How much do you want to know?
The universe always fascinated me. I read and listen and watch everything I can put my hands on about stars, galaxies, gravity, outer planets, you name it.
One (big) reason for that is that the universe is so vast and full of mysteries that one can hardly get tired of discovering. A second reason is that it gives you perspective.
For example, the comedian Jerry Seinfeld used to have a photo of a galaxy hanging in his office to remind him that the work he did wasn’t that important -so why spend time doing stuff that you don’t care about or are not excited about?
And talking about the universe, Neil DeGrease Tyson gave a beautiful example of how to inspire our curiosity: what’s the shape of the earth?
Earth is not just a sphere, as Neil explains unless it is. “In a first pass, the shape of the Earth is a sphere,” he says. “Do you want to know more? Okay. Earth is not actually a perfect sphere —it’s slightly flattened pole to pole, a little wider at the equator. We have a word for this in mathematics: it’s called an oblate spheroid.”
(He could go on and on and tell a lot of more specific information about the earth’s shape.)
The point of this exercise is what Neil called pedagogical approximation: you can break down the conversation at any point depending on the need or audience.
You may ask: isn’t that lying? Of course not. You are just picking a point where the information matters most depending on the audience, their interest level, and what topic matters most in that conversation.
Do you want to know more? Ok.
If your audience doesn’t know anything about a subject, you don’t give them the full hammer of details. That’s pointless. Because they’ll just get lost in the details, and they’re not going to learn anything.
Start with something simple. Instead of giving the whole truth, try to give them part of the truth, which is kind of interesting. They get curious. And then, later on, they research it more themselves, preserving the interest that you were able to establish with that entry-level information.
So are we done with that? Or do you need more detail? Ok, let’s keep going.
Well, I may not know enough about the shape of the earth, but I can tell you a thing or two about creativity.
When teaching creativity, I usually follow this path of pedagogical approximation to explain it, depending on the audience’s interest and/or knowledge level (from the simplest to the deepest):
– Personal perception (a subjective, whatever-you-want-it-to-be point of view)
– a skill to solve problems
– an ability (in a general sense)
– a competency
– a competitive advantage (especially when we talk about innovation)
– a sociocultural phenomenon that happens throughout our lives, which we manage depending on how we choose to participate and interact with our social, cultural, and material worlds
Curious enough, I noticed that this same path happened to creativity.
In my book, I did an extensive study regarding the evolution of the understanding of creativity as a concept (where the word “creativity” came from), and in academic research (which I divided into generations). Both, to my surprise, followed this same path.
I could go on, but I will stop here. But if you are curious to know more, you can always read about it (and much more!) in my book 😉