P2P No. 53 — Beginner's Mind
For the beginner there are many paths, for the advanced, few—Zen proverb
You do not want to be like the traditional expert. You really don't. As the Zen proverb distils the wisdom of thousands of years, experts tend to become indoctrinated into their fields. Studies show that their performance can even worsen with more experience.
There is a solution, which I learned from a fictional writer's fictional character. In the Nikki Heat novels by Richard Castle, detective Nikki Heat sets herself into what she calls a Beginner's Mind before entering a crime scene.
Beginner's Mind is a shorthand for leaving our preconcieved notions, cognitive biases at the doorstep. Pausing activates your conscious part of the brain, instead of the unconscious one.
Young people have an advantage with a Beginner's Mind because they lack experience. As Paul Graham formulated:
The most subtle advantage of youth, or more precisely of inexperience, is that you're seeing everything with fresh eyes.
We know that prejudices can lead to negative discrimination of people, but we are less aware that the same notion can lead to discrimination of thoughts. That is, knowledge can become a liability. The problem is not knowing per se but thinking that we always know the best. Consciously ignoring the canon can help. As Robert Laughlin put it
To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just often helps me see things me predecessors have missed.
Thinking is hard. Coming up with excellent and original ideas is even more challenging. According to Paul Graham, it requires independent-mindedness, which relies on solitude:
if you do not leave space for your mind to think, it can only regurgitate someone else's idea.
Turning on "hermit mode" for a while can help - one way for that is taking a walk. Nietzsche even proclaimed1:
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking2.
Being curious and interdisciplinary helps with breaking the canon. Seeing other people have different approaches to the same thing will remind you to question your assumptions. This was also advice from Brad Stulberg in my interview about his book, Master of Change. But being a generalist surely comes at the price of being shallow in every field, right? I leave that to you to decide, but I will mention a study showing that scientific impact increased after scientists switched fields. Having a Beginner's Mind probably helped with that.
Think about
Do you leave time for yourself to think and cultivate new ideas?
Do you approach the status quo with a healthy dose of scepticism
Do you consciously think about your assumptions?
Do you explore how other fields/labs/companies approach the same problem?
Down to the weeds
Constraints can help you to realize you inductive biases. Can you constrain yourself to see the same situation with a Beginner's Mind?
Dig deeper
The Stanford study showing that walking can improve curiosity
The study showing that scientific impact can increase after scientists switched fields
And he was not alone: Thoreau, Montaigne, Kierkegaard, and Rousseau also preferred thinking while walking.
A Stanford study shows creativity increases due to walking. I am wondering whether being away from distractions plays a role.