The Fertile Ground of Ideas between Extremes
As I sit here working from home I am hearing a piece on the radio about new research that finds that when one exercises it prepares the mind to be more receptive and positions it in a “better state of equilibrium” for receiving information. Further, the research also found out that kids that have the hardest time focusing learn better after exercise and occasional mini exercise breaks during the school day. The resulting research was so positive that a school system in the state of North Carolina here in the USA, has adopted its recommendations and is already seeing some results.
Of course we all sort of knew this at the margins. For example, I think best when I am walking and I write stories in my mind when I am riding my road bicycle. After these insights I started thinking of ways to be more active at work and one of the ideas was to have standing work stations. I do not particularly like sitting down all day in front of a computer, so I looked around, observed people and different scenes and came up with the idea (borrowed from airports, bars, etc…) of having standing office spaces for those of us that may want to work standing up.
The idea was dismissed and as I thought about why it was dismissed, I realized that it was so because people tend to think in binary terms and either/or propositions. There is so much that we can do to make things better and sometimes solutions are so simple and common sense that they are dismissed because of what I already labeled: snappy polarity.
Having just come back from an Innovation Conference in New York City arranged by The Economist (yes, the magazine guys) it got me thinking indeed how wedded we still are to old ways of doing things. Further, how wedded our minds are to not considering that fertile field of ideas and solutions that reside between extremes.
Of course we all sort of knew this at the margins. For example, I think best when I am walking and I write stories in my mind when I am riding my road bicycle. After these insights I started thinking of ways to be more active at work and one of the ideas was to have standing work stations. I do not particularly like sitting down all day in front of a computer, so I looked around, observed people and different scenes and came up with the idea (borrowed from airports, bars, etc…) of having standing office spaces for those of us that may want to work standing up.
The idea was dismissed and as I thought about why it was dismissed, I realized that it was so because people tend to think in binary terms and either/or propositions. There is so much that we can do to make things better and sometimes solutions are so simple and common sense that they are dismissed because of what I already labeled: snappy polarity.
Having just come back from an Innovation Conference in New York City arranged by The Economist (yes, the magazine guys) it got me thinking indeed how wedded we still are to old ways of doing things. Further, how wedded our minds are to not considering that fertile field of ideas and solutions that reside between extremes.
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