memory

every situation has its own balance

Our memory can be compared to a huge warehouse, containing every experience and piece of knowledge and feeling that has ever reached us. The knowledge we regularly use or find important is stored near the entrance of the warehouse. Properly labelled and ready to be taken out when needed. All other information is rather haphazardly stored and often difficult to retrieve. The exit to the consciousness is closed off by a filter which can be 'moved' by judgement, logic, reflex or ..... a certain technique.

So when we meet with an unexpected situation or problem we will not really think but react with the knowledge most easily retrieved: a script or scenario for such a situation. When we then find that it is not enough a next one is tried and if still unsatisfactory, the emergency organ called brain will be started up. When I button up my shirt, my fingers think for me, when I walk my feet think for me. When the button hole has been sewn up, or when I stumble, I will use my brain. Our limbs do a lot of our thinking for us and as long as these routines work we don't have to think. Yet, I may live in a world based on routines and completely forget to use my brain. Creative thinking involves breaking out of routines, a 'breakthrough' is never within a routine. All breakthroughs seem to show the dangers of routines.
The main problem seems to be the way we store information. Visual pictures are very helpful, the snapshots in the album bring back situations of years ago. Yet in everyday note-taking we make no use of this 'polaroid power'. Effective note-taking should be with pictures and colours, lines and keywords. Only then will the information be properly labelled upon entry.
I would like to compare this to the manner information is stored in a computer. The screen shown below gives me clear information about the files. If all files had the same name quick access would not be so easy. The point is to store information in the memory in one's own manner and clearly label it .

It is truly amazing to compare the lengths we go to properly use a machine with the scampish way we use our brains. Of course you will say, having no doubt learned the hard way, it is only logical to use a computer systematically and methodically. It is only a machine and can do nothin but add and subtract. Well if it could do more you would probably use it for that. And our brain can do more so why not use it effectively?

Or is it because we have to pay for a computer and get our brains for free without the proper instructions for use?

creativity > creating your own instructions for use