Lahrer brings up lots of interesting points, but I wish he were better at the act he fleetingly cites: connecting.
For example: He is confronted with the problem of "brainstorming" sessions: Fear of being criticised, which inhibits the throwing out of ideas. When I was a CEO in book publishing, I had a sort of solution. The topic was often finding a good title for a copy, or a good jacket or advertising hook. The rule was: In the initial minutes, utter any suggestion whatever, no idea should be considered too zany or off-the-wall -- and no immediate criticism was allowed. After a list of ideas was compiled, we'd go on to the second part of the session -- reconsidering each one, starting with the first. We wouldn't cite the suggester -- "Next, how 'bout Jane's idea for the title..." This separation of the "creative" part of the session from the criticism part did worlds for the freedom in suggesters. The separation seems like an obvious alleviation of the fear-factor in brainstorming sessions, but it evidently never occurred to Lehrer. I didn't think Lehrer grappled enough with the seeming contradiction between on the one hand calling for "wasting time" when trying to find your way forward -- take a shower, take a long walk -- and, on the other, simply applying "grit", hanging in there. Beethoven didn't get through seventy revisions of one musical phrase by taking long walks. Still, there does seem a time in each creator's work for "relaxing" the mind, unchaining it from the immediacy of the problem. I'd like to hear Lehrer's thoughts on how to decide what to do next. I myself have always been of the Beethoven school; I believed the best remedy for a slow mind was a heavy ass. But I'll bet there were times when I was wrong. Lehrer, rightly or wrongly, treats two kinds of imagination as one: In science, the imagination usually called for is solely how to solve a specific problem; and the problem comes with a rigid yes-or-no decision-procedure for determining if you've solved it. In the "arts" that sometimes occurs, but usually the "next thing" for the artist to do is decided by sensibility, not engineering or logic. But I do commend Lehrer for his displaying varieties of methods. It's encouraging for a constant reviser to know about Beethoven's sruggles.
