The only way to avoid the pitfalls of inflexible and inaccurate thinking is to continually develop our higher level thinking skills, says Martin Shovel. There's no better way to do this than to step outside our comfort zones by challenging ourselves to try something new.


Like it or not, radical and accelerating change has already become a permanent feature of our lives. When Bill Gates was a schoolboy, computers were the stuff of science-fiction but they ended up making him the richest man in the world. Like Bill Gates, many of today's schoolchildren will end up working in jobs and industries that haven't even been invented yet – occupations and lifestyles beyond our wildest, and weirdest, imaginings.

To rise to the challenges of this brave new world it's essential that we find a way of developing a more flexible thinking style. Like a professional tennis player studying a video of herself so that she can improve her serve, we need to discover a means of observing our own thought processes from a distance. From such a vantage point we might begin to influence the dance of neural networks inside our head.

Metacognition

Educational psychologists have a word for this high level way of thinking: they call it 'metacognition'. Don't worry, metacognition isn't nearly as scary as it sounds. Whenever you 'think about your own thinking' you're involved in a metacognitive activity. For example, if when you finish reading this article you're not sure how much of it you've understood, you could find out by asking yourself various questions about it. This process of asking yourself questions to check your understanding is an example of a useful metacognitive strategy. Its goal is simple: to make sure you've understood what you've read.

But metacognitive experiences can't take place in a vacuum – they happen when you're actively learning to do something. And for the metacognitive experience to be a rich one, the learning experience has to contain certain ingredients. Over the years, we've discovered that our workshops on learning to draw and think like a cartoonist contain these ingredients, so let's have a brief look at them.

Not surprisingly, people arrive at our workshops with a sackful of preconceptions about what drawing is and about their ability to do it, or not. Our minds are not empty vessels when it comes to learning. In fact, without preconceptions no learning would be possible because preconceptions are the cognitive pegs on which we hang, and make sense of, new information. But problems arise when our preconceptions about ourselves, or the task, are inaccurate or just plain wrong.

A vicious circle

People often approach drawing with false preconceptions both about themselves (e.g. a belief that they are not creative, cannot draw and could never learn how to) and about the task (e.g. a belief that drawing is the ability to picture a realistic image in your head and transmit it accurately down your arm to the pencil in your hand and onto a sheet of paper). Together, these two misconceptions combine to form a vicious circle that can prevent people from ever taking the first step.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that our preconceptions don't stand up and wave at us. Instead, they operate below the level of our conscious awareness, doing their work under cover of darkness. We hardly ever see them, which is why we rarely challenge them – they just feel right. Clearly if my false idea that I can't learn to do something is also based on a false idea about what that something is, then the chances of my making any progress are very small indeed.

The key ingredient of a rich metacognitive experience is when a learner is given the support and encouragement to replace false preconceptions with accurate ones that liberate them and enable them to do things they never thought possible. Beginning a workshop convinced you can't draw and ending it being able to is like throwing a huge stone into the middle of a pond; the ripples eventually touch every aspect of your life.

Questioning our preconceptions

In our workshops, metacognitive thinking enables the learner to question and replace false beliefs about their ability to draw and what drawing is, with true ones. According to the dictionary, when we preconceive we form an idea or opinion about something before possessing full or accurate knowledge about it.

Most of the time we depend on our preconceptions to get us through our daily lives. It wouldn't be feasible to test and prove everything we believe to be true – if we did, we simply wouldn't make it out of bed each morning. For example, without being physicists, we know that if we let go of something we're holding, it will fall to the ground – however, building expectations on this preconception wouldn't be much use in outer space!

Knowledge is our greatest defence against false preconceptions. When I was a child, a good encyclopaedia was regarded as an investment for life. Nowadays, given the volatility and availability of knowledge, what you know is not sufficient to guarantee success. In a world where knowledge no longer exhibits qualities of solidity and permanence, the only way to avoid the pitfalls of inflexible and inaccurate thinking is to continually develop our metacognitive skills. There is no better way of doing this than by trying something new: something outside your comfort zone that challenges your preconceptions about yourself, the task, and what you are capable of.

About the author Martin Shovel is co-director of CreativityWorks, a company that specializes in helping organisations and individuals get their message across more effectively. Find out more by visiting www.creativityworks.net