images

EARLY TRAINING

Female chess players represent less than 1 percent of world-class champions, yet Hungarian education specialist László Polgár turned all three of his daughters—literally, all his children—into champions. He'd devised a method for raising geniuses before he was even married, confident that he could follow the path of other parents who had accomplished it. Even as a young man, the principle of cause and effect was clear; talent was but a minor part of the equation.

Polgár grew up in a humble home in Budapest, Hungary, under the domination of the Soviet Union. While it was tough for his father to make ends meet, Polgár did not let this get in the way of his dreams, even that of finding the right partner. Polgár's future wife, Klara, lived just across the border in a Hungarian-speaking enclave of the Ukraine. Their families were acquainted, and one day Polgár's mother mentioned that she would bring him with her for a visit. Klara sent a formal invitation on her family's behalf, to which Polgár responded, although he didn't end up traveling there. Klara was delighted to discover that they were both educators. They began an avid correspondence, and in 1965 Klara went to Budapest to meet Polgár. Apparently not shy about revealing his dreams, he told Klara that he hoped to have six children, whom he would train to be highly successful individuals. Klara listened politely but felt no romantic interest. Still, because they shared a passion for education, she continued to correspond. It took a year and a half before Klara decided that Polgár was a man with real vision and devotion. He seemed to sense that she was yielding to him, so he wrote a love letter, punctuating it with a marriage proposal. Then he went to see Klara, and she accepted. The day before their second wedding anniversary in 1969, they had their first child, Susan.

To identify factors in the lives of successful people, the Polgárs have together analyzed hundreds of biographies of great intellectuals. It was clear to them that the most compelling common denominator among great people was early and intense training. Mozart's father, Leopold, set the example. Leopold Mozart was himself an accomplished musician—a composer, violinist, conductor, and teacher. Noticing signs of musical ability in his children, he started training his oldest child, Nannerl, when she was seven. Wolfgang, just three, watched them and began to imitate Nannerl on the piano. This drew Leopold's attention. Under his daily lessons, the child excelled. Three days before his fifth birthday, Wolfgang required just half an hour to learn his first musical composition. Soon, he was composing bits of music himself. Leopold let his own career slide in order to prepare his two talented children to tour the courts of Europe. This included daily lessons and an ambitious concert schedule. As he had hoped, they became quite famous. The making of young Wolfgang into a musical “miracle” became Polgár's model.

Polgár believed that training had more influence on Mozart's gift than had innate genius. Of course, many of us would not dismiss Mozart's genes, since his father was an accomplished musician. Be that as it may, Polgár believed strongly in training and discipline, so he set a course similar to Mozart's for his own children. Still, Susan was a girl. All the biographies had been about great men. The Polgárs were not certain the same approach would work with girls. Polgár decided to give it a try, but this proved easier said than done.

Susan was a hyperactive child, unable to focus for more than a few minutes. This was hardly conducive to a rigorous training regimen based in discipline, but Polgár was patient. He wanted Susan to find the thing that would engage her. He let her lead the way. She didn't settle on anything until she was four years old, but when she did, she was hooked. One day, she went looking for a new toy and discovered a chess set in a cupboard. The small pieces were strange and intriguing, so she begged her mother to show her how to play with them. Klara told her to ask her father. When Polgár came home that evening, Susan ran to him. She wanted to know right now what to do with the chess pieces.

Polgár enjoyed chess as an occasional hobby. He sat down with Susan and picked up some pieces, explaining that they were part of a game. Then, despite its complexity, he decided to teach her the game. He thought it might be the perfect medium for his method. Susan was at the right age. If it held her attention, the game was sufficiently challenging for her to be able to develop real skill. He would also be able to quickly see the results of his training and to track them as she progressed. In addition, there were competitions in their own city that could test her abilities and afford opportunities to play with opponents who could challenge her.

For a while, Susan recalls, they played a game called “pawn wars.”1 In this way, Polgár introduced each chess piece, one at a time. Susan became absorbed in learning; it helped to calm her and direct her powers of concentration. Polgár created checkmate puzzles, setting up the chessboard for the end of a game and asking her to figure out how the players had reached this point. He then taught Susan about checkmate traps.

Klara agreed that chess could be a terrific platform for their experiment in early education. It did not deter the Polgárs that few females—as noted above, less than 1 percent—had ever achieved top status in chess championships. Their enterprise was about the use of discipline and goals, not about developing latent talent. They realized that they had not started as early as Leopold Mozart with young Wolfgang, but they still envisioned great things.

Polgár purchased as many books on chess as he could afford and set up a card file, as well as an index of competitors' tournament results. His file soon filled the shelves of one wall of their home. He gradually worked Susan up to six hours a day of intense play, including having her play speed games while blindfolded. Although Klara was concerned about the intensity of these sessions, Susan thrived. In just six months, she seemed ready to take on adult players.

“Some time after my fourth birthday,” Susan wrote, “I entered my first chess tournament. I remember everybody being shocked that such a tiny little girl wanted to enter the competition.”2

It was a regional tournament at a local club, Varos Meteor. Susan found a partner who agreed to humor her and let her play him, and she won. This didn't sit well with the members, who'd been certain the whole thing was just a joke. They didn't like being humiliated by a little girl not even five years old. However, Polgár was pleased. The experiment that he'd long plotted and planned had come to fruition.

Next was the Budapest championship tournament. Susan was the youngest player to enter. She wasn't daunted by any of this; she was having fun. As she played one game after another, she handily won them all. Her finishing score for the championship was 10-0.

The media quickly learned about her and labeled her a wunderkind, which placed her in the spotlight. The Polgárs described their parenting method and took some sharp criticism over it. However, they knew that Susan had chosen this game, and she enjoyed it. No one had forced her to do it, and no one was forcing her into these competitions.

The Polgárs added one more cerebral exercise by enrolling her in a Russian-speaking nursery program. She quickly became bilingual, and added German. Then, at a time when home schooling was rare, the Polgárs applied to the government to be allowed to teach Susan at home. She was already adept in reading, math, and writing—advanced beyond other kids her age. The Polgárs received begrudging permission (and even public ridicule that verged on threats). Every year, Susan easily passed all the required tests that home-schooled children had to take to prove they were keeping up.

To further improve, Susan worked on her visual and motor skills with daily table tennis games. She also studied the great games of past and present chess grandmasters, talked with other coaches, memorized game patterns, and played with a wide variety of opponents. Her father also included sessions for play, even for telling jokes. He believed that laughter, exercise, and fun were important for training a child. When she was ten, Susan became a national female master. The following year, she traveled abroad for her first international tournament. As she met (and beat) chess players from other countries, she was more motivated than ever to improve her game. By this time, Susan could complete a game in less than a minute, play without seeing the board, and play five different games simultaneously in her head. However, the question remained whether this was all due to training or to genius. Susan could very well have had an innate gift. Training another child would help solve the mystery.

Next came Susan's sisters, Sofia and Judit. (In fact, Susan was immersed in a chess game when she first learned that she had a sister). Although it was probably tempting to push one or both toward the same training medium, the Polgárs waited until each one developed an interest and asked to play. Susan continued to spend a lot of time behind closed doors in the “chess” room, but there was a small window through which the other two could peek. They became intrigued. They wanted to play this game, too.

However, the Polgárs wisely withheld the privilege. They believed that the appropriate age for learning chess was five, and they did not want to risk exposing their other two daughters to this rigorous training before they were ready to pursue it seriously. This only whet their appetites. In fact, Klara was now playing, too, so the game created a family bond. The two youngest witnessed the special aura that surrounded the game for some of the family. Once introduced, Sofia and Judit became expert players as well. Susan recalls that even as a very young girl, Judit had started to look for challenges. She had a firm sense of commitment.

In 1984, Susan was proclaimed the number one female chess player in the world, and the following year she beat a grandmaster, becoming the first female grandmaster. Still just a teenager, Susan was featured on the front page of the New York Times.3 At times she qualified to play in male championship tournaments, but the rules of her country prohibited this. One Hungarian leader tried to get her removed from the world rankings, and each time she accomplished one more feat, she faced resistance, both nationally and internationally. “I did not give up the fight,” she says.4 Her bravery and persistence helped to create inroads for her sisters, but some people were angry that three girls from the same family were getting so much glory. None of this deterred them. They just got better and better at what they loved.

Susan did once learn a tough lesson: outside interests could undermine focus. In a match in Monaco, she had included her boyfriend on her team. At first, she played to her usual level, winning her games and maintaining the lead. But she sensed something amiss with her boyfriend and could not shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen. She thought he was acting strangely, but when Susan questioned him he refused to tell her anything. The suspense divided her attention. Unable to sleep, her concentration failed. “The anticipation and mystery took a huge toll on me physically, mentally, and emotionally,” she later wrote, “my head was a complete mess.”5 She lost her aggressive edge, just hanging on during each game while she tried to repair the relationship during rest periods. Her opponent drew even with her score. In a best-of-eight match, they were 4–4. Allowed two play-off games, Susan won the first one but lost the second. They had two more play-off games, and Susan again won the first one. She had but to win one more to become the world champion. But her feelings got the better of her. Despairing over her emotional problems, Susan once again allowed her opponent to draw even.

This now put them into a situation, according to the rules, where luck rather than skill would decide: the judges would draw lots. Susan lost. She never forgot this difficult lesson. She believed she could have maintained her advantage if she hadn't allowed her personal problems to interfere. It was a hard lesson, but it offers an important insight about snapping: the more intense and attuned the focus, the better the momentum. Divided attention is a poor medium for seizing an aha! moment and taking quick action.

Susan competed against some of the world's most skilled male players—Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer among them—proving wrong the popular notion floating around the chess world that the female brain is not equipped for high-level play. Susan's sisters accomplished many of the same things. Twelve-year-old Judit won eight competitions in a row, while Sofia beat four grandmasters.

Of the three, Judit, with her intense spirit of competition, was deemed the strongest female player in the history of the game. This is due to a number of factors, all of which are relevant for the best conditions for innovative snaps. From birth, Judit was exposed to a chess-playing household, exemplifying the principle that whatever surrounds us educates our emotions. Although she did not start to play until she was five, she watched her sisters and traveled with the family to their tournaments. Her older sisters enjoyed mentoring her. By age seven, she could play with a blindfold, and when she was nine, she played five tournament-level players simultaneously—blindfolded—and beat them all! By fifteen, she became the youngest grandmaster ever, beating Bobby Fischer's 1958 record. She also beat Garry Kasparov, who was considered at this time to be the strongest player of all time, and she was the first female to be among the chess world's Top Ten. In 1988, the three sisters together won the Women's Olympiad for Hungary.

The Polgárs believed that Sofia possessed the most innate talent. One night, when Polgár had found her playing chess, he told her to leave the pieces alone. “They won't leave me alone,” she'd insisted. When she was fourteen, Sofia shocked the chess world in 1989 when she defeated a string of Soviet grandmasters and achieved the highest performance rating of any chess player, male or female, in any open tournament in chess history.

However, talent or not, Sofia proved to be the least enticed. For her, the daily discipline became rote. Although she won her first national title when she was just five years old, as Susan watched Sofia develop, she thought that her sister did not have the same focus. “She liked playing chess, but the analytical part was a burden to her…. She was striving too much to find beauty.”6

Sofia developed other interests, especially art, which diminished her commitment to the game. “I could give up easier than Judit,” she said. “I never worked as hard as she did.”7

Thus, Sofia's story offers insight to the mysteries of snapping. She could apply herself when she wanted to, and did pile up a number of titles and records, but apparently she did not have a driving desire. Mastery, it seems, is not necessarily about talent, just as Polgár had suspected. Mastery can be taught. It could easily be argued that all three girls were innately gifted with high spatial intelligence. Still, even if this is true, Polgár guided them to the pinnacle in their area, something that likely would not have happened without his vision and dedication, as well as the girls' own sense of motivation. In fact, after Polgár published a book on his method, the number of child chess prodigies increased. Leopold Mozart had also made his method public, and in his day the youthful development of musical mastery increased across Europe. It seems to be the case that exceptional performance is strongly associated with training and with attitude.

Discipline, motivation, and immersion improve the activities of scanning and sifting. They facilitate tapping the brain's other side.

MEMORY MUSCLES

Chess requires its players to think critically along several levels: know the rules, anticipate potential moves, focus on visual-spatial angles, and decide which move in several scenarios is best. Once the knowledge base is established (with many thousands of configurations), reasoning becomes second nature. Just a glance at the board can provide information about numerous moves. As Susan Polgár said, “Once you have a winning position, play with your hands not your head. Trust your intuition.”8

Deliberate practice, such as the Polgár girls undertook, means more than just rote activity: it involves critical feedback, trying new things to feed momentum, and stretching oneself to meet ever greater challenges. Being fully attentive is an important factor. The brain engages with meaningful stimuli and embraces novelty. Deep and focused concentration develops its neural circuits for increased speed and fluidity. Focus, challenge, engaged practice: these items are essential preparation for snapping.

Research on the brain activity of master chess players reveals that people who can develop this degree of expertise have developed a unique relationship with their memory system. Essentially, we have three types of memory: sensory memory lasts just a few seconds, short-term (or working memory), a little longer, and long-term, indefinitely.

Typically, working memory is transient and limited to a few items at any given time, which allows it to stay fluid so we can react to new situations without information overload. Whatever we remember within this frame can be easily displaced by new information. (A common sitcom joke plays off this: while one person tries to remember a phone or license number, another mentions a date, which dissolves the first person's efforts.) To get along in life, we need a memory source that allows us to recall things on a short-term basis, such as when we read a menu, find our way in a new building, or drive to a destination. Psychologist George Miller published a seminal paper in 1956 regarding the “magical number seven, plus or minus two” in which he identified the capacity of short-term memory retention as approximately five to nine items, or “chunks.”9 However, we're not quite as mentally limited as this sounds.

Miller thought it should be possible to increase our capacity for this type of memory by recoding groups of what he called “low-information” content items into a smaller number of “high-information” content items. “A man just beginning to learn radio-telegraph codes,” he wrote, “hears each dit and dah as a separate chunk. Soon he is able to organize these sounds into letters and then he can deal with the letters as chunks. Then the letters organize themselves into words, which are still larger chunks, and he begins to hear whole phrases.”10 The telegraph operator goes from an inexperienced trainee who can recall only a few symbols to an experienced technician who can remember dozens of coded phrases.

To illustrate, Miller described an experiment that had been undertaken in 1954, in which subjects were trained to listen to a string of binary digits and mentally organize them into groups of five. They were then to recode each group with a name, and work on remembering the names. In this manner, some subjects were able to recall up to forty binary digits. In other words, they created meaningful groups that assisted their memory retention. “Recoding is an extremely powerful weapon,” Miller concluded, “for increasing the amount of information that we can deal with.”11

One such strategy is called “chunking,” because it organizes pieces of information into chunks that the brain can easily digest and retain. It recodes them into manageable units of perception and meaning. For example, color codes can quickly convey threat level. In fact, Joshua Foer describes in Moonwalking with Einstein his experience at the US Memory Championship, where he learned how to remember with ease typically difficult items of information. Following the model of Cicero, a famous statesman in ancient Rome, Foer discovered that relying on weird or colorful image associations made storing and recalling information easier. His example illustrates that almost anyone can improve their memory.12

Expert knowledge is generally organized for a specific purpose, with relevant patterns: “Chess masters have been shown to recall the layout of boards not as separate pieces but as functional clusters…expert readers see whole words and even phrases, not the letters in a word; expert musicians recall passages, not notes; expert waiters recall patterned combinations of meal components, not separate menu items.”13 This means that as we gain experience in some activity, we organize a knowledge base that becomes second nature.

We're assisted in recoding by a neurological device that structures chunks into hierarchical sequences. During the 1980s, psychologists studying motor control demonstrated that each seemingly linear sequence contained subsequences, each of which contained yet more subsequences. In other words, the brain organizes information in priority levels. This helps to store the information in an overall structure for later retrieval.14 The greater the expertise in some activity, the more spontaneous the organization. That is, in new situations, we can snap right into a familiar pattern, making our abilities in this situation faster and more fluid. Sometimes it can be so fast and automatic that we fail to feel the rush of insight: “I know this!”

A “chunk,” then, is an organization of elements that have a strong neural association with one another. Anyone can pack a lot into his or her own chunks. To experience this, look at the fourteen letters printed below for about ten seconds:

XIBMSATMTVPHDX

Now cover these letters and try replicating them in the space below:

You may have discovered that it's difficult to remember them all in the right order. This occurs because they don't mean anything. But if you chunk them into recognizable groups, it's easier:

X IBM SAT MTV PHD X

Via six “meaning units,” you can better recall the fourteen letters. But there's more to chunking than this. Instead of just seven distinct items, we can make each item stand in for a more detailed grouping of information. It's like using a series of computer icons to represent a set of instructions. They're visual shortcuts that relieve the pressure from our memory systems. We look at a picture of a folder with a specific label, for example, and we can recall its contents without having to sort through them all. Mobile devices rely on representing whole systems with a single brief graphic, an icon. The diagnostic manual for mental health experts uses specific codes to represent a long list of symptoms. When items are categorized, they're easier to remember.

Imagine playing a memory game like this: A number of items are presented on a tray. One is removed outside your view, and you must decide what's missing. If the items were all jumbled on the tray, the task would be difficult, but if they were grouped according to color, size, category, or shape, the task would be comparatively easier.

So, chunking involves reorganizing or representing large amounts of information in manageable ways: we pack each of the five to nine items with much more than its surface value. To chunk successfully, the chosen system must be perceptually simple or meaningful. Chess grandmasters, for example, can recall roughly fifty thousand to one hundred thousand chunks of information about the game, derived from their experience with the layout of a chessboard and the function of each piece. They chunk a given position with numerous possible strategies.

A study of chess masters that was undertaken in the 1990s found that a “template” theory better explained chess expertise. The researchers concluded that chess masters had developed large retrieval structures in long-term memory. A template, or recognizable pattern, would allow for the development of greater memory capacity than chunking and would frame selective search strategies.15 It seems that, as people devote themselves to a skill, they develop knowledge-based schemas that become long-term templates that influence their brain's encoding system. Information gets chunked, and chunks evolve into complex data structures that enhance perceptual speed. One thing that sets chess experts apart from amateurs is their eye movements. They search more deeply for strategies because their templates more effectively reduce the possible number of move sequences: they more rapidly recognize patterns and explore moves and consequences. Their mental templates augment short-term memory with “slots that can be filled rapidly with information about the current position.”16

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons are cognitive psychologists. They experiment with cognitive illusions to study some elusive aspects of memory. Aware of experiments that had demonstrated the prodigious memory of chess masters, they tested an acquaintance who was a grandmaster. They allowed him to see a chess position from an obscure master game for just five seconds. Then they asked him to re-create it on a board. Despite his brief exposure to the game setting, he was able to do this task from memory with a near 100 percent accuracy. This feat, they stated, went well beyond the typical seven-item limit. At their request, he repeated it several times and then explained how he combined the pieces into groups based on their relationships to the others. “In essence, by recognizing familiar patterns, he stuffed not one but several pieces into each of his memory slots.”17 Chabris and Simons add that by honing his skill with this game, he also had developed more vivid mental imagery, more accurate spatial reasoning, and greater visual memory.

Still, only when the chess pieces were meaningfully arranged into patterns that chess players used could the subject accomplish this feat. When the pieces were arranged randomly, the player's memory proved to be no better than anyone else's. He no longer had a practiced database on which to call. Like other chess grandmasters, he could perform well within his specialized arena, but this did not make him a savant for other memory tasks.18

In an analysis of four hundred games that compared grandmasters playing regular chess to the same experts playing blind chess, the rate of errors made was nearly equal. “The Grandmasters had trained so well they could perform their art without even looking at its elements.”19 Although they had to work hard at gathering a powerful mental database, once they had it, they could let themselves flow into their skill. The same thing applies to any other activity, because the brain has created neuro-pathways to support the focused activity, and practice has reinforced them.

Masters of a discipline or skill can tap faster and more fluidly into their stored information than most other people. Because they're aware of the range of strategies for any given situation, they can calculate ahead for swift decision making. Their memory skills and capacity may be no better than those of the average person, but they can exploit a well-organized system of neurological connections without the restrictive impediment of conscious analysis.

All experts chunk what they know into manageable categories. This gives them quicker access to information when they need it, and thus a greater ability to snap. Intense study in a specific enterprise provides the framework for this type of recoding. Learning music, chess, medicine, or any similar activity combines the flexibility of working memory with the durability of memory storage. Built around neurological templates that encode information about familiar patterns (moves and positions), accomplished people develop the ability to simultaneously store and evaluate.

WAYS OF KNOWING

Earlier, I mentioned Howard Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences. While developing it, he studied prodigies. He describes a scenario in his book Art, Mind, and Brain that features three four-year-olds, each of whom could play some exquisite musical piece. They were considered prodigies because they could perform well beyond the skill level of their peers and had developed these skills at an accelerated rate. However, studies of the minds of such “genius” children, Gardner points out, have long failed to identify the spark of creativity. Too often, traditional researchers on intelligence have equated ability with a high score on a cognitive IQ test. They err by viewing intellect as a seamless entity and creative skill as a fixed trait.

Gardner found that prodigies like these children move through a specific domain at a rapid rate. Heredity plays a part, as do role models and cultural support. In addition, some domains are self-contained, with little interaction with the outside world. Individuals can progress quickly, without much hindrance, because they rely on only themselves and their own tenacity. However, some domains require years of exposure before mastery can be achieved, as well as interaction with a professional world. In addition, in any given culture, some domains are unavailable or undeveloped. “Even the most gifted mathematician cannot make genuine innovations if he lives in a culture where mathematics has been little developed.”20 Gardner adds that while Mozart was gifted, his renown may have been due to a certain amount of serendipity: a “special fit” between his flair and the style of music preferred during his era.

He's a good example of what Gardner conveys about prodigy. Mozart's own descriptions of his process also correspond well with what we've discovered about accomplished chess players like the Polgárs. In addition, he assists in our understanding of the development of snaps as a benefit of expertise.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart thought he could compose more readily when he was in a positive frame of mind, which for him meant being active. He liked to travel or to take a walk after a good meal. When he was alone, of “good cheer,” the ideas that most pleased him arrived unpredictably, and no matter what he was doing, he could always retain them to write down later. If he was in a good mood, feeling creative, he could feel his music grow and change until it reached the stage that, for him, felt final. All this took place in his mind, much like a Zen master, before he wrote anything down. He had no idea how they came to him. He could never force them. Often, they were so natural he would hum them without realizing it until someone told him. “Provided I am not disturbed,” he wrote to a friend, “my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind…. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them as it were all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell.”21 To him it resembled a “lively dream.”22

The fluent ease with which Mozart composed music displays the way constant rehearsal made the process and product a natural part of him. While the early stages can be difficult, since he began as a child to inculcate the process and rules of his era, his malleable brain was able to accommodate the musical impetus quite readily. One biographer stated that witnesses had reported how Mozart would write a complex piece of music as rapidly as one might write a letter—as if he were just reading it out as his mind's eye saw it. Nothing seemed to disturb his dedicated focus. However, Mozart also played with many different combinations of music, humming fragments, pondering them, or playing something on the piano. In other words, he would immerse. He became the music. While this is not necessarily the only way a prodigy might approach the creative process, for Mozart it was effective. It was the rhythm into which he fell and the one on which he continued to rely. He recognized rules but tried out many other possibilities until he was able to produce exquisite deviations that made listeners shiver with delight.

For Mozart, it was musical composition. For someone else, it might be the preparation of a great feast, the direction of a film, or the ultimate challenge in chess. It requires the constant exercise of memory, a solid knowledge of one's subject area, the ability to stay on track, a certain amount of energy, and the courage to try things out; that is, to place your own signature on them. Creative aha! moments occur so regularly along the way that they seem enmeshed with all the rest.

George Keeler, an avid outdoorsman, wanted to design a better backpack. He had worked at REI, in the camping and hiking department, and one of his responsibilities was to sell backpacks. “I was basically shopping all day,” he said. “When you work with products you love it is easy to pick up on every little nuance and feature. I consider myself to be very detail-oriented. I pay close attention to the final finish of a product or prototype. I'll put on five extra coats of paint when I don't need to, just to get it that much smoother. I'm very picky about every stitch placement and consistency at our factory. Having this mindset is part of the reason I am able to easily visualize a new design rather than [needing] to sketch it out on paper.”23

During his junior year at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, Keeler won the Thalheimer entrepreneurship contest. From his inspiration for a backpack design, he formed a company, George Guest, with one of his friends.

I had to teach myself how to sew on a borrowed neighbor's sewing machine in order to construct a crude prototype to test my design. I took inspiration from the shape of a drawstring bag, but I incorporated my roll-top closure system. The unique thing about this patented design is that it's similar to a roll-top you would see on a waterproof dry bag for kayaking or canoeing, instead of a zipper—you roll it as if you were rolling a paper bag shut. This system keeps water out and is much stronger and more weatherproof than a zipper. It gave my bag a very different feel aesthetically and functionally.

The goal of this system was to gain the weatherproof benefits of a roll-top that was as quick as a zipper. I wanted to design something where you could just roll the top of the bag shut and then use the gravity of the bag to lock it closed. I came up with a system that is closed by pulling a top handle that engages a string system, pulling the ends of the bag shut.

Keeler understands the concept of experience and immersion merging with mental states to produce the aha! moment.

I'd say that 30 to 40 percent of the ideas I had for this particular product came to me when my mind was clear, my eyes were closed, and there were no other distractions around me. Many times I'd have trouble falling asleep in my college dorm—you know those nights when you can't sleep because your mind's on something else? This was often the case for me when I was first designing the bag. When I should have been sleeping, all I could think about was…how can I solve this, redesign that, or change this? Many of the initial breakthroughs that I had were when I was visualizing a particular detail or problem I was facing with the bag design, while I was lying in bed. When I figured something out, I would hop out of bed and immediately record my ideas. Sometimes when I came up with a solution or a new idea it energized me to the point where falling asleep would be impossible. I had no choice but to get out of bed and continue to flesh out my new idea.

I also had a few breakthroughs in the shower or while driving. I think this had to do with the fact that both of these daily tasks are very habitual and require little to no thought. They are such a normal part of my routine that I don't have to think about what I am doing. Instead I created a 3-D image in my mind of the aspect of the bag I was working on. If you could project these mental prototypes they would look very similar to an Autocad model, except in color. I have never been a huge fan of computer-aided design programs like Autocad because they have too many restrictions. It's a lot easier for me to test a new concept mentally than it is to figure out how to modify something on a computer.

I'm decent at sketching and drawing, but 50 percent of the design process occurs mentally for me. I can picture how I want to construct it, and I'll write down a few notes, and maybe a crude sketch, but the real breakthroughs don't start happening until I'm physically working with my hands. This is when I test my mental prototypes on the materials I plan on using. A lot of the time, an idea may seem like it will work when I first come up with it, but in reality the characteristics of the leather, canvas, etc. are different than how I pictured them. The prototyping process reveals these issues and forces me to rethink, reinvent, and sometimes to start over. This is why only 50 percent of the design process occurs mentally for me. Every other aspect of a new product comes to life during the trial and error process of construction.

When I design new products, like leather belts, bracelets, and other bags, I am not always enthused by the new idea. When I'm thinking about a new way to buckle a belt or a new look for a leather camera strap, I'll mull it over, not overly interested, but the second I get that snap, and the solution becomes clear, I'm instantly energized. I then get to my studio as fast as possible, where I can start prototyping. Sometime I'll be in the zone for hours. I'll be up until three in the morning and not even know how long I've been there. Once I get that initial spark, it locks me in and I can't stop.

Helping the process along is, of course, the brain—the seat of emotions, of passion and pleasure. So, let's examine the elements. We all have cells—neurons—that form our nervous system, and they rely on chemicals called neurotransmitters that help the entire physiological system to function properly…or not. I want to focus on the neurotransmitter called dopamine. So much happens as a result of this chemical that plays a significant role not just in snapping but also in much of the preparation leading up to these electric aha! moments.

So, how does it work? Dopamine, along with other neurotransmitters like serotonin and melatonin, helps neurons convey information around the brain and from it to other parts of our bodies. In essence, they choreograph the information-processing system. Scientists identified dopamine a century ago, back in 1910, but they've significantly updated their theories about how it works. At first, biologists believed that dopamine played a small role in our feelings or behaviors, that it was merely a helper to more important chemicals. They actually didn't pay much attention to it until the 1950s, when they discovered high levels of dopamine all by itself in areas of the brain where they didn't expect it, particularly in the nucleus accumbens in the forebrain. This region fires up whenever people anticipate a reward.

After a few experiments, researchers realized that dopamine played several roles in the nervous system, and all of them were pretty significant. For one thing, dopamine affects our memories. It is also involved in how we move around. The more scientists have studied it, the more they have discovered. About thirty years ago, they learned that dopamine influences the quality and intensity of the pleasure we feel, whether falling in love, for example, or anticipating something we really want to do. In other words, dopamine helps make our positive experiences even better. At first, we thought it caused pleasure, but recently scientists found that it has a more complex process and is intimately involved whenever we're considering our options.

When we're confronted by novelty, dopamine levels surge, along with those of another neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, triggering the brain's reward system. Thus, we approach with anticipation those behaviors and situations that may feel good, and dopamine in particular provides an edgy high that spurs us to seek that experience again. It also helps us to notice particular stimuli. Thanks to this neurotransmitter, we make a biological investment in life's twists by developing a keen appetite for what's around the bend. Our evolutionary apparatus supports such curiosity.24

Dopamine appears to be heavily involved in helping us to focus. That is, when something important happens, the release of dopamine assists us in being alert to new material so we can make sense of it. Thus, novelty stimulates the brain, which then stimulates us into action. Because dopamine is so involved in the thrill of being alive, it is likely implicated in the sense of engagement with something beyond ourselves that accompanies activities that make us learn and grow.

Yet, to keep a certain balance, the brain also adapts. Dopamine keeps track of whether we actually get what we anticipate getting, and its levels increase or decrease accordingly. It's a gauge. It records how we feel when we anticipate something and later compares what we expected against what we got.

Think about an outing or a trip you'd really like to take. When you feel the sensation of pleasure, that's the dopamine. Some people call it the “dopamine rush.” It jumps right in—to focus you on what you're hoping for. It measures the pleasure you expect to have at your destination. If the actual experience feels as great as you had anticipated, your dopamine levels remain stable: the pleasure is what you'd expected, so your brain thinks that all is well. But if the experience is not as great, your dopamine levels drop, leaving you disappointed. Yet on the other hand, if your trip was even better than you'd hoped, dopamine levels rise and heighten your mood. This was so much better than I could have imagined! So, the quality of your pleasure depends on how well your dopamine gauge functions. It can even inspire you to repeat your experience.

You might also be inspired to act when dopamine levels diminish because you want to avoid the feeling of disappointment and find some way to recoup the pleasure. In addition, research indicates that those people with fewer dopamine receptors in the brain do seek greater levels of stimulation and may thus be vulnerable to addiction or compulsive pleasure seeking.25

Recently we've seen experimental evidence that supports what I just described. Here was the setup: We know we can mentally simulate a possible future event. You just did it, right? And you could probably tell me on a scale from one to five how it felt when you imagined your pleasure trip. It's exactly this ability that allows researchers to set up imagination exercises in which they can manipulate the research subjects' dopamine levels. If we're right, higher levels should increase the pleasure when we think about doing something fun-filled.

Some British researchers tested this in four steps: a rating scale, an imagination exercise, a choice between options, and a final rating scale.26 First, the researchers flashed depictions of eighty vacation spots on a screen, from Hawaii to Greece, and asked subjects to rate on a scale from one to five their expectation of being happy at each place were they to plan a holiday there. Second, the researchers gave the control group a placebo and the experimental group a dopamine enhancer, L-dopa, and asked them all to now imagine being at each spot and then rate their level of pleasure.

The following day, the researchers showed each person sets of destinations that were paired according to their own ratings during phase one. In other words, if someone rated Greece the same as Brazil the day before, they now had to choose between them. The researchers discovered that those who'd anticipated more pleasure while imagining Greece under L-dopa's influence consistently chose Greece, even though they'd initially viewed this destination without L-dopa as equal with Brazil. But the control group showed no such bias. So dopamine appears to have enhanced the anticipation of pleasure sufficiently to have influenced the final choice.

“We had reason to believe that dopamine would enhance expectations of pleasure in humans,” said Dr. Tali Sharot, from the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at the University College London Institute, “but were surprised at the strength of the effect. The enhancement lasted at least twenty-four hours and was evident in almost 80 percent of the subjects.”27

Dr. Shelley Carson, a psychologist affiliated with Harvard University, teaches a course called Creativity: Madmen, Geniuses, and Harvard Students. She has served as a subject matter expert and consultant for the Department of Defense to provide innovative assistance to returning service members. Having studied hundreds of creative individuals, she published Your Creative Brain, in which she outlines the CREATES model of brain activation states, or “brainsets,” for innovation. CREATES, her shorthand for these brainsets, translates to connect, reason, envision, absorb, transform, evaluate, and stream.28 Among her findings is that creativity correlates with eccentricity, and that both might be the result of genetic conditions that increase cognitive disinhibition. In other words, they can process a lot of unfiltered information without being overwhelmed, which gives them a greater range for seeing and combining unique associations. “Cognitive disinhibition,” she surmises, “is also likely at the heart of what we think of as the aha! experience. During moments of insight, cognitive filters relax momentarily and allow ideas that are on the brain's back burners to leap forward into conscious awareness.”29

Carson also describes dopamine's role in this process. Citing a Swedish study that used a PET scan to examine the density of dopamine D2 receptors in the subcortical region of the thalamus in fourteen “divergent thinking” subjects, Carson says that they appeared to have a diminished amount of dopamine bindings compared to what is normally found.30 This condition, Carson believes, might be involved with the decreased cognitive filtering. So, while dopamine plays a role in anticipation and excitement, its part in the information-filtering process might also support a certain type of openness to innovative thinking. Although divergent thinking and focused attention might seem contradictory, having just the right balance between focus that blocks information and focus that allows it might be exactly how an aha! moment is possible. We achieve momentum but also remain open to new connections.

So, what has this to do with snapping? If we look again at the Polgár sisters, we notice how much pleasure they derived from their practice sessions, and in particular from their most engaging challenges. They anticipated with great excitement the idea of participating in tournaments. When they won, they surely felt the dopamine rush. Quite often, the achievement was greater than they had anticipated. Thus, they kept on track, winning honors and titles and taking on even more challenges—except for Sofia, who was not quite as enthralled. But their father emphasized the process of learning over particular accomplishments, which is a good way to trigger dopamine.

People who stay focused on their process grow quite intimate with it over time. They know how it works. They're used to it and can read all the signals. They can sense when they're getting offtrack the way a bloodhound loses a scent. They fully embrace their work, sometimes experiencing more from it than from their relationships with people. Even when engaged in mundane pursuits of daily life, they remain mentally attuned to their projects or goals. Some feel as if they cannot thrive without it. To others, they might seem lonely and solitary, but to them, life feels rich and full of possibility. Thus, at almost any time, they can flash to a strategy that will serve some unexpected purpose.

In the next chapter, we'll return to the subject of memory to more clearly describe how encoding and recoding can assist with snaps. Some of these aha! moments have changed the lives not just of those who had them but of the rest of us as well.

KEY POINTS