Work In The Conceptual Age

Consider how many of us have access to more information than we could ever hope to read, right at our fingertips. The future is not in how much you know, the old school method of learning facts and figures is behind us, the future is about how you use that information.

Learning HTML and CSS doesn’t mean you’ll create beautiful websites. Mastering WordPress doesn’t make you a good writer. Music theory doesn’t make a great composer.

Dan Pink talks about how important having a sense of empathy will be, along with the ability to recognize beauty, and being able to find meaning from inherently neutral objects and ideas. These are things only we can do, as yet no machine or program has accurately managed to do these tasks.

Higher order thinking and creative problem-solving are the new in-demand skills in the 21st century, and they rely on our ability to find meaning, to see things that exist outside of raw facts and numbers, to see the beauty and identify meaning in patterns and creatively use our insights to solve problems that cross a variety of different fields.

Higher order thinking centers around using schemas and systems in new ways to synthesize new information. Given how important it now is, let’s take a look at the best way to improve it, which is by learning new systems, and finding creative ways to apply this knowledge.

Here are four activities you can do right now to start developing this skill of higher order thinking, that slip into two simple categories:

 Learn…

1. …By Doing. Interact with what you want to learn, try to look at it from different perspectives, learn to take criticism, and make mistakes. Experiences are the way to learn something thoroughly–Use your devices, use your hands, create things, be artistic, experiment, iterate.
2. …By Expanding Your Horizons. Everything is connected somehow. Learn new things that are outside what you normally associate with. You might be a coder that does something radical because you are also an expert at how to cook exotic food. Being open to new experiences is essential, close-mindedness is a killer of creativity.

Create…

1. …Solutions. Don’t wait for problems to find you, go and seek them out. Look at the world around you, what could you make better? What doesn’t exist that might make life easier? Design your own solutions.
2. …Art. You don’t need to be problem-solving all the time. You can create stories, ideas, characters, and art. Push the boundaries of what you can do with every chance you get, think outside the box and surprise yourself.

You might be surprised at how effective playing is to creativity. Having fun and trying new things without fear is exhilarating. Children know this, but we forget it. Sometimes when everything is taken too seriously, we forget to enjoy ourselves, and in doing so we can become narrow-sighted, looking for the quick and easy solution to things.

Bring back that carefree curiosity you had as a child, play and interact with new things, and open your arms to any new experiences. This will prepare you to thrive in the emerging conceptual age and make you more recession-proof in your career.