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

I loved Cleese's talk and I wonder if there's the inverse of it somewhere? On the opposite side of the spectrum are those of us who make all sorts of wonderful connections but have difficulty putting A next to B next to C.

Perhaps it's Elon Musk's chats on thinking in first principles, but I'd love if anyone knows some introductions to linear, tight-knit, strategic thinking.

Edit: I also wonder if books on clarity in writing like Zissner's "On Writing Well" qualifies here. Writing is linear and the practice of it presumably should help the writer think more clearly.

No it doesn’t. Pragmatic thinking is just another mental algorithm. You just haven’t learn any good out-of-the-box thinking algorithms. May I suggest Inside the Box? https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Box-Creativity-Breakthrough-Re...

I believe that constraints breed creative solutions.

... or drop acid! Just mind your set and setting.

And whatever you do, don't share ideas with colleagues until you've sobered up.

I'm not able to speak authoritatively on this subject (after who the heck am I? I'm creative in spurts but have no deep insight on the process), but as an observer of human nature, engineers do seem especially weak at divergent thinking -- they can't help obsessing over how something might fail almost as soon as as they hear an idea.

This is a blocker. One of the ways to unblock this, I'm told, is the "improv" mantra of "yes, and" -- meaning, if someone states an idea, instead of saying "yes, but", you say "yes, and" and build upon it. For instance, someone says "I'm a unicorn fireman", you say, "yes, and your horn is a nozzle for a high-pressure hose". And you keep building.

For years I could never quite figure out how this applied to engineering problems so I thought "yes, and" was mostly stupid and unworkable (except in the arts) -- because what if the other person's wrong? How do I "yes, and" someone who says "the earth is flat"?

But one of Paul Graham's tweets helped me reframe this in a way that is palatable to even engineer-types. He says (paraphrased):

"Problem solving is 2 phase approach: (1) idea generation / mistake making, and then (2) aggressively fixing those mistakes / editing. We often shortcut the process by editing too soon."

In other words: engineers are only good at "yes, but" (convergent thinking phase) and prematurely shut down the "yes, and" (divergent thinking phase). So how about we treat thinking as a two-phase problem and give divergent thinking some room? We can still apply pragmatism/practicality ... but later, after we've "yes, and"ed.

Alls we're saying is, give "yes, and" a chance.