February 20, 1986

How To Improve Your Aha! Power

How’s you’re aha! Power?

Aha! is the buzz-word used by psychologists to describe creative insight. It illustrates the exclamation we utter when we suddenly behold the answer to a perplexity.

Archimedes had extra aha! when he perceived the solution to a physics problem while taking a bath. He was so excited he jumped from the tub and ran naked through the streets of Athens shouting, “ Eureka!” (I have found it.)

All of us have aha! to some degree. It enables us to develop satisfying solutions to the problems of life. Creativity is the ability to combine experience and knowledge in new ways, new to the thinker-upper, at least. When these ways are new and satisfying to others we call the thinker-upper a writer, executive, artist, scientist, composer, engineer or successful parent.

Aha! power is not necessarily correlated with quickness of thought, according to Martin Gardner, editor of the popular Mathematical Games column in “Scientific American.” A slow thinker can solve a problem creatively just as well, if not more so, than a fast thinker.

Nevertheless, some people are more creative than others. Here is a simple exercise to test your aha!. Time allowed: 3 minutes.

The Aha! Test

• My father was caught in the rain without hat or umbrella. There was nothing over his head, and his clothes got soaked. Yet, not a hair on his head got wet. Why?
• Figure out this problem in diplomatic relations. If an airliner crashed exactly on the U.S.-Canadian border, where would authorities be required by international custom to bury survivors?
• Mr. Smith got up before daylight. In order not to awaken his wife he dressed in the dark. In his dresser drawer he had ten blue socks and ten red socks mixed together. How many socks would he have to choose to be sure of getting a mixed pair?
• If one face of a cube is 2 inches by 2 inches, what is the total square inches of all eight faces?
• Can you throw a tennis ball - without bouncing or hitting it - so that it goes a short distance, comes to a dead stop, then reverses and goes the opposite way?
• Mr. Gotrocks offered a prize of one million dollars to the driver whose car finished LAST in a race. Ten drivers entered the contest but were puzzled. “How can we race?,” said one. “We will all just go slower and slower, and the race will never finish.” Suddenly one of the drivers exclaimed, “Aha! I know how we can manage it.” How?

The answers: (1) father is bald, (2) we don’t bury survivors, (3) three socks, (4) 24 inches, a cube has six faces, (5) toss the ball into the air, (6) the drivers switched cars.

Cultivating Creativity

If you figured out quickly two correct answers, you have average creative ability. Four correct answers puts you in a superior class. If you answered all the questions correctly you shouldn’t be wasting your time reading idiosyncratic newspaper columns.

If your score was less than perfect, take heart. Creativity can be cultivated to your enjoyment and advantage.

The trick is to learn to think in an unconventional, playful way. As babies learn to walk, they discover a new and amusing world by bending over and peeking between their legs. Familiar objects are upside down.

As we learn to stand erect, mind our manners and memorize the multiplication table, we lose the ability to stand on our head and see things differently. Sometimes the answer to our problems is simply the reverse of what we thought it should be.

Did you chuckle when you discovered the correct answers above? Most people give up on difficult puzzles, but when told the simple answers they will laugh. Why?

Psychologists are not sure, but studies of creative thinking suggest some sort of relationship between creative ability and humor. Gardner believes there is a connection between hunches and delight in play. The spirit of play seems to make one more receptive for that flash of insight into new relationships.

Three Brains

Jack Taylor, a friend who teaches creativity to executives of the Packaging Corporation of America, says we have three brains.

The “retainer” brain is the storehouse of experiences. We forget 90 percent of what we learn during our lifetime. Yet, at maturity, our storehouse contains ten times as much information as the nine million volumes in the Library of Congress.

Our second brain is the “analyzer,” the sizer-upper of new ideas. It is the least used but provides the greatest benefits.

For example, try a Taylor exercise:

• List first ten useful objects you see.
• Now list the things, useful or not, that you value most in your life.
• Check the ORIGIN of the items on both lists.

Ponder this statement: “Ideas are the beginning of everything that men want from life.”

Creative ideas -- and expressions of thought -- do not exist until they are communicated to others.

I will explore aha!-how to expand it and communicate it-during nine Friday morning workshops sponsored during October and November by the Charlotte County adult education program.

We will discuss writing techniques and critique manuscripts -- inasmuch as that is my thing -- but there will be no required composition, exams or grades.

Registration will be 4 p.m. to 7 Tuesday evening at the PGI Civic Center, 1800 W. Marion Ave. Workshops will begin October 3.

You’re invited if you bring your sense of humor with you.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist