Using Your Whole Brain

Fine tune your left brain, but don’t overlook the opportunities to let your right brain make its mark. Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO, also discusses the use of the “hare” brain, meaning the aspects of thinking that we can control, and the “tortoise” brain, meaning giving though processes time to sit, ruminate, and percolate to slowly process creative solutions. Kelley claims this slower level of background thinking is even smarter than our cognitive problem-solving, and that it can be used to address dilemas directly. Creative thinkers should schedule some time for daydreaming to give these slower mental processes a chance to be effective.