Formulate More, Make Less, Do Better
The more we play with problems, the better results we get.
Pen and paper is 4X more effective than typing. About six months ago, I read this provocative claim from a company that sells journals. Although it rang true, it seemed biased.
So I looked for research to support the claim, which led nowhere.
But what I learned about creativity surprised me.
THE COMPUTER VS. PAPER DEBATE
Many have weighed in on the paper-versus-computer debate, mostly with opinion and personal preference; actual research shows each has its place.
For example, it's true: using paper and pen increases the rate and effectiveness of idea generation —for individuals.1 Neuroscientists suggest this may be because our brain's speech and motor pathways evolved together. The graph below (at left) shows subjects using “Brainwriting” (BWr), or pen and paper, generated about twice as many ideas as they did with computers (EBS, or Electronic Brainstorming).
However, because technology helps us share ideas more easily and quickly, computer-wielding humans, working together, generate more, less redundant ideas and better ideas (below, right).
So buy that journal! It's the best tool for personal idea generation. But keep using your computer, especially when working in teams.
Enter Albert Einstein
While Einstein couldn't weigh in on the computer-versus-paper debate, he did explain the importance of problem formulation. In The Evolution of Physics, he wrote,
"The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."
Einstein wrote this while explaining the importance of Galileo's (incorrect) idea about how to determine the velocity of light in 16382. Here's the entry from his journal:
Almost 300 years later, in the 1900s, the speed-of-light code was cracked. But Einstein was quick to credit Galileo’s question as the seed that grew into one of science’s most significant advances.
Paper and pen is the first port of call for many scientists, artists, inventors and writers. Here's a few: Frida Kahlo,3 Da Vinci,4 Jony Ive,5 Tim Ferriss,6 and Ryan Holiday.7
Is there evidence that more formulation begets better results? Yup!
Social Psychologists Weigh In on the Importance of Idea Formulation
Thirty-three years later, in 1971, social psychologists measured the importance of problem formulation. A team led by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave 31 award-winning artists a creative prompt. They measured8 six phases of the creative process:
picking up objects,
looking at them from different angles,
feeling their weight,
re-arranging them on a table,
designing the solution,
crafting the solution.
The results confirmed what Einstein intuited: the more time spent formulating, the more valuable and original the output.
Who Knew Al Gore Was a Visionary?
In her best-selling book slide:ology, presentation guru Nancy Duarte, the designer behind Al Gore's visualizations for An Inconvenient Truth, asks: how much time do you spend researching ideas versus making slides for a typical presentation?9
While teaching how to communicate with executives, I asked my class this question. The responses varied from two to six hours. There was an audible gasp on the Zoom when I told them that Duarte recommends you spend 36-90 hours to create an hour-long presentation with 30 slides. But the kicker was this: she also suggests you spend just 1/3 of that time making slides.
Duarte’s advice is Einsteinian. When making your next presentation, spend 2/3 of your time researching, organizing, sketching, practicing, and collaborating; spend just 1/3 of your time making slides.
Paper Ties Computer; Formulation Beats Making.
Paper and computers both play an important role in the creative process. But Einstein, Csikszentmihalyi, Duarte, Ive, Frida, Holiday, Ferriss and Da Vinci agree: the secret of more valuable, original work is to spend more time formulating and less time solving.
Is Electronic Brainstorming or Brainwriting the Best Way to Improve Creative Performance in Groups? An Overlooked Comparison of Two Idea-Generation Techniques, NICOLAS MICHINOV, the University Rennes, France.
According to the commonly accepted view, Galileo Galilei devised in 1638 an experiment that seemed able to show that the velocity of light is finite. An analysis of archival material shows that two decades later members of the Florence scientific society Accademia del Cimento followed Galileo guidelines by actually attempting to measure the velocity of light and suggesting improvements. This analysis also reveals a fundamental difference between Galileo's and Florence academy's methodologies and that Galileo's experiment was, in some respects, a pioneering work affecting also the history of the psychology of perception. Galileo, Measurement of the Velocity of Light, and the Reaction Times, Renato Foschi, M. Leone
5 Artists Whose Diaries are as Inspiring as their Art, Shira Wolfe, Artland Magazine.
Journal like da Vinci, think like da Vinci, John Muir Laws
From AT-ATs to iPhones: Early Sketches of 10 Iconic Objects, Wired Magazine
What My Morning Journal Looks Like, Tim Ferriss
Here’s Some Stuff Worth Carrying With You Everywhere, Ryan Holiday
Discovery-oriented behavior and the originality of creative products: A study with artists, Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Getzels, J. W. (1971). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 19(1), 47–52. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0031106
slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. Duarte’s breakdown of the 36-90 hours to create a presentation, 2008.
I so love this post!
I can definitely attest to “thinking better” with pen and paper.
I also find writing in cursive incredibly relaxing. I do this with an Apple pencil too but somehow the tactile experience and idea retention are not quite the same.
Re: research and constructing ideas in your head first before executing them, I find these useful, apart from mindmapping on paper:
- grouping topics using Chrome’s tab groups vs just bookmarks
- rearranging post-its ala design thinking
- short voice recordings while walking
- and consolidating all the files digitally on Google Keep, MS OneNote, Notion or Note+ if you’re fancy
Then there are the periods of "writing in your head."
Accomplished German scientist and philosopher Herman von Hemlholz said: " So far as my experience goes it [inspiration] never comes to a wearied brain, or at the writing-table. I must first have turned my problem over and over in all directions, till I can see its twists and windings in my mind’s eye, and run through it freely, without writing it down; and it is never possible to get to this point without a long period of preliminary work....And then, when the consequent fatigue has been recovered from, there must be an hour of perfect bodily recuperation and peaceful comfort, before the kindly inspiration rewards one. Often it comes in the morning on waking up…. It came most readily…like a flash of lightning...when I went out to climb the wooded hills in sunny weather."
Great essay and an important topic for the 'do first' crowd which is depressingly strong. There's a quote attributed to Einstein that goes:
"If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes coming up with solutions"
Think first, then do. Understand your problem. Another favorite is called the Eisenhower Principle:
“Whenever I run into a problem I can't solve, I always make it bigger. I can never solve it by trying to make it smaller, but if I make it big enough, I can begin to see the outlines of a solution.“
- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
I had a manger who kept pushing me to 'just do' and I shared the Einstein quote. He said "Mike, we don't have time for that" I responded "I'm not asking for 55 minutes, I'm asking for 15"
We just needed to actually slow down and understand the actual problem that needed to be solved because jumping too soon meant anything was OK (but rarely successful)
A last thought, is regarding my own authoring, people ask me how long it takes me to write an essay. To write the essay? Maybe an hour? To roll the ideas in my head, expereince things, make patterns, and then identify the thread I want to pull? Years.
In all reality, the time spent in actual writing is much less than 1/3 and is rarely done in one sitting.