Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

by The Pragmatic Programmers

pany. They had a new way of dealing with queued

  requests into the system. I suggested we assign everyone

  a role. The scheduler would have a whistle, the requests

  would stand in their appropriate queue, the director would

  tell the request where to go, and so on.

  “A couple of people thought it was stupid, but everyone

  was tired and ready for a change. We made signs for our-

  selves. I had a stopwatch and clipboard so I could observe

  by timing and taking notes. We started.

  “The first people collided (oh, it was so funny to watch their

  faces). We made a design change. Reroled. Got through

  a few of the normal scenarios. We realized as we got ready

  for one scenario that we would have another timing issue.

  “That was enough for people to realize the thirty to sixty

  minutes we’d spent role-playing was more valuable than

  any of the design review meetings.

  “Role-playing a design is not open discussion; it’s partici-

  pating in and watching the design in action.”

  Linda Rising describes another use of acting out: training a

  team. After several experiences introducing a new frame-

  work to teams that didn’t quite get it, she and colleague

  David DeLano had the next team act out the framework

  as a play. This time, instead of complaining they didn’t get

  it, the developers complained the play was a waste of a

  time because the material was “soooo easy!”

  Ah, the curse of effectiveness.

  For instance, here’s a quick quiz for you. Get a piece of paper and

  a pencil. In five seconds, draw your house.

  Take five seconds and try this.. . .

  STOP

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  DRAW ON THE RIGHT SIDE

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  Figure 4.1: Is this Your House?

  I’m guessing you drew something like Figure 4.1. Now tell me truth-

  fully, does your house really look like that? Unless you live in Flat-

  land,3 that is not an accurate picture of your house. Your ever-

  helpful L-mode is rushing in and screaming, “House! I know that

  one! It’s a box with a triangle on top.”

  It’s not your house any more than a stick figure looks like a per-

  son. It’s a symbol, a convenient shorthand representation for the

  real thing. But oftentimes you don’t want the trite symbol; you

  want to perceive the real thing—when drawing or perhaps when

  interviewing users to gather requirements.

  Feel R-mode with a Cognitive Shift

  It was Dr. Edwards who first suggested that to get at the real per-

  ception you need to shut down the L-mode and let the R-mode do

  the task for which it is best suited. To accomplish this, she recom-

  mends an exercise similar to the following to help you experience a

  cognitive shift.

  This exercise will show you what R-mode feels like. There are only

  a few rules:

  1. Allow thirty to forty minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time.

  2. Copy the image shown Figure 4.2, on the next page.

  3. Do not reorient the page.

  3.

  Seen any good shrinking circles lately? (See Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions [SQU84].)

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  Figure 4.2: Draw this picture.

  4. Do not name any parts you recognize; just say to yourself up,

  over, this goes that way a little bit, and so on.

  It’s very important that you not name any features you think you

  see—that’s the hard part. Try to just focus on the lines and their

  relationships.

  When you’re done, turn the picture right-side up and you might be

  quite surprised at the result.

  Try this before reading on.. . .

  STOP

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  Why does this work?

  It works because you’ve given your L-mode a job it doesn’t want. By

  consistently refusing to name the parts you see, the L-mode finally

  gives up. This isn’t a task it can handle, so it gets out of the way

  and lets the R-mode processing handle it instead—which is exactly

  what you want.

  That’s the whole point of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It’s

  all about using the correct tool for the job.

  How did you feel during this exercise? Did it feel “different”? Did

  you get a sense of losing track of time and being immersed in flow?

  Did the drawing turn out better than had you tried to just copy it

  normally?

  If not, don’t be discouraged. You may need to try this exercise a few

  times before it works for you. Once you experience the cognitive

  shift, you’ll better know what pure R-mode processing feels like,

  and it will become easier over time.

  4.3 Engage an R-mode to L-mode Flow

  Although I’ve been extolling the virtues of the R-mode, that’s not

  the complete story. There was a spate of self-help books a few years

  ago that promised all manner of benefits based on the right side of

  the brain. I think there was even a Right Brain Cookbook.

  That’s nonsense, of course. Half-witted, even.

  Although we can take advantage of R-mode processing that we

  have traditionally neglected, it’s not a silver bullet or panacea. By

  itself, it won’t solve all our problems—it can’t even process lan-

  guage, after all.

  Instead, what we need is a better way of synchronizing our L-mode

  and R-mode processing so that the whole mind can work better

  and more efficiently.

  There’s a particular technique that will let you accomplish this,

  and I found out about it quite by accident. I didn’t exactly stumble

  on it; I sort of climbed over it.

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  Go Climb a Wall

  Once upon a time, my wife thought it would be fun for us to try

  rock climbing. Many of the participants looked a little uncertain—

  none of us had ever attempted anything like this before, but we

  were determined to soldier on.

  The instructor came out and made sure everyone was properly fit-

  ted in their safety gear. Once we were all fitted up and checked out,

  he stood in front of the group; we fell silent, ready for the lecture.

  But there wasn’t going to be a lecture. Instead, he told us to go start

  climbing. Just like that. For thirty minutes; then we’d all meet back

  here. There was some grumbling in the crowd—we had paid good

  money for this introductory package, and here the instructor was

  just throwing us to the wolves (or to the rocks, as the case may be).

  He wen
t and got a coffee.

  So, we cavorted on the rocks for a while, not really

  knowing what we were doing. And after a half

  hour, the instructor reappeared and then began

  the lecture, explaining to us how to climb. Now,

  having had some experience (however brief), his

  explanations made much more sense. We had

  some context in which to place his instruction:

  when he talked about shifting your weight in a

  certain way, it made sense—much more sense than if he had sim-

  ply begun with the lecture.

  In fact, thinking back on it, this instructor really did the correct

  thing: he provided us with a safe environment in which to explore

  (remember, he made sure everyone’s safety gear was correctly fitted

  and adjusted before turning us loose). He first presented us with a

  multisensory, experiential context so that we could “get our heads

  around it,” as it were. Then he followed up with a more traditional,

  fact-filled lecture.

  What he did here was create a sort of

  R-mode to L-mode flow. As it turns out,

  Engage antoflow.

  that’s exactly what you want to do to facil-

  itate learning.

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  The Lozanov Seance

  In the late 1970s, Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov began

  experimenting with what he termed a seance.4 The idea was to

  create a learning environment that would help create an R-mode to

  L-mode flow, in this case, specifically for foreign language training.

  Prof. Lozanov took his students into a darkened room, with gen-

  tle baroque music playing in the background (because this was the

  1970s, no lawsuits were imminent). By using yoga-inspired breath-

  ing techniques and rhythmic exercises in this relaxed, comfortable

  environment, he hoped to improve the student’s ability to concen-

  trate and assimilate the new material.

  While the students were in this state, the professor bombarded

  them with foreign language examples. No lecture, no footnotes, no

  explanations—just exposure. In other sessions, they would follow

  up with more traditional skills and drills.

  It worked well, and the students who followed this intensive regi-

  men outperformed those who participated in the normal classroom

  regime. In the years since, many educators have seized this idea of

  leveraging the R-mode for its acquisition capabilities.5

  As with any exciting new technique, some folks took it too far in one

  direction and advocated pure R-mode techniques that completely

  ignored the L-mode. There were faddish books pushing right-brain

  bowling and a host of other ill-conceived ideas.

  That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You can’t ignore

  either mode of thinking; you need both working in concert. You

  want to let the R-mode lead and then switch to L-mode to “produc-

  tize” it, if you will.

  TIP 13

  Lead with; fol ow with.

  Both ways of thinking work naturally together; for instance, start

  with the analogic processes for connections and theories, and then

  use the analytic processes to validate your thinking. But remember

  4.

  See the Education Resources Information Center at http://eric.ed.gov.

  5.

  See, for example, The Neuroscientific Perspective in Second Language Acquisition Research [Dan94].

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  it’s not a one-way trip; you need to return to R-mode to keep the

  ideas flowing. R-mode is the source, and you want to give it free,

  uninhibited reign.

  Write Drunk, Revise Sober

  There’s an old writer’s adage that advises would-be authors to

  “write drunk; revise sober.” Now before you go stock up on Patrón

  Silver or Guinness, let’s take a look at what this means.

  You want your creativity to have free reign, unrestricted by “com-

  mon sense” or “practicality.” There’s plenty of time to reign it in or

  discard the absurd later, but to begin with, you want to let ’er rip.

  Just as creativity can be stifled by trying to tie ideas down prema-

  turely, learning can be impeded by trying to memorize minor facts

  when you don’t yet grasp the whole.

  Don’t be in such a hurry. When prob-

  lem solving, learn to be comfortable with Get used to it.

  uncertainty. When creating, be comfort-

  able with the absurd and the impractical. When learning, don’t

  try so hard to learn and memorize; just get “used to it” first. Try to

  understand the meaning first; get the overall gist of it.

  Then follow up with traditional L-mode activities to get to the next

  step: an R-mode to L-mode flow.

  There’s a bit of a push in educational circles along these same lines.

  Dr. David Galin is a noted researcher at the Langley Porter Neu-

  ropsychiatric Institute, University of California at San Francisco.

  He believes that teachers these days have three main responsibili-

  ties to the whole student:6

  • Train both hemispheres, not only the verbal, symbolic, logical

  left mode (as is traditional) but also the spatial, relational,

  holistic right mode.

  • Train students to use the cognitive style suited to the task at

  hand.

  • Train students to bring both styles to bear on a problem in an

  integrated manner.

  6.

  See http://www.rogerr.com/galin/.

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  Shitty First Drafts

  Part of being comfortable with uncertainty means being

  comfortable with something that’s incomplete and unfin-

  ished. You want to avoid the headlong rush to try to

  achieve “perfection.” Author Anne Lamott is an advocate

  of purposefully creating a shitty first draft. That is, it’s better

  to complete a shitty first draft than to never complete

  a perfect one. In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instruc-

  tions on Writing and Life, Lamott explains the dangers of

  perfectionism:

  “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy

  of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your

  whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a

  shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obses-

  sive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each

  stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth

  is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who

  aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole

  lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re

  doing it.”

  You have the same responsi
bility to yourself. You want to end up

  using both L-mode and R-mode in concert, as needed, effectively.

  But those of us in the learned, white-collar, technical professions

  are at a greater disadvantage than the general population. We have

  become so highly focused on (and rewarded for) the L-mode style

  of thinking and learning that we neglect the R-mode. We need to

  honor, respect, and foster attention to these largely ignored R-mode

  processes.

  Let’s look at a few other ways to get the L-mode and R-mode work-

  ing well with each other.

  Pair Programming

  An interesting way to get L-mode to work with R-mode is to use

  another person for the other mode. In other words, have your L-

  mode work with another person’s R-mode or their R-mode work

  with your L-mode.

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  One of the more effective—and controversial—practices espoused

  by Extreme Programming is pair programming. In pair program-

  ming, you have two programmers working at a single keyboard and

  monitor. One person types code in the IDE (the driver), while the

  other (the navigator) sits back and offers suggestions, advice, and

  kibitzes in general.

  One reason this might work so well is that

  while the driver is locked in verbal mode Work with one person in,

  at a particular level of detail, the navigator one in.

  is free to engage more nonverbal centers.

  It’s a way of using R-mode and L-mode together at the same time,

  using two people. Reader Dierk Koenig describes the experience:

  “While pair programming, I often experience that the navigator falls

  into a kind of ‘pattern-matching’ mode when the driver cannot. This

  is sometimes a source of disagreement; the navigator says: ‘All that

  code over here is exactly the same as that other thing over there,

  I mean—beside all the words....’ And the driver disagrees, because

  he just cannot see it while driving.”

  The navigator is free to see these larger relationships and the larger

  picture. And most of the time, you cannot see these relationships

  if you’re driving. So if you aren’t pair programming, you definitely

  need to stop every so often and step away from the keyboard.

  When you talk to another person or work hand in hand with some-

  one at a whiteboard or a paper, your thinking tends to get more