jumpingthewall by Dan Bergevin

Jumping the Wall The insights of Jack Foster by Dan Bergevin

JackÊ Foster

is one of those guys who you wish you could invoke at will, whenever you smash into a creative wall, or just can’t seem to find your way around one. He’s the guy you wish you could call up whenever your boss hands you a problem that is so hairy it makes your head spin, like you’re possessed by every angry spirit who ever died smashing its head into a keyboard in spite and frustration. Oh, and your boss wants ten possible solutions. And you have until 3:00 pm. And, right now, it’s 1:30. Naturally, I felt that reading Jack’s book How to Get Ideas would help me fix these nasty necessities of day-to-day survival. And, lucky me, I chose wisely. Reading How to Get Ideas gave me the tools I needed to solve problems on my own, and actually enjoy the process. But reading How to Get Ideas also gave me an idea... What if I could ask Jack all the questions about creativity that I could come up with? What if I could ask him to address the doubts and discouragements that I, or anyone else, may have regarding creativity and problem solving? So I tracked Jack down, and I asked. And, lucky me again, Jack responded with patience and far more detail than I could have ever hoped for. And, lucky you, and now present my conversation with Jack Foster, king of creativity and lord of luck-inducement.

Bon appetit.

Q: You mention in your book how having fun is a prerequisite to getting better ideas. How can someone arrive at a creative insight when creativity is a necessity and the work requiring it doesn’t appear fun at all? A: I never meant to imply that having fun was essential, only that it was important and helpful. Perhaps it’s the most important, the most helpful. But it’s not essential. After all, people get ideas all the time while they’re not having fun. It’s just that, in my experience, it seems that it’s a lot easier and productive when the participants are enjoying themselves, when they’re laughing and joking and fooling around. So if you are bogged down and the job of getting an idea seems a chore instead of a joy, my advice is to loosen up and be silly. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Say something stupid and ridiculous. Q: You also mention in your book that people should use the naivety of a child as a tool to see possibilities where before there were blockages. What are some ways that this lesson can be applied in difficult times, when obstacles seem insurmountable and problems seem to have no solutions? A: It’s not easy. If Baudelaire was right when he said that “genius is childhood recovered at will,” then it takes a genius to think, on command, like a child. But it doesn’t take a genius to act like a child. It takes only courage and the willingness to try. And acting often becomes reality. So my suggestion on how to think more like a child is to act more like a child. Here are four ways to do that: (1) Children are Whyers. Adults are Becausers. Become a Whyer again. Ask “Why?” about everything. (2) Children break rules because they don’t know that the rules exist. You, an adult, must pretend rules don’t exist. If you don’t, rules will exist and they will prevent you from leaping into new worlds. (3) Ask yourself how you’d solve the problem, the one that seems to have no solutions, if you were a six-year old. (4) Pretend, for 15 minutes every day, that you actually are a child. Sit on the floor in your office and draw pictures with crayons. Play with toy trucks or dolls. Take a nap. 2

Q: What advice would you give to those who feel they aren’t idea prone because they aren’t smart enough, talented enough, or creative enough? A: I’d tell them that they’re crazy. I’d tell them to change their thinking. I’d tell them that they’re incredibly creative, that every human being, no matter his or her education or background or genes, is an idea-generating machine. It’s what we humans do. We figure out different ways to solve problems and to do things—to repair things around the house, to raise our kids, to fix the meatloaf or the chicken breast differently for dinner, to get to work faster, to arrange the stuff in the garage better. I’d tell them that the only thing holding them back from getting more ideas is their belief that they cannot get more ideas. I’d tell them that the two most important reasons why some people get more ideas than other people are (1) the idea-getters believe that ideas exist, and (2) they believe they will get those ideas. It has little to do with smarts or talent or education. It has to do with belief. So believe. It is the key to the door of creativity. I’d tell them to tell themselves everyday that they are incredibly creative. Every day. Q: What would you say is the biggest obstacle to producing dramatic results in any endeavor? A: The belief that dramatic results are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Q: What would you say is the biggest creativity killer of them all? A: The belief that the problem you’re working on has no, or perhaps just one, solution. Q: What is the biggest motivation killer of them all? A: A negative attitude. 3

Q: What are some ways people can convert “bad” ideas into good ones? A: By recognizing that there are no “bad” ideas. There are simply some ideas that don’t solve the problem you’re working on now. But they may solve some other problems. You must, therefore, keep your eye peeled for possible fits. And of course you must believe that such fits exist. Q: If stubbornness is a prerequisite to creativity, can stubbornness be learned like creativity? What would be the learning process? A: I suspect that by “stubbornness” you’re referring to persistence. The surest way to learn it is to believe in it and to practice it. As my first boss, Bud Boyd, told me: “People don’t fail. They simply stop trying.” And heed what Churchill told the schoolchildren: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never.” Q: With so much information available to anyone with a library card or Internet access, how can anyone know when to stop gathering inputs and move on to the next steps in the creative process (searching for the idea and forgetting about it)? How can such issues as “information overload,” “information anxiety,” and “paralysis by analysis” be avoided or even exploited? A: Of course you’re right. We’ll never know everything about any one thing. Never. Let me tell you a story: One day many years ago I was out in the driveway of my house using a toothpick to dig out, from the carved back of an old oak chair, some paint I had softened with paint remover, and my older son (who was still young enough to be profound) asked me if all knowledge was related; if, say, you knew everything there was to know about a toothpick for example, including, of course, everything there was to know about wood and trees and soil and water and air and teeth and gums and mouths and bacteria and packaging and shipping and marketing and saws and metal fatigue and everything else that either touched on toothpicks or touched on something that touched on something that touched on toothpicks—if you knew all that, would you know everything? 4

I (who was still young enough to be certain) said, “Certainly.” Then, after thinking about it off and on for a couple of years, I changed my mind. To begin with, most scientists believe that knowledge, like the universe itself, expands faster than our ability to grasp it; that in the very act of learning about one thing, we create new knowledge about three or four more things; that the body of knowledge is in fact infinite—a Hilbertesque Hotel that even when full always has room for more guests. Furthermore, many doubt our ability to understand everything about even one thing all by itself. Carl Sagan for example posited that our brain can hold only l0l4 bits of information, for it has but l0l4 neuron-dendrite connections. And since even a tiny grain of salt contains l0l6 sodium and chlorine atoms, it is physically impossible for us to understand fully even that tiny grain of salt because, believed Sagan, the three-dimensional position of each atom must be understood before true knowledge is complete. Sagan, of course, was not alone. Poets, philosophers, and many other people who think about such things, while not going as far as Sagan, certainly question our ability to understand even the most common works of nature. Tennyson yearned to understand a flower in a crannied wall. Whitman marveled at a blade of grass. Blake saw an entire world in a grain of sand. It wasn’t that these people questioned the relatedness of knowledge; it was that the task of understanding even one thing, much less everything, staggered them. But, of course, all this talk about the difficulty of the task begs the question. Is all knowledge related or not? Had we but world enough and time, could we learn everything by studying one thing? I still think not. I think (Who can prove these things?) that certain kinds of knowledge exist— like how to milk a cow or write a horn concerto or fix the transmission in a 1937 Bugatti—that are unique, knowledge unrelated to other knowledge, knowledge the complexities of which you could never master by studying, say, a toothpick. But I digress and ramble. Sorry. I just wanted to make the case that we can never know everything about anything. We must, therefore, decide when we know enough, and use the knowledge we have to formulate ideas. But when is enough? It varies from a lifetime to a nano-second. 5

If you have a deadline, then that’s your “enough point”—the deadline. And, as you know, I believe in deadlines. If you don’t have a deadline, it depends on how urgently you need the idea, how complicated the problem is, how much new information on the problem is being generated, how much of the essentials of the problem you already know about, how you feel in the morning, what the weather’s like. At some point, you’ll just feel it—enough! But even then, in trying to find ideas, you may realize you still don’t know enough, and so you’ll have to dig for more information. So often it’s a continuing process, this gathering of inputs, a process that you may interrupt at any time you feel comfortable doing so. Indeed, many times you’ll get an idea while you’re gathering the information. And many times that idea will work, will win out, will solve the problem. And so that’s where you stop. But remember: There are always more ideas where that came from, and the more information you have, they better equipped you are to find those ideas, and the more helpful those ideas tend to be. Q: Is there a process for visualizing success? If so, what are the steps in the process? A: Do not imagine that you will get the idea you’re looking for. Imagine that you have already gotten it. Set your mind on the destination, not the journey; the goal, not the process. Q: How can deadlines be applied to their greatest positive effect? Must they be short, can they be long, and should deadlines have mini-deadlines within them? A: To be effective, deadlines must be real and uncompromising. Fake or changing deadlines are lies. And nobody pays attention to liars. In my experience, I found that, within reason, the shorter the deadline the better. And mini-deadlines, it seems to me, are simply excuses for not adhering to the real deadlines. Eschew them. 6

Q: Paul Arden talked about running with the idea you have now and making it the best it can be. Does this contrast with the idea that coming up with a lot of ideas is always better than coming up with only a few ideas or is it complimentary to it? A: I agree that at some point the plane has to get off the ground, at some point one must make the best of what one has. But I also believe that there’s always another idea, probably a better one. And the only way to find that idea is to search for it. Furthermore, I’ve found that coming up with lots of ideas is actually easier than coming up with just a few ideas since it removes from you the burden of finding the perfect idea, or the one or two “best” ideas. So it all depends upon the situation. Do you have more time to search? Then search. Is your back against the wall? Then run with what you’ve got. Q: If everything seems against you, and you’re having a streak of bad luck, how do you turn it into something positive? A: Realize, as Edison did, that all the work you’ve done so far has not been a waste of time that has resulted in failures. Realize rather, those “failures” have been discoveries of what doesn’t work, discoveries that will help you find something that does work.

CREDITS AND RIGHTS Introduction and Interview Questions Copyright © Dan Bergevin 2010 Interview Responses Copyright © Jack Foster 2009 Cover art by Michele de Notaristefani. Used by permission. Published by Capitalized Living Post Office Box 2172, Layton, Utah, 84041