Research: Productive Thinking (2)

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An additional way in which these exercises may be beneficial is by practicing them as group brain storming sessions.

Our own style of thinking of Functional Fixedness may be extremely personalised or individualised.

By being exposed to other's input, we may be able to see how combining our own thinking with their thinking can lead to new relationships and perceptions that are not as easily discovered when we are working alone.

The concept of Functional Fixedness also relates to another area discussed in this section - the problem of attaining goals. Often, it is the case that we may fixate on needless or irrelevant information that may obscure our goals.

Halpern (1984) provides an example of how this fixation on irrelevant details may prevent us from solving problems. Halpern poses the following scenario:

Pretend you are a bus driver. You start with an empty bus. At your first stop, 3 men and women get on. At your second stop, 4 men and 3 women get on, while 1 man and 2 women get off. At your third stop, 2 men and 1 woman get on, while 2 men get off. At your fourth stop, 5 men get on and 2 women get off. What is the bus driver's name?

While the above scenario is a humourous riddle, more importantly, it shows how fixating on the wrong elements may interfere with our concentration and our focus on our goals.

This focus on goals is critical if we are going to be able to pay attention to our tasks at hand. Interestingly, Buzan, in providing the outline of the course, in the last part of Unit 2, is providing the goals and directing attention towards these goals.

In the above riddle, the bus driver's name is Yours, since the first sentence said, "Pretend you are a bus driver."

You can benefit from findings such as Halpern's mentioned above. All too frequently, people in business are bombarded with an overabundance of information that may be irrelevant or unnecessary for them to accomplish the goals at hand.

For instance, it may not be important for all employees to be subjected to information that may not be relevant to their particular tasks. If a manager is giving an employee and overabundance of information that is not pertinent to the desired goal, the employee may not be able to focus attention on the actual task at hand and may have problems concentrating.

The results of the studies above provide strong support for Buzan's emphasis on exercises such as the uses for a paper clip and the relationship of these exercises to problems concerning reaching our goals. We often become locked into a way of thinking and this clouds our perceptions of the goal and the methods of reaching it.

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