This post is about very funny, engaging activities that help your brain zoom out and in and flip between opposable ideas in a fast way.
If you are in a situation where you want to help yourself or your team to arrive at a creative flow but still look at the big picture and not lose the goal in your mind or simply flip between opposable ideas, then the activities below will help make this fast.
Duck or Rabbit?
Purpose of the activity: To alternate between two apparently contradictory ideas.
🎲 With a playful grin, tell the participants that you are going to teach them basic concepts in zoology. You will begin by helping them differentiate between birds and animals.
🎲 Explain that this figure was first published in a German humor magazine, Fliegende Blatter in 1892. Ask the participants to raise their hands if they see the picture of a duck. Pause for a few seconds and ask them if they see the picture of a rabbit.
🎲 Explain alternative perspectives. Tell the participants that they can see either a duck or a rabbit in the figure. Check to see if all the participants can see these.
Show additional versions.
🎲 After displaying each slide, ask the participants if they see a rabbit and a duck. Explain the difficulty of seeing both images at the same time. Ask the participants if they can alternate between seeing the duck and the rabbit. Point out that most people have a preference about what they see first but they can train themselves to see both the duck and the rabbit. Also, point out that it is almost impossible to see both the duck and the rabbit simultaneously.
🎲 Debriefing
Relate to creativity. Encourage the participants to practice flipping rapidly between the duck and the rabbit. Explain that the ability to flip between the two figures has been shown to be correlated with a person’s creative ability to come up with alternative uses for common objects such as paper clips and chairs.
🎲 Introduce the concept of the opposable mind. Refer to Roger Martin’s book, Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Think. Present the following key points from the book in your own words:
• Usually, our brain cannot handle two opposing thoughts at the same time.
• But we can train ourselves to think alternatively between two perspectives.
• This will help us figure out when to use which perspective.
🎲 Conclude the activity. Announce that the session has come to an end. Immediately contradict yourself by saying, “This session has just begun” :)
Half-a-second illusion picture
Purpose: help yourself flip between opposing ideas
🎲 Show the picture below for half second to your participants.
🎲 Ask what did they see in the picture. Some will say an old woman, some a young woman, maybe some did not get it so fast, and so on. Then ask them to be attentive and check if they see an old woman or a young lady and show the picture again in half a second.
🎲 Ask them to raise their hand who saw an old lady. Tell them you will make an experiment.
🎲 Ask the ones who saw an old lady look if they see the young woman and the other way around. Show the picture again, this time for 10 seconds.
🎲 After everyone saw both, tell them you will do another experiment: ask them to flip fast between the perspectives of an old, respectively young lady. This will help their brain flip between opposable ideas and switch from the big picture to details and the other way around.
🎲 You can make a short debriefing to check how it was for them. Conclude the activity and go on with the session.
Inattentional blindness game
The game is bringing awareness to assumptions and inattentional blindness and helps participants look at the big picture.
🎲 Display the picture below. Ask the participants to secretly select one of these six cards--any card. Tell them not to type the name of the card in the chat area, but jot it down on a piece or turn one of the cards face down.
🎲 Explain what you are doing. Show a slide with this message: “Here’s what I am doing. Tell the participants you are shuffling the packet of six cards. You are going to deal with the cards again after shuffling them. But before doing that, you are going to reveal the result. Display the picture below.
🎲 Ask the participants to locate their cards. (Can you find your card?) The participants will not find their card. Explain that you turned the selected card face down.
🎲 Reveal the secret. Ask the participants if they would like to learn how you performed this cheap trick. Announce you are going to show them the original set of six cards in a new configuration. Show the picture below. Invite the participants to mentally select a card, either the one they selected before or a new one.
🎲 Shuffle and re-deal. Tell the participants you are going to show the finishing slide in a new configuration. Show the picture below. Ask the participants to guess the secret. Ask them if they have figured out how you did the trick. Invite the participant to type their responses in the chat area. Congratulate those who have figured out the secret.
🎲 Display the before-and-after cards. Explain that you are going to make it easy for the participants by displaying slides with both sets of six cards. Display the picture below.
🎲 Point out that the cards in the second set are not the same as the cards in the first set. None of the cards in the first set are found in the second set. Not seeing their selected card, people mistakenly assume that the face-down card must be their card.
🎲 Debrief. Ask the participants to reflect on their experience and type what they learned in the chat area. Briefly explain that the phenomenon of focusing on one element and missing the background information is called inattentional blindness. Ask for examples. Invite the participants to type examples from the workplace of someone focusing obsessively on one thing and missing out on everything else.
🎲 Ask for advice. Invite the participants to suggest ideas for reducing or removing inattentional blindness. Add your own suggestions (such as frequently shifting from taking a panoramic view to a narrow view).
One-phrase summary:
Use these three simple games to switch from the detailed picture to the big picture and flip between opposable ideas. Training our brains and bringing awareness to these facts helps us arrive in the creative flow faster and bring up valuable solutions and ideas.
Resources:
“LOLA” book by Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan
Picture “My Wife and My Mother-In-Law”, by the cartoonist W. E. Hill, 1915
“Jolts! 33 Brief Activities for Diversity and Inclusion” book by Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan
“Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Think” book by R.Martin
What do a rabbit, a duck, an old lady, a young lady and a set of cards have to do with each other?