Eureka Moments

We have all had those moments of clarity where ideas, thoughts and solutions to our life’s biggest problems seem to pop into our heads in a continuous stream that cannot be ignored. How nice it would be if we could actually control these events and have them happen at will! Most people would pretty much agree that this “Eureka Moment” (EM) are random and completely beyond human control. How about if I present a case for it being very much in our control, but requires a set of circumstances to be present for that EM to occur?
The reason I am talking about this is because EMs are skillfully crafted moments that can be purposefully trained. We need to have learners who are able to access the full range of their brain power to stimulate critical, logical and intuitive thinking. This, I believe, is a requisite for new people with new ways of thinking that in turn enable the development of new ideas that could quite possibly transform current approaches to living on this planet.
My proposition is that we are not planning in the correct way to reach those EMs. More accurately, we are focusing on the wrong things when we even do plan. I remember this scene in the movie, Men in Black. The hero and a bunch of agents are asked to complete a test on a piece of paper. They are forced to sit in an almost completely enclosed chair that blocks arm movements, which makes it impossible to write. There is a fixed, immovable table in the center, out of reach of anyone sitting on the chair. The chair can be ripped off its base. Whilst the agents try to wriggle around to write on the document, the hero rips the chair off its base, moves it to the table, leans forward and easily completes the test.
The focus of the agents was wrong because they were in the box and yes, I know it is the world’s greatest cliché! This is the famous box that we all seem to be perpetually stuck in. Almost 100% of the time, we stay in the box because our focus and planning are wrong. Let’s get to how we might shift the focus and planning.
My first prerequisite comes from this saying, “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”
This means that when you repeatedly do something, you will gradually learn more and more about it. The many ways of doing things and the expected results – maybe, could be, probably, logically, surely. Now, when you repeat your actions and unexpected things happen… aha… now you will learn. If you monotonously do the same thing, you will become an expert at performing that sequence, but you learn nothing new. It implies that you need to make mistakes in order to enable true learning, something that most education systems and workplaces seem to have forgotten. In fact, current learners and employees are punished for mistakes in a way that makes them never ever want to take the risk again.
Prerequisite number 2 is the forethought for Planned Discovery
Learning occurs during novel experiences, or at least that is the way it should be. When you are confronted with an experience that is a surprise, and one that you did not prepare for, then your curiosity is aroused. If you had expected a set outcome from your actions, and you instead get an outcome that is different, you would want to know what changed. Somehow or the other, your perceptions and your world views have to be altered because you realise that somewhere along the line in your thought processes, an error exists. It could be your factual knowledge, assumptions, variables not accounted for and the host of details that have a causal effect on your perception of the world, but the conclusion is that something needs changing.
You might also have some wrong learning systems, and insist that the outside world is wrong and you always right. You might dismiss the occurrence as a fluke or an accident, and only search for answers that reinforce your own knowledge and ways of thinking – a common habit among learners and human beings.
The implication here is that learners have to start learning by experiencing when and where to apply what types of rules for learning. Most importantly, students can accelerate their learning by participating in Planned Discovery - actively seeking out encounters where they are likely to learn and in the process of doing this; learn to get rid of the habit of looking for knowledge that reinforces preconceived notions about ways of thinking.
Prerequisite number 3 is that “Inexperienced Decision Making is the weakest link, so build experience” to achieve EM
Charles Darwin said "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" and this is quite probably the most dangerous aspect of ignorance.
Look back at work you have done with a team of people, and those that were actually completed and met expected outcomes. How long did it take from planning, up to achieving deliverable outcomes? Consider now repeating the project with all parameters remaining the same, the exception now being experience levels and awareness of previous mistakes. What do you think the timeline will be now?
Research shows that the new timeline would be on the order of quarter to half the previous time.
If the only difference during that the second time was that you had mastered the intricacies of the project, this would suggest that the obstacle to your deliverables was what you didn’t know. It does not mean that you spent all the extra time trying to learn stuff. You probably spent it trying to find a way forward, or being involved in discussions with various experts, in order to get more information. You also probably took wrong turnings, that you would not have taken had you only known.
So it’s not really learning that’s the weakest link – its inexperienced decision making and ignorance. More accurately, it’s inexperience about specific aspects of the problem at hand. Inexperience is the greatest obstacle.
Inexperience applies along multiple lines of reasoning. You can be inexperienced with the particular technologies, inexperienced with the ways in which you could address the problem or opportunity, inexperienced with a better way of articulating the problem – a better model – that would make the solution obvious, inexperienced with people in the team – their aspirations or fears, their motivation, their relationships with one another and out into to the wider organisation – there are a host of other factors that could affect delivery of expected outcomes.
Prerequisite number 4 is the skill of Creative Thinking - aka analytical thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, logical thinking and thinking of all sorts.
Obviously, all humans think, unless they have been programmed and conditioned to not think; and to question everything. This must sound very familiar to many of you, no? Thinking and creativity are closely related, thinking being a prerequisite to creative thinking, creativity for short. The dilemma is, education is never easily “administered” where creativity is allowed. Could you imagine a school where lesson plans are ignored, and where learners are allowed to explore tangents that they go off on, or where even one where learners are allowed more authority than teachers!? What a nightmare scene! Yet, without this nightmare scene, Creative Thinking skills will never develop.
I have this poetic bit of a paragraph that was constructed to try painting a picture of the kind of students that we need to have so that we have EM’s exploding throughout the day in our schools.
“To realize that we are shaped by education, that learning leads to thought and self-reflection, understanding and knowledge and wisdom, and to see that skills in critical thinking lead to creative solutions; thus strengthening our minds and giving us sound judgment and character to see clearly. Our student is a Scientist who is able to interpret a poem, a Poet who sees rhyme in the Scientific Method and a Philosopher who understands there are no truths, only perspectives.”

Eureka Moments are built on the starting blocks described above, yet these are the very attributes that are seldom present in most education systems. I think that administrators and many stakeholders will even now, argue against changes being made because people have been conditioned to stay in comfort zones and to not rock the boat when the sea is still reasonably calm.

I must also say that stakeholders, who want change, have to create a storm if they want that change. Don’t sit at home and send letters and emails complaining about the state of affairs – go out and do something about it! Develop plans for actions that foster innovative changes with measureable outcomes. These just might motivate “Higher Powers” to start engaging with stakeholders for the transformation of our education system.

Plan for a Eureka Moment, and when inspiration strikes, JUST DO IT!