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Develop pragmatic habits of geniuses

By Bayo Ogunmupe
19 August 2017   |   3:31 am
Fortunately, these behaviours can be developed. As you practise these habits, you too can become more intelligent and creative. Soon after mastering these behaviours, you will become a genius at creative problem solving.

Fortunately, these behaviours can be developed. As you practise these habits, you too can become more intelligent and creative. Soon after mastering these behaviours, you will become a genius at creative problem solving.

Men and women of history who have been considered geniuses have been studied to determine how they became geniuses, their thinking processes, actions and behaviours.

Most of these geniuses were found to be of average intelligence. Few of them were geniuses in the Albert Einstein mode. However, they have three behaviours in common.

Fortunately, these behaviours can be developed. As you practise these habits, you too can become more intelligent and creative. Soon after mastering these behaviours, you will become a genius at creative problem solving.

Concentration is the first habit of geniuses. They have developed the ability to concentrate single-mindedly, 100 per cent on one thing to the exclusion of all distractions.

In psychology, this is called Concentrated Mind Power (CMP), which seems to accompany all creative breakthroughs and accomplishments.

Single-minded concentration, also called single handling, is essential to the achievement of important goals, the management of time, completion of tasks and all creative works.

Unfortunately today, we are overwhelmed by an endless river of distractions, with emails constantly pinging with messages, the phones ringing and text messages streaming in nonstop.

Indeed, people in the workplace are continually interrupting and distracting you. For you to learn to concentrate single-minded, you must create time, unbroken periods of time where you can work without distraction. Perhaps, the most important time management principle essential for creativity and concentration is for you to leave things off for a while.

Create zones of silence around yourself by disconnecting from all technology for a period of time each day. You require blocks of time, 30, 40 minutes re one hour for your mind to settle down, like silt in a bucket of water. It is only then that you can get to the point where you can think with clarity and effectiveness.

Two, open-mindedness and flexibility in thinking is the second quality of genius. Geniuses see causal relationships, the big picture; they act childlike in examining every possible way of approaching a problem. Try looking at your work, yourself and your business as part of an organic system.

Instead of looking upon an event as a separate occasion, you look at all that might have led to the event and all that may come after. Avoid attachment and desist from falling in love with a particular solution to a problem.

A factor that inhibits creative thinking is your becoming attached or married to an idea or solution that you have come up with and investing all your ego in selling the solution to someone else. Then, you consider yourself successful if you can persuade someone else to come around to your point of view, even if there is a clear possibility that your point of view is incorrect.

Like a Buddhist monk, stay detached from your idea by considering many other possibilities with an open mind. Remain flexible by avoiding the tendency to embrace the solution until you have exhausted all other possibilities. Be skeptical; begin with the assumption that your idea could be completely wrong.

Three, geniuses are systematic and use an ordered approach to solving problems. They first define the problem in writing. Then, they ask questions, such as, ‘how did this problem occur? Is this really a problem or an opportunity?’

As a teacher, I do know that in school, we were taught to think mathematically to enable us adopt the skill of logical reasoning in solving future problems.

Even though we never learn algebra or geometry again after leaving school, the purpose of learning them is to teach us to work systematically from the beginning to the end of a problem until we find the solution.

This is a skill that you can then apply in all the areas of your life. It is the habit of geniuses to work their way systematically, approaching the solution to their problems step by step. But action is everything.

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