. He attuned himself to the issue and wanted to address it. Something from his background assisted: before he'd become an internist at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital, he had been a graphic designer, so he exploited this experience to “sift” through what he knew. He understood that, like medical conditions, art appreciation is inherently ambiguous, forcing the observer to rely on an uncertain and incomplete data set to make judgments. Once Katz spotted these similarities, he set to work to develop a unique new curriculum (still sifting). He invited colleagues, including Alexa Miller, curator of education at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, to help him. The objective was to see if the structured observation of artworks improved apparently unrelated skills in patient care. To test his hunch, Katz and his colleagues devised an experiment that paired Visual Thinking Strategies with diagnostic instruction.

Visual Thinking Strategies are based on a theory by Cambridge researcher Abigail Housen, who worked with Philip Yenawine, director of education at New York's Museum of Modern Art, to assist viewers to better appreciate the meaning of art.5 They soon realized that the Visual Thinking Strategies helped art viewers to develop critical thinking and cognitive abilities, so this approach was implemented in many more museums. They also introduced it into public school systems and many colleges.

As a curator, Miller was familiar with Visual Thinking Strategies, so it made sense to her to include them as part of Katz's experimental course. Both activities involved cognitive development. So with his medical colleague, Drs. Khoshbin and Sheila Naghshineh, and researchers from Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Katz developed “Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Diagnosis.” It was a ten-week course in which students would meet for two and a half hours every week. The researchers invited students who were in their first or second year of preclinical training to participate, and fifty-six expressed interest. This was enough for an experimental group and a control group, since only two dozen could be accommodated in the class. Twenty-four students (59 percent female, with a mean age of twenty-four) were assigned to the experimental group, and thirty-two similar students acted as controls. Each took a precourse visual skill examination that measured the frequency of accurate observations.

While the controls continued with their education in the typical manner, students in the experimental group went to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts each week to participate in seventy-five-minute exercises of observation, coupled with a lecture about how each exercise related to physical diagnosis. They also kept a journal. During two sessions, they examined volunteer patients who had undiagnosed disorders. The students walked around the museum observing paintings by such artists as Gauguin, Picasso, Pollock, Monet, and Manet. As they stood before Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's The Scream, for example, they considered diverse interpretations of that bald, wide-eyed, shrieking figure on a bridge against its hallucinatory yellow, blue, and orange background. While looking at ancient aboriginal artists, they hypothesized on the role form played in the impact of the art; they then applied this same method to their observation of patients with various breathing disorders. How was the stomach moving? How is the voice generated and projected? What was happening to posture and muscles related to breathing? They also considered how such findings as color, balance, light, symmetry, and texture related to medical topics like dermatology, neurology, and radiology.

No matter which piece of art they observed, they were to offer several possible ideas about it. This exercise helped them to think beyond well-known interpretations, forcing them toward less obvious angles. In addition, the students participated in reading and visual training exercises. In an optional session, they had the opportunity to learn from a professional art teacher how to draw a live human model.

At the end of the course, the participants retook the visual skill exam, which was scored by a scientist who had no way of knowing if the test was the pretest or posttest, or if the test taker had taken the course or was in the control group. The results were impressive: the “active looking” approach had improved the students' visual skills. Compared to the control group, students who had completed the course made more frequent observations. There was an average increase of 5.41 observations per image, or a 38 percent improvement in focus, as well as a higher level of sophistication when students described what they were seeing. They were more accurate than students in the control group and better than they had been prior to the course.6

“Our findings suggest,” Katz said, “that through the structured study of works of art and medical imagery, visual inspection skills, including those directly relevant to clinical medicine, can be improved.”7

He recognized that the study had not achieved true randomization and that the groups had been too small to make a definitive statement. In addition, the follow-up had also been short-term, so long-term results remain unknown. However, Katz and his colleagues continue to run this popular course at Harvard. “The results hold consistent,” Katz observed. “The original study was about teaching early medical students core physical exam skills. The next clue that we are investigating is a textural analysis of the types of responses of class participants, before and after, and how the exercise enriches not just the number of observations, which is what we reported on before, but on the quality and depth of the observations.”8

These researchers demonstrate that an expanded curriculum that transcends traditional notions of medical training can effectively address the problem of declining quality in a profession on which people's lives depend. Rather than sitting around bemoaning the sorry state of medical diagnostic skills, an innovator considered this problem from a unique angle, devised a way to address it, and then tried it. Because Katz had trained in a different profession before he entered medicine—a cross-fertilization factor that will pop up throughout this book—he brought to medical training a different perspective to effectively dissolve the impasse. In addition, taking the students to a museum that is well outside their usual surroundings may have allowed them to access and improve parts of their own minds that were inaccessible based on years of highly focused and competitive schooling. The course yielded an additional side benefit for the students—greater art appreciation. We'll see another aspect of this research later.

THE PREPARED MIND

French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur once said in a lecture he gave in 1854, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”9 Current brain studies reveal that he was correct. Creative entrepreneurs take time to prepare themselves; they develop habits that yield knowledge about many aspects of their work arena and focus on those conditions in their lives that best incubate insight. They're ready to be enraptured by as many things as possible. Then they exploit the process as often as possible to prime themselves for the flash of insight. They possess no better memory or cognitive skills than anyone else, it turns out, but they nurture an attitude that keeps them sharp. They are always looking. They scan. They want that moment.

Because they reap a continuous sense of reward from applying themselves to disciplined study, they gain more opportunities for flashes of insight—“snaps”—that can turn into a goldmine or improve lives. It's not what they think about that counts but how they think. Actually, it's how they allow themselves to stop thinking in a particular way so that their brains can go to work. The trick is to achieve the right balance.

A snap is a flash of inspirational brilliance. As noted, snaps contain a sense of purpose and direction so compelling that you snap into action. You might jump out of bed or stop your car in the middle of the road to write the thought down. You might charge straight into seemingly impossible odds or interrupt your lecture. Snaps are not mere insight—“Aha! So that's it.” Rather, they're so bursting with fullness that they push us forward. In a snap, we see a new method, a solution, or an inspiration that propels us to get right to work (or play). For example, in 1816 Dr. René Laennec had a female patient who appeared to be suffering from heart problems. He felt stymied. Moral protocol at that time prohibited him from putting his ear to her bosom to listen to her heart, but it seemed the only way to help her. He looked around, grabbed some paper, and rolled it into a tube. He carefully placed it into position and could hear the heartbeat. Afterward, he fashioned a hollow wooden cylinder for his practice and thereby created the first stethoscope.10

The aha! feeling is so highly charged it can prompt dramatic decisions: you know what you must do next to activate the insight and see how it works. It's fully formed in its mental presentation; so exquisitely right that the person to whom it occurs feels compelled to capture it in some act or permanent medium. A scene in the 2010 movie Social Network, about the creation of Facebook®, provides a good visual. Whether or not it actually happened this way, the scene nicely illustrates a snap. Inventor Mark Zuckerberg has already set up the Facebook software and is preparing to launch it, but he's not yet ready. An acquaintance comes up to him in a computer lab and asks him about a girl in his art history class, whether she has a boyfriend or ever talks about a guy. The Zuckerberg character freezes. He suddenly knows what he must add to the homepages of Facebook participants. He drops everything and zips across campus, knocking into things and people in his haste to get to his computer. The other student's queries had triggered his awareness of what people really wanted to know about each other—the thing about college life that had initially inspired the Facebook design: their relationship status. The flash of inspiration for this added refinement is so compelling, as the film shows it, that Zuckerberg must get it into place at once. The codes are mentally clear, and he knows what he must do; he just needs to type them into the computer.

This is the perfect representation of the way a snap works. It's a dramatic brilliance that floods the mind and clicks into place. Sometimes a snap is so powerful it can wake you from sleep. You can't wait to respond to it, so you go right to work. In some instances described later, the snap insight even occurs in a dream. At times, it happens just before going to sleep.

Physicist Stephen Hawking is renowned for his work on the basic laws that govern the universe. He was getting into bed one night in 1970 when he “saw” how to apply his work on causal structure to the concept of black holes. He compares the snap experience to sex—not as intense, perhaps, but “it lasts longer.” In a speech for his sixtieth birthday, Hawking stated, “There is nothing like the ‘Eureka’ moment, of discovering something that no one knew before.”11 Although some theorists claim there's no such thing as a flash of insight, because true innovation emerges only after a long incubation process, brain research tells us otherwise. There is indeed a spark before it happens. No matter how long it has been incubating, a snap insight truly pops. It's a thought climax.

INSIGHT VERSUS AHA!

Just to differentiate insight from a snap, here is an example of an “ah!” versus an “aha!” An ah! moment can alter perception without an impetus to an immediate act. In 1989, Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan was studying temperament in babies. He placed them in unfamiliar (but safe) circumstances and watched their reactions. He predicted that “high-reactors” would continue to be sensitive, growing up to become shy and anxious teenagers and adults. Baby number 19 was a prime example. In a new surrounding, she incessantly cried and flailed her arms. As she grew up, she was so disturbed by her environment so much of the time that she became a reclusive, fidgety musician who reported being highly anxious. From his studies, Kagan realized that temperament is essentially hardwired rather than learned. As a result of this insight, he looked at people differently.12 This was a cognitive shift that many have labeled an aha! moment. However, the insight, while changing Kagan's awareness, did not press him into action or invention. Thus, it is not what I'd refer to as a snap.

The snap is exciting and full; it feels like something has suddenly been given birth to. It's a peak experience, a payoff, a mental sweet spot. It doesn't just change our ideas; it offers a course of action. We see this in the account of danger and survival involving a firefighter named Wagner “Wag” Dodge.13 On August 5, 1949, he led sixteen men into Montana's rugged Mann Gulch. Conditions had been unusually dry that season, with record high temperatures in the high 90s—the perfect condition for a storm front. On this day, a fire had burned through many acres in Mann Gulch, and a thunderstorm had formed that could ignite others. Dodge instructed his crew to get ready.

With nine years of experience at this job, Dodge was aware of the dangers, but every man on his team had battled blazes that summer and knew the ropes. The youngest was seventeen, and a few were World War II veterans. They rode in a C-47 plane until the pilot located a safe landing spot. One man felt anxious and opted to return with the plane, while the others parachuted out to the ravine below.

On the ground, they discovered that they had no map. In addition, the radio had been destroyed when its parachute had malfunctioned. These were important items, but not mandatory. Dodge believed that a firefighter already on the ground nearby would have a map.

It was late afternoon, and they expected to work through the night. To a man, they were confident they could deal as successfully with this fire as they had with others before. They walked single-file into the woods, meeting up with the other firefighter, but he told them some bad news: he had no map. Dodge knew they would have to make it work without one.

He approached the fire line and instructed the others to wait until he could check the area. He walked toward it on his own, and it wasn't long before he realized that this fire was moving faster than he'd expected. Much faster. A gusty ground wind gushed oxygen that pushed the flames directly toward him. Turning back toward the men, Dodge retreated. He found them and told them to go farther down the gulch, toward the river. On his own, he went to retrieve food that he'd left at the landing zone. When Dodge rejoined the others, he found them scattered. As he tried to pull them together, he discovered an abundance of burning embers that blocked his proposed escape route. He reversed course again, urging everyone to run. When he realized that their equipment was slowing them down, he ordered everyone to drop whatever they were carrying and move. As the fire raced toward them, they knew their lives were now on the line. Suffocating heat surrounded them, and flames in every tree and bush cut them off from the river. They moved into an area of tall, dry grass just as Dodge saw a grass fire sweeping toward them. Wind-swept grass fires burn faster than any man can run. He knew that unless he could think of something, they were doomed. He estimated he had a minute or less.

The wall of fire, sucking up the grass, roared louder, popping tree sap and sending out a swirl of hot embers and choking smoke. It looked as if there were no options. But Dodge had an idea. He knelt down, retrieved a book of matches, and ignited a small circle of grass. He intended to burn away the grass—the fire's fuel—from an area that could contain his whole crew. The fire would then jump over them. In short order, Dodge burned out this tight safety zone. He moved into its center, urging the others to join him. Placing a wet cloth over his face, he pressed himself against the smoldering ground. He felt the blazing heat surround and move over him, but he remained unburned. Holding the cloth, he took shallow breaths, waiting and trying to endure the scorching heat. Finally, it passed. When Dodge thought it was safe, he raised himself and looked around. No one was close. He stood up, expecting to find his men. But he was alone.

Apparently, the others had panicked and run, or had misunderstood his intent. Two had made it to a stretch of rock that offered the same type of safety zone, but the fire had overtaken thirteen men. Just an hour after they had confidently set forth to contain the fire, they had burned to death.

Later, Dodge's surviving companions said that when they saw what he was doing, they figured he'd lost his mind. Instead, he'd had a lifesaving snap based on years of training and an abundance of knowledge about the behavior of fire. When asked to explain it, Dodge said, “It just seemed the logical thing to do.”14 It was not guesswork. Dodge had had experience with fires, as well as years of disciplined study. He had read about how others before him had saved themselves from similar grass fires. When he'd needed it, the right knowledge had been there. In a snap. His aha! moment was the instantaneous flash of insight delivered from his store of knowledge and experience.

BRAIN SNAPS

Sudden insight involves a complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical thinking does. The formula is simple: one must have specific knowledge and experience, a challenge within one's field of expertise, an effort to meet the challenge, and a period of mental surrender. Both the left and right hemispheres of the brain must be activated to work together. While many people believe that such insight is completely random, those who apply themselves know better. Snaps can't be forced, but they can be prompted—even in desperate life-threatening situations.

In many endeavors, deliberate practice outpaces innate talent. Researcher Anders Ericsson interviewed seventy-eight musicians and found that, by age twenty, the most accomplished had spent an average of five thousand more hours of practice than their counterparts. But the key was this: their practice involved rewarding engagement in the pursuit of achievement, not hours of mechanical drudgery. That's why they had logged so much more practice time. They loved it!15 Attitude matters: the desire to take on a challenge, to pay attention, and to improve is paramount.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has studied innovation in many different disciplines, has found that people who learn to control their inner experience can influence the quality of their lives. This involves being engaged with activities with an eye toward the future. “The best moments,” he says, “usually occur when a person's body is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”16

He tells the story of a man named Joe who worked in a factory that assembled railroad cars. Although factory labor might seem the antithesis of creativity and purpose, Joe did find a way to make his work meaningful. While his coworkers could not wait to leave at the end of each day, viewing their job as merely a means to support themselves and their families, Joe adopted a different attitude. He perceived his workplace as a series of challenges. He wanted to learn the nature and function of each and every piece of equipment in the building. Eventually, he was called on to fix some of these pieces, and he found this work quite satisfying. He looked forward to going in each day and did not watch the clock as the others did. Moment by moment, he reaped rewards. Every hour of his day felt to him like quality time. He felt stimulated and useful. Rather than give in to the boredom of routine, he took control and found a way to create.17

We focus our psychic energy toward achievable but challenging goals, Csikszentmihalyi found, and as we get closer we expand them. This inspires vigilance for opportunities. As each step rewards us, we're motivated to keep striving.

Parents can instill this edge-of-the-seat attitude in their children from a young age. Teaching children to move toward challenge via self-reward and a sense of adventure can yield early and regular snap dividends. Still, any of us can also cultivate this sense of adventure later in life by adopting certain habits. Training the brain for the type of neural activity that incubates problem solving has no age limit. In fact, the brain's neuroplasticity means we can create new neural circuits to support new directions at almost any age.

Among the initial steps is to experience a perceptual shift. Not all perceptual shifts are snaps, but all snaps involve a perceptual shift. In simple terms, a perceptual shift can arise from learning a new fact that changes the meaning of something you thought you understood. Here's an amusing example: Groucho Marx once said, “I shot an elephant in my pajamas.” You might imagine him in his pajamas shooting an elephant until he adds, “How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.” With this added information, you see the first remark differently (making the joke work). You've just had a perceptual shift. Thirteen-year-old Hart Main was watching his sister sell candles for a school fundraiser. He didn't care for the feminine scents, so he joked that someone should sell candles that males would enjoy. It was an inspired moment. With his mother's encouragement, he created candles for men—the ManCan. They smell like pizza, bacon, smoking pipes, and baseball gloves. Now he's an entrepreneur with a successful business. Making a joke about an existing product had given Main a perceptual shift that offered an idea no one had yet fully exploited.18

The reason this experience is important is because it signals mental flexibility. Remember the Harvard med students. Their success in improving their diagnostic skills relied on their ability to have perceptual shifts. Seeing things from more than one angle enabled them to consider alternate diagnoses.

Perceptual shifts can be developed with exercises that guide them. For example, you might look at a fork, which you would typically view as a utensil for eating. Now, try to think of other uses to which you could put that fork. Do the same with other common objects, like a pencil or a tin can. A fork could hold up a sagging plant. A pencil could dig a hole in dirt. A tin can, used for food, could become a pencil holder or a primitive telephone for kids.

Cognitive psychologists often use ambiguous pictures to provoke a perceptual shift. Recall the picture that features the side view of two identical faces looking at each other. Initially, you notice the faces, but when you learn that the space between them forms a vase, you now see the vase clearly, and the face details recede. The vase was always there, but you may not have noticed it until after you learned about it. A famous personality assessment, the Thematic Apperception Test, was designed from this concept to assist with insight during treatment. This “projective” test uses a series of ambiguous pictures about which a person being tested must offer a dramatic story. (One card is blank.) It should include what led up to the event, what the picture shows happening, what the characters are feeling, and the story's outcome. The subject's tale is not the only possible one, so it helps to reveal facets of the individual's personality. A variety of such exercises will pop up in this book because snapping relies on mental flexibility.

Taking delight in disciplined study is the key to successful snaps because it thrusts us right into the process. Each accomplishment strengthens motivation so that success breeds success. Quick apprehension comes from knowledge and awareness that has been ingrained during education and training. Thus, our preparatory state influences whether and how often we will snap. Once the skill is developed, quick decisions become second nature and eureka moments more likely. Hans Lippershey, a seventeenth-century optician, is a good example. There are several different stories about his flash of insight, but one holds that he observed two children who were using a pair of lenses from eyeglasses to better see a weather vane in the distance. He watched them hold the lenses in line with each other to magnify the effect, and because of what he knew about the function of lenses, Lippershey recognized the possibilities. He placed a similar set of lenses into a tube, inventing the refracting telescope.19

Here's another one: Elisha Otis worked as a mechanic in a bed factory. The owner required a cargo hoist for heavy equipment, so Otis applied himself to devising a way to ensure that the mechanism would be safe. He realized that a spring would cushion the platform in the event the rope broke, so he created the first elevator brake. His invention gave builders the assurance they needed to create taller buildings.20

Prior training or experience in an area incubates “prepotent candidates” (clusters of knowledge that could offer solutions for specific problems) for epiphanies, increasing our control and decreasing the impact of chance. To generate the spark that ignites flash strategy, trust in our judgment is crucial, and this comes from the excitement of achievement. It turns focused effort into an engaging process with rich dividends.

Let me elaborate now on the three steps. Once we've made the proper preparation, there are three key parts to this process:

  1. vigilantly scanning the information that pours into our consciousness every day,
  2. sifting it for what will work best for our goals, and
  3. letting our inner lives digest and solve the problems.

Then, snap! We might receive the eureka insight, image, solution, or formula that could start a new business, provoke a world-shattering discovery, save lives, or even save the world. In the following chapters are inspiring stories in many different areas. Interspersed with them are the psychological and neurological dynamics that clarify how snaps occur, and also how you can trigger them in your own life or work. We'll look at the role of memory, the dynamics of right-and left-brain coordination, the quirks of human attention, and the importance of exposure to diverse subject areas.

KEY POINTS