It’s taken a long time for me to realize that my brain works a bit differently than most of the people I know. I guess I just assumed everyone’s brain was as random as mine, pulling in stuff from all over the place and twisting and turning it into something new.
In some respects, this is indeed the case. We all have the same mechanism that does this, and it’s something that sets us apart from the other creatures that roam this land.
Let’s start with the basics. When it comes to remembering things, we’re on a par with monkeys. Monkeys can remember sequences three or four items in length. We can remember four. Yes, that’s it. Our pee brains can easily remember four things before we start to lose track. Eggs, milk, cheese and bread. Add in eggnog and we start to get a bit muddled.
If you’re a bit depressed because you can only remember as many things as a monkey whose brain is a fifteenth the size of your own, take heart. We have some tricks up our sleeves that mister monkey wasn’t graced with.
It’s called “chunking.” I know, not a very sexy term for something so cool. Here’s how it works. From the time we’re born, we learn very quickly how to chunk information that comes into our world. Over the years, we get better and better at it, adding to our vast collection of previously chunked data, mixing and mashing it up, and using it in new ways. It’s how we learn in life.
Our temporary eggs, milk, cheese, bread memory can only hold those four items. Doesn’t matter if it’s a shopping list, a phone number or data. That’s all you get, sorry.
Through chunking, however, we can hack our brains and compress information into bits and bytes so it’s easier to remember and later, easier to associate with other bits of information in our head. What makes each of us unique is how we chunk. Everyone does it a different way, some better than others, mixing what we learned a moment ago with what we already have stored in our noggin.
The best part is, you can improve your chunking. One test subject could remember a sequence of seven numbers in a row at the beginning of an experiment they did on him. Hey, that’s better than the average four and the length of a phone number. Over the course of the two year study, he got better and better at it, to the point where he would remember an 80 digit long sequence.
How did he do it? He chunked. He turned the numbers into groups of four, associating them with times as a runner. Instead of 3,492 he would remember 3 minutes, 49.2 seconds. Basically, he created a new superstructure on which to hang all the data coming at him, so it was just neatly grouped back into sequences of four.
It turns out that our brains love patterns. Like playing a game of continual mental Tetris, we love to slot everything into our brains so it makes sense to us. Chunking helps us build that structure so that we not only recognize new patterns, but ones we previously acquired throughout the course of our life.
This is one of the reasons why, by the way, you do get smarter and more creative as you age. Assuming you hold onto your mental faculties, your brain gets even better at chunking, making you far more valuable to the world than you realize as you can instantly access lessons learned that the youth of this world can’t even glom onto, largely because they haven’t had the same amount of time on the planet to acquire data and chunk it.
So, how does this relate to me and my level of creativity that often astounds others, where it’s rapid fire word play or a new way to do something that’s always been done a different way before?
It seems that chunking is essential to creativity. The better you chunk, and the more easily you assemble the connections between seemingly unrelated data, the more creative you tend to be. It turns out that chunking and pattern recognition are at the core of creativity.
Music is a great example. It’s chunking on steroids because music is all about patterns and how they are managed, manipulated and presented. The result of this form of chunking is music to our ears, literally.
As Steve Jobs once said, “creativity is just connecting things.” The more unique or interesting the connections, the more interesting and original the patterns, whether these are penned by an author, painted by an artist or written by a composer.
I find all this stuff very cool. From the time I was a little kid until now, I have been fascinated by nearly everything in life. As a result, my brain has become a sponge, soaking up odds and ends anywhere it can. It has a ravenous appetite for information, which is then spun around and spit back out in some really amazing ways.
And therein lies the rub. I used to think I was just like everyone else. And in reality, I am. We all chunk. I just happen to chunk differently than a lot of people in this world of ours. I suppose I could call it a gift, blame it on growing up alone without anyone to play with, or just an insatiable curiosity that until now seemed to have no rhyme or reason.
I’m still not sure of the reason, but at least now I understand the rhyme. While I still can’t remember a phone number or even eggs, milk, cheese and bread when I go to the store, I can turn on that Cuisinart brain of mine any time I want and chunk to my heart’s delight, finally realizing and appreciating that I am only getting better with time and that the seeming advantage of youth is really just an illusion.
It’s great being old and chunky. It’s what makes me, and all of us, unique in our walk in this world.
In the Emerald City, suddenly craving more input,
– Robb