Symposium Neue Thinken

Yesterday, I had the great opportunity of attending an eye-opening symposium organised by NUS AIESEC. FYI they are one of the participants of Project Ahead, so that's how I managed to get involved. As you can see from the subtitle, the symposium is about "new thinking for social action" and basically the theme revolves around social enterprises.

In the morning, I listened to a mini-lecture on social enterprises by Prof Albert Teo from the department of philanthropy and social enterprise in NUS business school. So I got to understand the concept of social enterprises better, since after all, it is a new concept to a physics student, who has been living in the world of equations for near eternity. Following which, we went off for our combos of workshops and 'conversations for inspiration', followed by a great panel discussion and a 'world cafe'. There were a few combos available for the participants, I attended combo B, (and I was the head facilitator of the conversations for inspiration section in that combo)I shall talk about them one by one.

Workshop: Creating a good social brand.

The invited speaker was Ms Kuik Shiao Yin, founder and creative director of the School of Thought. For those who do not know, the School of Thought is somewhat of a tuition center specifically aimed at GP. It was a really interesting talk as she described how the School of Thought actually came about. I found the concept particularly interesting since the original idea was not actually a tuition center, but rather it aims at the 'apathy of the middle class'.

Seeing how Singaporeans love to complain to no end, 3 friends, including Ms Kuik, decided to target at educating the middle class in current affairs, to give them a better understanding of what was happening around them. General Paper was a great medium, because it was precisely this subject that allowed discussion of current affairs.

It was a great success, and it has been running for 8 years. There have been many success stories especially how one of the graduates actually jumped from a C6 to an A1 under the guidance of the School of Thought in a few months. He was one of the facilitators and he also attended the workshop.

Anyway, during the workshop, Ms Kuik told us about the 7 important principles in making a social brand. They are the 7 Ps, passion, purpose, purity, possibility, perserverance, product and people. The things that particularly caught me were passion, purpose and possibility.

From the workshop, I learnt that passion was seriously overrated. And I could easily relate to that. Passion is not permanent, the heart is a fickle thing, and during times of crisis, passion can easily fade away. What is really important is purpose. When you start to feel a passion, you need to think of a purpose, in times of crisis, it is ultimately your purpose that will sustain you.

It reminds me of what I put up 2 posts ago, on "design thinking on a personal level". Ultimately, the purpose would be like "what the world needs". So I now feel it is important to question your own passion, on whether you feel you have a purpose behind it to sustain you when this passion fades away.

And regarding possibility, Ms Kuik brought up this touching story on "The Maid internship". A housewife, using her rights to hire a maid, used the opportunity to ask her newly-hired maid what she would like to achieve, write them down, and she will send her for training. In return, the maid was to work for her like other maids. This way, she was giving her maid the power to make a difference to her life when she returned back to her home country.

In a sense, it goes to show that wherever you are, whatever you are, there is always something you can do to help. The housewife did not think of starting a social enterprise or whatsoever, she just wanted to help the maid make a difference in her own life. It is pretty inspiring and I think I am inspired to think about what I can do in my position to make a difference.

Conversations for inspiration: "Creativity for social service"

This is my show, I was the head facilitator for this session, and it was an opportunity to prototype a session on creativity exploration that I had designed about 2 weeks ago.

The session works like this. I got the participants into 3 groups, and each group had a 'problem picture' on their table. I also arranged several objects and pictures around the room, and the objective was to get the participants to 'stand up' and 'explore' the room, trying to gain inspiration for solutions to those problems.

The idea was to get them to associate the items and pictures that they find with possible solutions. Sometimes, 2 seemingly disparate objects have some kind of intimate connection between them. Probably the best association that I've seen yesterday was with my 'yingyang' necklace. The problem was world hunger, and the necklace was associated with astrology being used to predict the weather. As such, with a system to predict the weather, technology could be used to help agriculture find the best time to grow their crops. I thought it was really cool.

I managed to see other good uses of associations during this session, and I thought the groups did a pretty good job. In the end, I gave everyone a reward, I sent them all my slides along with the slides for Ms Kuik's talk (she used my laptop).

Panel Discussion

This panel discussion was really on fire! Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organisation, Bernise Ang, founder of Syinc, Eugene Tay, founder of TEDx Green and another Dr Tay ( i forgot his affliation), was on the panel, and it was moderated by Victoria Chen, AIESEC member commitee Vice president, business development.

During the discussion, we really got to see the firy entrepreneurial spirit of the panel. Dr Tay and Mr Sim really had a lot of angst inside them, so strong that it made them want to change the world. A lot of meaningful things were said along with quite a load of bad language. After the firy exchange, I felt that my eyes were somehow massively opened to the demographics of social entrepreneurship in Singapore, and how we really need to change our culture, from being mindless robots to actual human beings with creativity, if we were to have any sustainability at all. It was definitely the highlight of the day, with lots of laughter and a lot of applause. I had a lot of fun.

World Cafe: Happiness and Thankfulness, can social enterprises promote those?

My show again, and I had not prepared for this at all. I was too caught up with my creativity session. Well, great opportunity to practice thinking on my feet. So I did a very classic science research sort of analysis with the participants, mindmapping associated words for happiness and thankfulness, then after that, trying to link these associations with the concept of social enterprises being able to promote happiness and gratefulness for their beneficiaries.

The participants brought out interesting insights, because I really had not thought much about the topic. One good insight is that those who work in social enterprises themselves must be thankful for what they have before they try to bring happiness to others. Other insights include the fact that the beneficiaries are already thankful.

In the end, to kill time, I made everyone say what they have learnt during their short stint with me. I was glad they all have learnt something, so I did not have to bury my face in shame. Well, I guess in future I should prepare better for my topic, and I also feel that the World Cafe should be held in a cafe, and not in a classroom, since the whole idea was to be free and easy and move about seeing different discussions. (I mean, if you're in a classroom, it wouldn't feel very good just leaving right?)

Conclusion

So that about sums up all the events for the symposium. I felt it was a good way to spend a Saturday, getting to learn more about social enterprises and meeting new and awesome people, making new friends, getting free food... I collected several name cards, met 2 fellow polymaths (it's very rare to find a polymath, and can you imagine there were 3 of us in the same room?) , and got inspired to make a difference to society, by doing what I enjoy doing, exercising my creativity!

I went home happy and fulfilled. This symposium was a success, for me and for everyone.

Here's the group photo with the organising committee and other facilitators, as well as the chair, taken at the end of the day. It was a lot of fun and they are great people.

Traits of Highly Creative People

Image source: http://dezignus.com/behance-creative-portfolios-network/

I was sourcing the net for what others feel are the traits of highly creative people, and I have come across 3 different websites, each offering their own views on what creative people should be like. There were some similarities, and some unique points listed in some of the sites. So through some analysis and based on my own experience, here are the list of traits of highly creative people which I feel are the most relevant.

1) Curiosity (unknown author)

This one is without question, a creative person is inquisitive and curious, which enables him to garner incredible amounts of knowledge. His ability to think outside the box is not actually out of the box thinking to him, it is because his knowledge is so great, that essentially, the act of learning to him is 'expanding the box', enabling him to pull in different fields of knowledge together to create innovative solutions.

2) Optimism (unknown author)

Every problem has a solution, is essentially the philosophy of a creative person. This positive sort of attitude makes the creative person happy, and because he is happy, his mind is open, and because his mind is open, he can come up with innovative solutions. The creative person's emotional self-defence also enables him to see any problem as interesting and acceptable, and this also helps fuels the optimism.

3) Positive attitude towards failure (unknown author)

The creative person sees every setback and failure as opportunities for learning. Essentially meaning that there is NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE to a creative person. Because whatever he encounters, he will learn something from it. I think Thomas Edison is a good example of this, saying "I have found 1000 ways how not to make a lightbulb". Essentially this also brings about an attitude of perserverance, which enables him to press on and learn more.

4) Intuitive (Michelle L. Casto)

A creative person is able to trust his gut, and does not rely solely on logic to make his decisions. Naturally, there are increased risks, but the rewards reaped are much greater. I like to describe this as 'wormholes of thought', whereby it is possible to analyse the intrinsic sequence of logic for most creative thoughts, but superficially, it seems as though the creative person has taken the chain from the 1st ring to the last ring without going through the rest of the rings. To complement this, the creative person must have trait 3), since he is more likely to fail, but because of his incredible space of ideas, he is also more likely to succeed.

5) Action-oriented and Expressive (Michelle L.Casto, Dean Rieck)

Creative people have a very strong need to express their thoughts and feelings. As such, they may also not be the best person to entrust your secrets on. However, the great thing about this is that whatever lies inside their mind, they would want it to take on a physical form. They want to turn their visions into a reality.

6) Playful (Dean Rieck)

Creative people love to play. It is through this play that their creativity flourishes. Play to me is active exploration of everything and anything. As I like to describe it, creative people are essentially 'matured children', because their path never deviated from their childhood days, but rather, it was stretched by adult wisdom into something incredible.

7) Experimental (Dean Rieck)

Creative people love testing their ideas. They are not afraid to be wrong or look stupid, because it is only through mistakes do learning take place. Like my father likes to tell me, "if you already know everything, then what's the point of learning?"

All in all, I have listed 7 traits of highly creative people which I feel are the more relevant ones for anyone wanting to develop their creative muscle. There are other traits, but essentially they all link here and there.

It is only through creativity can we generate the innovative solutions needed for today's problems.

Design thinking on a personal level

Today I had this wonderful opportunity to meet the other facilitators for Symposium Neue Thinken, which is happening this coming Saturday (and yes! I'm getting a free t-shirt! :) ) And from what I see, these facilitators are not just students, they are really good student leaders, founders and pioneers of their own social initiative. I met the founder of give.sg, as well as the co-founder of Moolah. I felt kind of shadowed because I wasn't the founder of Project Ahead, just the successor, and not to mention the chair of this whole event was there as well, and gave us an awe-inspiring session on the concept of facilitation and it was really an eye-opener for me. I had already taken back so much from tonight, I just wonder how much more I will take back on Saturday.

But anyway, the topic I would like to discuss in this post is again on design thinking, hence this pretty venn-diagram that I had used back in the very first post of my revamped blog. I decided to bring it up because it was actually brought up today during the meeting. Actually, what was brought up was not design thinking on a personal level, it was about basically, acheiving a balance between our strengths, passion, and what the world needs. Some of you may jump ahead already in fact. When I saw the venn diagram drawn on the board, I instantly thought of design thinking, and sure enough, the answer to this question, "how can i bring design thinking to a more personal level", a question which I had been thinking about for about 3 months, finally came to me.

1) PASSION as DESIRABILITY

Well, you are passionate about something, so naturally you would desire to do it.

2) STRENGTHS as FEASIBILITY

If you're good at something, it is definitely feasible for you to try doing it.

3) WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS as VIABILITY

You cannot just keep your talents and passion to yourself, as human beings, as social animals by nature, we have an obligation to serve a cause greater than ourselves as well. The good news is, there is always a way to translate whatever you enjoy and are good at to something the world needs. It's all a matter of....you guessed it... creativity.

So to bring you all to see the big picture, we are talking about design thinking, for designing your purpose in life. Ultimately, the questions you should be asking yourself ( and I should be asking myself as well) is, "What makes me happy?" , "What am I good at?" and "What can I do to serve my community?" The ultimate objective is to find one single answer, which can answer all 3 of these questions, and that is your purpose in life, and that is what you should be doing.

For me, after contemplating long and hard. I feel I have finally reached an answer. I like to invent things, and not just "things", I invent ideas, theories, philosophies and concepts as well. In fact, I have not invented any"thing". But I have invented many short stories, the triple personality theory, the new perspective of the mind, body and soul, the creativity exercise for SNT, and many hare-brained solutions to handle my personal oddities. I realised that the process of "inventing" these new concepts and stuff make me very happy.

But I don't want to stop there, after going through a module on entrepreneurship, I've been thinking about inventing world-changing products and designs as well. And being inspired by Tim Brown and IDEO, I've also been thinking about inventing services and processes. Essentially, I enjoy 'Renaissance inventing'(as i call it), where inventions just aren't about technology and hard science, but also about the metaphysical and the human factor.

And again for those who jump ahead of me, you would probably realise that the first 2 questions are very closely related. If you enjoy something, as long as you have the discipline and the perserverance to push on, high chances are that you will be good at it as well. The main question is how can we actually push these 2 factors into the 'viability' portion of the venn-diagram, or rather, how can we translate it into something the world needs.

For me, it is simple, I simply need to invent things to change the world. What about others whose interests are intrinsically more subjective? Recently, I've watched this rather interesting TED talk on how interpretive dance can raise awareness of social issues in India. Essentially, the lady was doing what she loved (I apologise, I can't remember her name), but at the same time she was bringing awareness of the sufferings of people, especially women, in India, to authorities who had come watch her performance.

Even something like the arts can help in social change, so even if you are the next Van Gogh or Michaelangelo, it doesn't mean you should be stuck in your atelier painting your fantasies and not care about the world. What if you could paint a picture of social issues, using your artistic talents to make it catchy, and thus bring about this awareness to members of the community?

So to sum it up, I strongly believe that we MUST do something that makes us happy, and we MUST have the discipline and the will to be good at it, and we MUST have a heart to give back to society. This is design thinking to help change our own lives. (note the 'experience innovation', you are innovating your own experience.)

Mind, Body and Soul, a more general perspective

Image source: http://www.lth-hotels.com/london_events/mind-body-soul.htm

We often hear this advice, that we are to take care of our 'mind, body and soul'. Most of us do it quite adequately, we take good care of our mental health, exercise regularly and maintain our spirituality through some form of religion. From a free-thinker's perspective, I was a bit concerned on how I should see the soul. I'm not the hardest type of free-thinker around actually, I do believe in a Creator, and I can fully appreciate the concept of the soul, but I feel our understanding of the soul should go beyond simply a 'ghost' or a 'spirit' living inside our flesh.

This was an intuition I had about a year ago, and today, I am going to reveal my insights into this issue, those that I have developed over one year.

The first question we should ask is "What is the soul?"

Initially, I drew a venn diagram, one circle for the mind, the other for the body, then I called the intersection the soul. So in this prototype model, the soul was essentially the link between the mind and the body

But them I began to see flaws in my design. I can think of many ways how the mind influences the body, but it seems like the body cannot seem to reciprocrate the powers of the mind. It was then that I was prompted to revise the statement.

So now, the soul is the "dominion of the mind over the body".

And having a healthy soul essentially means that your mind is in control of everything. Essentially saying that "whatever your mind thinks, you can achieve". And "the spirit is willing, and the flesh can do it!"

Now this may actually be something quite powerful. We're talking about super athletes, those who can perform amazing feats with the means of visualization techniques. We're talking about super observers, those whose 5 senses are in strong communion with the mind. We're talking about people who can force illnesses out at will, and perhaps in a more practical sense, people who can dream big and achieve big. Based on my definition, these are people with 'super souls'

So basically, what is this saying? It's essentially saying that we should first develop our mind and body before we talk about developing our soul. This is just my conjecture, but listen to the following logic. You can have a very fit body, but if you are ridden with mental illnesses and constantly plagued by stress, there's no way you can hope to develop the mind's control over the body. In fact, the body is most likely to get ill because of poor mental health. Likewise, you can have a very strong mind, but if your body is weak and you are constantly bugged by illness and fatigue, you wouldn't have the energy to develop the soul and your mind would also be in a vulnerable position.

Now let's say we've already taken care of our mind and body, how do we take care of our soul? This is actually something I'm not very sure of, because well, honestly, I have yet to take care of my mind and body. But what I think can be done is through the practice of certain skills. Meditation is one obvious example. Other skills would probably be ambidexterity (balance the body, balance the mind), observation with the 5 senses, active exploration of everything and anything (curiosity) with your hands and your mind, and visualisation with physical practice, as in sports or a physical stunt.

In fact, it may even be possible to develop the soul simultaneously with the mind and the body, and this may in fact, help to quicken the development of both entities. I'm not too sure. But the speed of development would certainly not be as great as if both the mind and the body have already been well-developed. But I guess for most of us, simultaneously developing the soul may be more practical. Good news though, the speed of development is likely to increase as our proficiency increases.

Yep, this was the insight I came up with today after a heavy lunch. Personally, I feel it is a good insight, because it caters to all faiths and beliefs, from religious church-goers to rationalists and atheists. As for myself, I have been self-inspired to take better care of my mind and my body (lose weight!) because now I am really curious as to how a powerful soul would feel like.

Unconventional Story Writing

Image source: http://kapalama.ksbe.edu/faculty/weburbri/FictionWriting/index.html

Back in the past when I was relatively more free, I enjoyed writing short stories related to science fiction themes and more recently, I've been playing around with other genres as well. I also experimented with some unconventional strategies that I have seen or thought of, here's just a list of them.

1) Chronologically backwards.

I've ever seen a story about some sort of time-travelling device which essentially reversed the flow of time, such that the person actually went through a lot with another person, 'before' actually meeting the person. It is something very curious and intriguing, because in a sense, you are left in suspense, for something that has happened 'in the past'. I have not yet attempted to write a story like that, but yes, it is something to consider.

2) Breaking the 4th wall.

Sometimes, in films or cartoons, the characters 'break the 4th wall', and end up having a conversation with the viewer. Good examples I've seen are mainly cartoons for pre-school kids, where the main character regularly talks to the intended audience. There are also some comedies where the characters suddenly become aware that they are in a show and often tell the audience to 'forget' their scenes of embarrassment. Those really make me laugh.

So I had a thought, why not try to 'break the 4th wall' in a short story as well? I have written stories whereby the character scolds the author, me, for making him end up in a bad state, and then, depending on my mood, I sometimes help out the character or make him end up in an even worse state. Talk about author-character relations eh...

3) Picture story

Not too unconventional, but it was an idea that I had last night. This was actually inspired by my own planning for the creativity session in Symposium Neue Thinken next Saturday. It would be fun to try surfing the net for certain pictures, related to a certain theme, and some other random pictures, then try to write a story relating all these pictures. Now I bet those seemingly unrelated pictures may just give the story a little juicy twist.

4) Anti-musing

As the name suggests, this story will have a very conventional background. How conventional? The story is based on a day of the author's life. Waking up, brushing his teeth, eating breakfast, going to work/school, going for tests/exams...etc... But then, when the author sits down to write about his day, everything is transformed. Instead of eating breakfast normally, he has to fight off jackals from the underworld to get his scrambled eggs, and instead of going to school normally, he has to fight off evil martians who try to rob his brain of knowledge. Simply put, it is transforming your boring life into a more interesting one. Who knows, after trying out some of this, you may develop new insights into your own life or whatever. (PTN, the examples I used are exaggerations, feel free to try more 'conventional' ones if you want)

5) Deep-thought diving

If you hit a story without planning before hand, you will see somehow that your inspiration gradually increases as you write. It is a very fun and exciting journey which I enjoy. Hence, I often like to jump onto a story on a whim, and as I write, deeper and deeper thoughts and creative insights enter my mind. A conventional method of story writing done in an unconventional way, who knows what wonders you can come up with using this method?

Story writing is not just restricted to the realms of authors and writers. People from different professions may just do well trying out writing as a hobby or an interest. Writing is a good way for me to exercise my creativity and unleash my built-up creative tensions. Perhaps you can try it too? If you have any interesting insights, feel free to share them with me :)