Chatter and Intelligence

 

Mind chattering is the continuous narrative going on in our heads. Some scholars call it a bug. That may be a hasty assessment.

Mind chatter is the raw material for Sci-Fi writers. France wants to hire the creatives to imagine how the future could go wrong so that the nations can stay one step ahead of trouble. Is this a new idea? Not at all.

The Moon landing: Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon depicted three people being sent to the Moon in a spacecraft from Florida – with some similarities to the actual mission 104 years later.

Videophones: The first example of a video phone appearing on screens was in the 1927 film Metropolis, although it was considerably larger than the smartphones we see today.

Atomic bomb: HG Wells predicted the atomic bomb in his 1914 novel The World Set Free – which featured “indefinitely” exploding bombs based on then-early nuclear science.

Einstein’s mind was not quiet when he looked at the light emitted by a lamppost, and the theory of relativity was born.

The constant chatter is the source of what we experience as intuition and visualization. It makes the mind a chaotic place. However, underneath that chaos, there is an order. We do not know how, amidst the chaos, the mind makes hypotheses, experiments scenarios, generates imagination, and delivers output.

The computers do not carry around such chatter in their heads.  We implant focused behavior—response to stimuli—into the computer. As soon as the computer can execute the pre-programmed action without any glitches, it becomes “Common Sense.” However, everything or anything the machine cannot imagine or do by itself; we call it “Intelligence.”

Conventional wisdom says that we need to make the chatter disappear to perform better, just like a computer. Several athletes and celebrities claim that they make the narrative go away with a sharp focus on what they are doing. No. The chatter does not disappear. They learn to ignore it. How? With an intense focus on what they are doing at the moment.

Imagine a cocktail hour at a business convention. You are listening to a diverse conversation of people talking about all kinds of things. Suddenly somebody says something, and there is the answer to a problem that you have been wrestling with for weeks.

Once you discover an idea or solution to a problem, it is time to ignore the chatter and act with a sharp focus. Just like a computer.

Agility, not haste.

Most business schools and self-proclaimed business gurus will tell you to think, think, and think. I will propose that you follow Nike’s slogan, “Just do it.” Be agile. Dive in. Make it personal and be passionate.

Agility is not haste. We do not abandon our senses or our responsibility. We just leave the fear of failing or some kind. This is the only way you can pursue the work with a sharp focus, tenacious implementation of the task, and nothing else.

Later, there’s time to improve, add more features, maybe retreat and adjust. But right now, once you have the idea or solution to a nagging problem, make haste, please.

Leave fear.