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Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

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Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#21

Post by Swizec »

Invictus0 wrote: post #17
michaelscott wrote: post #15

"Outrageous" or "out-of-the-box" solutions are just very lateral solutions to a problem, and in an engineering context you can do this by questioning the assumptions of the problem until you've reframed it enough to allow these solutions to seem more "obvious". Here's a very silly and simple example: you have an engineering task to search for an ID in a tree data structure. You may know several standard methods off t…

Agree with this approach. I had a manager tell me once that managers think differently than engineers and I asked him to explain. He gave the example of asking an engineer how to turn on a light bulb. The engineer (me) would/did say to flip the light switch. He said that manager would ask why do you need to turn on the light bulb? What is it in the room that needs to be illuminated? Maybe your real purpose is to figu…

As an engineer, the thing I always prided myself on was always asking my customers/stakeholders ”Ok but what’s the problem you’re solving? Why do you need this?” before jumping to a solution to their initial ask.

Often they ask for a solution to the 3rd step in their process where they got stuck and it turns out the underlying problem is easier/faster to solve

Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#23

Post by nestorD »

I don't think being practical hinders one's imagination (I would consider myself both imaginativ and very practical).

I know of two school of thought regarding the origin of original ideas :

- Original ideas stem from ignorance of the existing idea and being an outsider in the domain. I don't think this is sustainable as, at some point, you have to become familiar with the domain to which you want to contribute.

- Original ideas comme from a deep knowlege of the domain and its history which lets you understand how new concepts you meet might fit in the overall puzzle.

Overall, if you have problems coming out with outrageous new ideas, I would recommend practice : whenever you enconter a problem, try to design a solution for it (it doesn't matter if you never implement it) and only then research what kind of solution is used to solve this problem. With time you should become familiar with your own creativ process.

Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#24

Post by moralestapia »

Not at all.

A few months ago I started being extremely pragmatic in everyday life (even against my will which is usually not like that). Things like, say no if you want to say no, answer emails immediately with a sentence at most, find the fastest way to get something done etc...

Now I have a lot of time on my hands to do whatever I want, that includes spending the day studying or pondering things which I believe greatly increased the potential of my imagination.

Find things that you like and do them, weed out everything else. If you can't shake some of those away, find the most practical way to get rid of them.

Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#26

Post by mistermann »

drenvuk wrote: post #14

If you have access to friends or family with children the next time you're hanging out you should try asking the kids a simplified kid friendly form of the problem you're trying to solve. They'll usually give you a completely correct answer that interprets the question in a way you never would. It's both interesting and enlightening. Since they haven't internalized the exact definitions of the words they're using or…

A half decent article on the subject: https://effectiviology.com/curse-of-knowledge/

I constantly perceive that this is a major problem in modern UI designs, whereas in the past people thought really hard about usability, because they didn't grow up using computers, everything was new.

Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#27

Post by WiseWeasel »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #20

There is a saying from Zen Buddhism: "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few". Granted, the beginner is also going to go down a lot of dead-ends, but sometimes the expert won't get started on something which they have mistakenly ruled out as impossible. The question is, what (mental) exercises could you do to get into the practicality equivalent of "beginner's mind"?

1. Devalue all your knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#29

Post by sharma_pradeep »

Over the years of mindfully watching myself,

having endless debates on what's important for creativity : being flexible or being organized,

having read the book on this topic called "making ideas happen",

I got to understand what we all know already

To do the best of our work, it requires

Balance

- Balance between creativity and organization

- Balance between being practical and being a mad scientist

- Working in routine and breaking that routine

- Having a laser focus on problem and staying away from the problem

Re: Ask HN: Does being practical act as a hinderance to one’s imagination?

#30

Post by daenz »

I don't think being practical acts as a hindrance to one's imagination. It's critical to actually accomplishing creative ideas. Each skill just needs to be engaged when they're most useful. If you're trying to be creative, then you should be actively trying to pause thinking practically. Then, once you think you've "got something", start looking at the idea practically to see if it's even possible. Repeat until you have a creative solution that might just work. Being imaginative let's you fly, being practical helps you land.
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