Don’t Quit Diverging
I've observed that a divergent mindset is something that many folks like to get out of as quickly as possible. As soon as a reasonably good idea comes up, there's almost a collective sigh of relief which says, "Whew! We did it! Mission accomplished!" (The unspoken sentiment: "Let's move on now; no more divergence -- or the discomfort that accompanies the unknown -- necessary!")
A fascinating study called "The Creative Cliff Illusion," explains this phenomenon in part: folks assume their best ideas come early in the idea generation process, and that they will "run out of good material" pretty quickly. The paper refers to an “illusion,” because that belief is simply not true!
In Curious, Ian Leslie points out another university experiment that sheds lmore ight on the phenomenon:
"In 1987 researchers at the University of Oklahoma ran an experiment in which they gave students a series of problems to solve and asked them to generate as many solutions as they could... The students came up with about three hundred solutions... After the students had generated their answers, they were asked to estimate what percentage of possible good solutions they thought they had come up with. Separately, a panel of experts had been asked to compile a database of the possible solutions. Understandably, given their efforts, the individuals guessed that they had landed on three out of four possible solutions. However, when their answers were matched against the experts' database, it turned out that the average participant had generated only about one in three of the best solutions. The participants had missed most of the best ideas."
This accords with much of what I have observed: folks do a "quick sprint" to generate ideas, and if they've got a few good ones (especially if they're unexpected and seemingly novel!) they wrongly conclude they've exhausted the pool of possible solutions and snap back to a convergent mindset. But they potentially move beyond the divergent mindset much earlier than they really should. Assuming the goal is to identify and implement the best solution possible, these studies would suggest they've declared victory a little prematurely...
Related: Hack Your Creative Blocks
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The fine folks over at Section recently interviewed me about some common mistakes I’m seeing folks make when they use AI. One of the biggest ones? The tendency to expect too little, and get just that.