The Aesthetics Of Order

Interesting and elegant conceptual photography from Ursus Wehrli:

This video shows how one of the photos sets was made. Watch as the artist organizes a group of sunbathers, and all their gear, into well-ordered groups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBg06Oc5i4&feature=player_embedded

Any lessons here?

Organizing takes work! [Suggestion: the next time you have to organize people and beach equipment on a hot day, don't wear a three piece suit].

Some things are more functional and useful in a disordered state. Think of your desk covered with support materials while engaging in a major project. What's the point of going to the beach to lie in a line and segregate beach toys into individual piles? Maybe certain aspects of your work would be more productive and fun if you allowed more disorder.

Apparent disorder can actually be the true state of order. Again think about the sunbathers. True order is when each sunbather is gathered alongside his or her own beach toys and umbrellas. Not when all the umbrellas are grouped together. Most of us put our pens into one area of a drawer, in a group. Maybe true order is to scatter the pens around the office. Several on the desk, one in a notebook, one in the briefcase, and so on.

Finally, order can be beautiful. But disorder -- even with the same constituents which could be ordered -- may be more beautiful.  Such is the night sky.

(via Kottke)

Psychological Techniques For Boosting Creativity

Looking for ways to increase creativity, methods grounded in actual research?  Take a look at this two part series on psychological techniques to boost creativity.  One of my favorites:

People often jump to answers too quickly before they've really thought about the question. Research suggests that spending time re-conceptualising the problem is beneficial.

Mumford et al. (1994) found that experimental participants produced higher quality ideas when forced to re-conceive the problem in different ways before trying to solve it. Similarly a classic study of artists found that those focused on discovery at the problem-formulation stage produced better art (Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels, 1971).

◊ For insight: forget the solution for now, concentrate on the problem. Are you asking the right question?

So many knowledge workers -- lawyers in particular  -- rush to solve problems, because that's what they're good at. But stopping to thoroughly examine the problem not only serves to identify the real issues at stake.  According to these studies, it also helps apparently stimulates creative thinking.

(via Kotte)

How A Burglar Changed Gravity

The New York Times has an interesting article about a new approach to understanding gravity led by physicist Erik Verlinde. Rather than treating gravity as a separate fundamental force, it can be seen as a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. Basically, gravitational attraction is the result of the universe's natural tendency toward disorder, or entropy. This makes no sense to me, since I think of gravity as an ordering force, coalescing mass and maintaining the proximity of objects in space. But apparently I'm in good company -- the idea is pretty controversial among scientists.

Besides its radical nature, however, what I found interesting was how Verlinde came up with the idea:

That inspiration came to him courtesy of a thief.

As he was about to go home from a vacation in the south of France last summer, a thief broke into his room and stole his laptop, his keys, his passport, everything. “I had to stay a week longer,” he said, “I got this idea.”

Up the beach, his brother got a series of e-mail messages first saying that he had to stay longer, then that he had a new idea and finally, on the third day, that he knew how to derive Newton’s laws from first principles, at which point Herman recalled thinking, “What’s going on here? What has he been drinking?”

When they talked the next day it all made more sense, at least to Herman. “It’s interesting,” Herman said, “how having to change plans can lead to different thoughts.”

So the next time you're forced to change plans, or otherwise bumped off your routine, it may be an opportunity for a breakthrough idea. Try to create some time and space for creativity. And be sure to capture any imaginative sparks so they can flash over later. For more on routines and creativity, see this interesting post from Jack Cheng.

Turn Failures Into Breakthroughs

Is that unexpected result a stupid mistake, or an expression of the truth?  Don't resist anomalous information because it might lead to an epiphany. Jonah Lehrer has the the following advice:

Check Your Assumptions: Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.

Seek Out the Ignorant: Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.

Encourage Diversity: If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.

Beware of Failure-Blindness: It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.

Or as Stephen Covey might say, if things aren't working well, consider whether your paradigm is incomplete on incorrect.

(via Above and Beyond KM)

Is Legal Project Management Going Mainstream?

Jordon Furlong charts recent press on legal project management and thinks it's about to burst on center stage.  He writes:

The day of the haphazard lawyer, who pursues a solution by intuition, experience and the loosest possible timetable, is drawing to a close. In his place is emerging the process-driven lawyer: disciplined, procedural and systematic, who understands that madness lies not in method, but in its absence. Most of us don’t like that idea. We’d much prefer to maintain the image of the ingenious lawyer who triumphs by intellect rather than by procedural discipline. It confirms our belief in our innate intellectual advantage over non-lawyer competitors — and, frankly, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

....

The truth is, much of what lawyers do can be charted, diagrammed and proceduralized, and both the quality and the cost will be better for it. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for smart, creative lawyers in the future. For one thing, systems don’t need to be straightforward and monotonous. More often than not, especially in the law, they’re complex and challenging, and they can easily be made elegant, precise, finely tuned, honed to a keen edge — the imagery of swordsmanship is intentional. And even within systems, a lawyer’s unique judgment, analysis and creativity can emerge.

I think this right and the whole post is worth reading.  And as I've written before, good processes and standardized work facilitate, rather than hinder, creative thinking.

Race to Nowhere: How Are Tomorrow's Lawyers Being Educated?

Several weeks ago, I saw Race to Nowhere, a film screening to small audiences in the San Francisco Bay area. This movie documents the incredible demands we place on elementary and high school children. Many of these kids spend over seven hours a day at school, followed by two or more hours doing activities such as sports, music, or clubs. They visit with tutors. When they return home, they have several hours of homework. This over-scheduling is compounded by an incredible amount of time spent consuming media.

Despite these time commitments, children aren't learning more. Educators must increasingly prepare children for standardized tests in order to comply with state and federal mandates, lest they incur penalties and further budget cuts. Teachers spend less time teaching critical thinking skills, problem solving, and instilling a love of learning. Those passionate about teaching lose interest and burn out. Students cram material for the tests, then purge it from memory.

As a result, kids are a mess. They're stress out and sleep-deprived. Boys get frustrated, begin to dislike school and learning, and alarming numbers drop out.  Girls get depressed, and some develop eating disorders and resort to suicide.

And to what end? While U.S. elementary students perform slightly better on tests than those in other countries, this advantage disappears by high school. Tellingly, even the most academically selective universities - think Harvard, Yale, Stanford -- must remediate half their incoming students. That is, fifty percent of entering freshman at our best colleges lack basic reading, writing, and math skills.

How does this affect the legal profession?

Lawyer Sara Bennett, featured in the film, is co-author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It. She left the legal profession partly out of frustration that incoming members of the bar couldn't do the work without extraordinary levels of handholding.  She argues we are creating generations of adults lacking critical thinking skills and the ability to work independently.  Today's adults are still "studying for the test."

Bennett invites us to consider what might have happened to a kid like David Boies today and references this excerpt from his biography.

And then there's this depressing vinette from Ralph Losey.

If our educational system is as infirm as reported, what type of lawyers will lead in twenty years? Will we be equipped to deal with the future's increasingly complex problems.

I've written about the importance of nuturing creativity in young people so that we can solve humanity's emerging problems. We don't seem to be on track.

Our professional institutions also reinforce the problems in our educational system. Law school admissions still fixate on standardized test scores -- despite being a poor measure of lawyerly ability -- draining the pool of legal talent. Associates are "over-scheduled" with billable hour requirements. The work frequently lacks the depth and intellectual content that promotes growth and satisfaction. Attrition rates were high (at least until the recent economic downturn).

What's the lesson here? Recognize that test scores are not the full measure of a person. Acknowledge the human limits on how long we can work, especially when humans are still growing and developing. Provide nourishment and allow time for rejuvenation. Understand that physical and mental health are prerequisites to academic and professional excellence.

And lawyers, and indeed all professionals, should remember their fundamental responsibility: to resolve society's most difficult problems though -- yes, hard work -- but also though creativity, compassion, and other unquantifiable traits that make us human.

Free Your Mind (and the rest will follow)

David Allen recently wrote (no link available):

I'm lazy and I don't want to think about anything more than it deserves. So my quest became to find the best and most efficient ways to think about things as little as possible. What I found was that by asking a few clarifying questions, and putting the answers in a trusted system, I was able to use my mind more creatively and more strategically for the kind of stuff that really did deserve my mental horsepower.

Using a good system for capturing standard processes allows you to delegate routine thinking to your system, thus freeing up your mind for hard thinking. Contrary to popular belief, a good organizational system enhances creativity.

Most people use a calendar this way. They put appointments and deadlines on their schedule, rather than trying to keep it all in their head. Instead of thinking about when a meeting is scheduled, for example, they focus on preparing for the meeting, or doing something else entirely. By getting the basic information about their schedule on the calendar, it frees them up to think about more important things.

But most people don't appreciate that this method works just as well with tasks. By taking the list of next actions out of your head -- which is usually an impossible thing to keep in your head anyway -- you free up mental RAM for something else. This is particularly true with routine and standardized tasks, which may require little mental energy to do, but tremendous mental energy to keep straight in your head.

And getting tasks into your system minimizes waste. Managing tasks mentally adds little value, and does so at the expense of higher value thinking.  It's like searching for a tool versus using the tool to make something.

D. Mark Jackson

Creativity and Failure

In the last several weeks, I encountered several instances of the same theme:  Creativity Requires Failure. In a recent lecture, legal writing consultant Gary Kinder argued that creative writing is only possible when you set aside your left brain's logical and structured tendencies and allow your right brain to expound. If the left brain jumps in to criticize, it interrupts the flow of ideas. Only through free flowing ideas can one produce greatness.

In a TED presentation, creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson contends creativity can only develop if humans are allowed to regularly fail. (video below) Our educational system, he argues, stymies creative development by judging children's abilities by their performance in math and science, rather than art, music, and dance. Robinson believes the problems facing humanity are so profound as to be solvable only though the next generation's creativity, which we are tasked with nurturing today.

Legal work, of course, allows for very few errors. Same for automobile manufacturing. Hence lawyers' attention to detail and the "error proofing" techniques of automobile manufacturers. For example, Toyota uses many techniques to ensure workers exactingly follow standard workflow.

On the other hand, creativity is essential to good lawyering. Robinson defines creativity as original thoughts that add value. At our best, that's what lawyers do.

Is there a way to ensure error-free work, as well as highly creative-high value work? One solution is to encourage risk taking and boundary stretching within the safety of the office, but apply quality measures before allowing anything to leave the office, either to the client or the court.

D. Mark Jackson