November Newsletter
A synthesis of previous posts on intuition with a micromastery and a micromastery approach to learning to use colour in visual art
A summary and synthesis of suggestions for developing intuition
We have previously described ways to actively develop expertise and intuitive thinking in areas of specialism (March 2024) and how to tap into the expertise of people with more experience (June 2024). Also explored have been ways of allowing intuition to emerge by removing barriers (September and October 2024) with a particular focus on using aspects of mindfulness. The purpose here is to look at a few other activities that are claimed to help develop intuition, to weave all these strands together, and from this, to suggest a simple micro-mastery approach.
If you search for suggestions on how to develop or allow intuition to develop you will find plenty. These range from drinking Mugwort or abstaining from meat and dairy, through paying attention to your dreams, making all activities into rituals, walking barefoot, to paying 6500 rupees (£59.14 at current exchange rates) for a ten week zoom based course.
I am not too sceptical of some of these, and I do try and keep an open mind, yet I find myself drawn, initially at least, to activities that I would naturally enjoy or fit in with my obligations, as well as ones which appear to work based on the experience of others that I judge to be trustworthy.
Based on these criteria I have found myself interested in the following suggested activities-
Sailing or rock climbing
Trekking in the wilderness
Travelling (as opposed to more organised tourism)
Dramatic Improv
Creative arts such as painting, dance and movement.
To understand how these may help to develop one’s intuition, it would be useful to explore the range of both rational and intuitive thinking again. Rational thinking is about following a set of rules, a linear process, often calculative and where precision is seen as important. It is a consistency tool that works well where there is low uncertainty, few alternatives and good quality information. Universal, context independent, and time unchanged rules have their place (e.g. aeronautical engineering.) There is some evidence that we use it for persuasion or justification in some circumstances, both to persuade ourselves and others as much as a consistency tool. At its worst (when it dominates our thinking) it can lead us to delusions about the actual scope of control that we have and our level of mastery.
Where it doesn’t work so well is in areas that are sometimes described as ‘wicked’ or ‘wild’ problems. Such problems have the properties of having goals that are subjective or hard to define or objectively ‘scored’ or filtered, where the circumstances and hence information and goals keep changing (uncertainty and emerging complexity), and where previous paths to success don’t always replicate. Because of these factors there is no ‘map’ or calculus, or the rules, models and maps need questioning and constantly updating. This big group of (important) problems are found commonly in nature and in our own lives. In such situations we do use our intuitive thought, based on what resources we have on that spectrum of instinct to experience and including what could be described as our values. We have to rely on a subjective assessment of the whole composition of the situation. If you accept these assertions, it could be worth answering the question “How do we make intuitions better?”
The first three activities listed above are taking us out of the relatively ordered and less complex world we have created for ourselves and putting us in situations where the decisions we must make are more likely to be ‘wilder’ in the sense of quickly changing environments. You could see them as training exercises that encourages more intuitive thinking. If you push out to the extreme end of these activites, the consequences of getting it wrong can be severe, hence the necessity. But there is a range there, (I have sailed for instance, but in a marine lake where the consequences of error are far less likely to be severe) so you don’t have to jump in at the deep end in these types of activities. If the downside risks are too high, it can generate anxiety, which as we know, can be a barrier to intuitive processes. These types of activities may be something you need to feel your way into, depending on your personality, and build up some confidence as you go along.
The creative activities have fewer changing environments, but more subjective goals related to the overall context.
The dramatic improv has both changing environment (but with less physical consequences) and subjective goals. These types of activities may encourage intuitive thinking too. (As an aside, I was explaining to a friend who speaks Welsh fluently that I was meeting up with some members of an improv group that we all used to be in. He hadn’t heard of improv and after explaining it, he suggested that the term for it in Welsh could be ‘fyfyrio byr’ – ‘meditation short’ to translate literally, which may be an indication of the both the practice and end state that one is engaging with.)
There are questions about any kind of training exercises – are the ‘skills’ transferable from the context of training and are they generalisable? I’m not sure, but our current understanding of learning would suggest that such transfer can be limited. I do think aspects of mindfulness as described in the last newsletter can become transferable if practised in different contexts and in a certain way. The activities described above may have a general training effect, in that a person gets into the habit of using their intuition more (if this balancing factor is needed) but they may need an awareness of this, when they are using it and in which external contexts and alongside what other type of thinking.
A Micro-mastery approach intuition development
There is a view that we are thinking both intuitively and rationally already most of the time without being aware of the intuitive thinking so much.
If this is the case for you, then the entry trick to micromastering one’s intuition would be to ‘catch yourself’ making these kinds of decisions. If you recognise that you already use intuition for decision making, the entry trick would be start keeping some kind of track of its use.
You could keep notes of what the decision was, the context, the outcome, how you felt the sensation and so on. Mental or written, to whatever depth works for you and which you could gamify. The point here is that you can make the tracking manageable as part of everyday life.
If you live a very routinised or habit driven life, then as Robert suggests in his blog (link below) you may need to step out of it at times. Why? Because you need to actively put yourself in situations where the decisions could be somewhat ‘wilder’ for you. Making good decisions inherently involves the risk of making bad ones. If all you do is try to eliminate bad decisions from your life totally by following rules, then you stop learning. There is an element of de-skilling oneself – use of judgement can atrophy. You sometimes need to be surprised to an extent. Our attitudes to uncertainty are quite instinctive but have become ‘maladaptive’ in certain contexts. The examples of activities mentioned above are examples of just that stepping outside of routine. You will likely be able to find your own examples.
This then becomes the zone of experimental possibility. You can start small, or on the less important and less consequential areas of your life as much as adding extra activities such as those listed above.
It could be something as simple as trying something completely different to eat and giving yourself the choice of meal A or B. If you take up ‘flaneuring’ around the benign country villages and countryside that was suggested in the newsletter on expectations, you could consciously choose one direction or another. Or you could decide to have a conversation with someone in a queue at work. The ‘at work’ is important here You need to start in fairly predictable environments – you need some patterns to learn from. Later when you have more confidence or trust in your abilities you could extend that to starting conversations in a random queue in a big city. Eventually, you may want to extend to the activities mentioned at the top as activities that could be used as experimental possibilities, if they appeal and can fit into your schedule.
It would be very useful to use and note your intuition in as many different contexts as you can given that they appear somewhat context dependent. This type of situational assessment needs to be experienced, and it can be very useful for rounded development to acquire a sufficient baseline of experience outside of speciality demanded by the modern world. Just learning something new has similar possibilities of taking one out of routine and using one’s intuition. (Hence the possibilities inherent in micromastery and polymathy and why we post specific examples of things we are learning. We do practice what we ‘preach’.) Often you will get the quick feedback loops that are useful when starting to use a new skill.
Micromastery emphasises to an extent creating success and payoffs and if you are monitoring your intuitive decisions carefully and find that you are moving forward from getting an at least 50% success you can be fairly sure that you are making some progress.
However, it is worth linking back to previous posts about learning from mistakes (December 2023 newsletter) in this new context of intuition. It is useful to see the connections between these different perspectives and in this case, we could see these as background support for this and other micromasteries. We need mental models created from past experiences for both reasoning and intuition. However as mentioned earlier, some predictive models become too inflexible and generalised to adapt to changing environments and need frequently updating.
In learning, both to use your intuition and generally, will involve making errors because you are putting yourself in situations where your models are somewhat inadequate. We know from experience that making errors can be crucial to optimal learning. The signals that the mind gets can direct it to a more pliable state. But we can have quite stubborn attitudes to mistakes that develop largely from our personal and social environment of learning. We are talking about overreactions to our mistakes from people when we are younger, the over, or inappropriate at times, emphasis of ‘getting it right’ in our education system and so on. Really strong feedback from errors can accelerate learning but it does depend upon the capacity of the recipient to receive them without it being too stressed by them. It is possible to gamify error making and we will describe some more in a forthcoming newsletter on overcoming ‘internal learning barriers.’
Being open to analysing one’s errors in intuition is helpful in overcoming the rub pat barrier of misattributing the source of emotions that are coming from something else to intuition. As mentioned in the previous post, any strong emotion can drown out the subtle interior voices of intuition. Some of the benefits of being able to recognise one’s emotional states and the calming effects of that small unpretentious exploration of meditative practices could be useful here. (Simply observing ones breathing at times can give an indication of one’s emotional state and the space to examine the causes.) There are simple more direct approaches which Rob has written about in his blogs (see link at the end.)
Background support
If you are interested in pursuing this rub pat barrier in more detail, Professor Joel Pearson has just written a book on intuition (link below) which focuses particularly well on when not to rely on it. He has similar views to us on the approach on the subject and he also agrees about the 10,000-hour rule on developing mastery not necessarily being correct.
Returning to the payoff, developing one’s intuition has the potential to improve one’s day to day judgement and decision making – it may give you a capacity one didn’t use much before. Another payoff that you may be able to discern is, that rather than following procedures to arrive at a single right answer you may well find yourself being able to select from multiple answers that can apply to different situations or people in different ways.
Beyond this what might you use intuition for? That may require intention informed by a wider knowledge and understanding, which is why we frame these posts within the wider aspect of polymathy and practical wisdom. Finally, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and an aspect of mental flexibility is realising that rational thought, in its widest sense, will still be needed in its place!
If you refer to the March and June newsletters mentioned above, you will see a lot of overlap with the suggestions here. It might be useful to regard those situations as specific cases of the more general model proposed here and further examples of background support.
https://www.roberttwigger.com/journal/2014/10/22/thinking-in-patterns.html
https://www.roberttwigger.com/journal/2012/8/7/listening-to-the-two-inner-voices.html
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intuition-Unlock-Brains-Potential-Decisions/dp/1801293058
In the USA the book is called The Intuition Toolkit
A micromastery approach to learning to use colour in visual art
My biggest problem in art has been not having the opportunity of learning how to use colour (I stopped having and formal education in art at 14.) I have tried watercolour and gouache but find them a bit flat for some effects that I want to create in my mind’s eye. I am really interested in getting a bit of luminosity in the pictures or prints and find myself fascinated by the idea of painting light, fire, snow, very bright landscapes and nocturnes and learning how to use different colours and shades to do that.
Having had extremely little experience and coaching in colour mixing I came up with an exercise that has aspects of a micromastery approach.
The entry trick for me that might suit others. It was to buy the biggest set of pencil crayons that I could afford that gives a range of shades for each colour. I then collected pictures that I liked from the range subjects listed above and printed them out. I have a A4 landscape book where there is space for the picture and my copy to go side by side. The idea is to practise using colours to get these effects without having to do too much mixing.
I am happy to copy as much as creating my own ideas. I never try to pass them off as my own and if I post any copies online such as here, I will always signpost to the original artist. The process is not a mindless imitation, and I hope to illustrate some of the things I have learnt from the first example below. (Though I would add, it is very likely that I am also picking up things that I might be unaware of too – implicit learning.)
· Other than the shades provided in the set, you are limited in the range of shades you can create with crayon. You can darken to some extent by pressing harder or going over and you can blend to some extent by going over with a different colour, but the effect is not the same as with mixing paint.
· It can be hard to get a sharp edge between light and dark when needed. One technique that I have picked up from Japanese prints is to use a deliberate dark line using a biro. Also, different colours can merge into one another when you want to but again the effect isn’t the same as with other media. Yellow and white on their own are not that luminous in crayon. You need to ‘show’ the luminosity.
· Although I am not focussing attention on composition I am developing ‘muscle memory’ of this. Because I am copying, I am practising my drawing skills. I would miss this if I was using an adult colouring book (which I wouldn’t denigrate and gives some of the experiences described here). Also, I am beginning to see which bits of the picture are best done first and those which are better coming later.
Experimental possibilities
Interestingly, the colours of the pictures on a computer screen look different to the printed versions so there is choice there. In the examples shown, there was a slightly blue tinge to some of the lighter greys which I have used on my versions. There is also the possibility of going a bit further and following one’s intuitions and experimenting with changing the colours slightly more.
Size sometimes matters and the format of the book allows some degree of playing with this. And if I need to go bigger than A4 I do have larger paper available.
As I progress with this process, I can see it becoming a bit looser. Following that intuitive thinking, I might change elements in the picture – add things or change their position or size and completely change some colours. Over time I hope to get inspired to try my own composition. Eventually I expect I will experiment with something else besides crayon, probably line and watercolour to start with. All these will encourage repeatability.
I have a good range of pictures of different subjects from a range of different processes and media (listed below) that will keep me interested in the process for quite some time. My aim is to do a minimum of one picture a month – I’m not pushing myself too hard here.
Background support
Using a proper sketchbook with advice from an experienced artist has been a big support. It is readily at hand around the house (following the Richard Burton worktables idea). The advice that I have been following (see link below) is to use it as a creative laboratory – a place to plan, experiment, test new materials, analyse, and document the learning process. It can be as specifically detailed as I have the energy for, and experience tells me that I have ‘wasted’ a lot of time in the past by not doing this in the past. I have done my art in too many different books and scraps of paper and have recorded no detail of material and process! I think I will regard it as a book that I will enjoy filling and looking over for a range of reasons and it certainly is another element of the repeatability of the exercise.
As time goes on, I will probably need to add to the range and quality of the pencils. Quality ones can be bought individually, and I will treat myself to some when I have completed a certain number of copies.
I may well post some of them online and invite feedback – there are many friendly artists about who are willing to share and advise. There is an art club in Rowen which I might join at some point
The payoff
In this case mainly personal and the sense of achievement and efficacy. If I do get inspired to use some of these skills in something that comes from my own imagination all the better. I am not thinking of turning this into a commercial exercise but if I could create a card or illustration for a friend or some other project that would be very satisfying.
Link to using your sketchbook
Artists I am currently interested in –
Japanese and Korean style prints including contemporary artists ( a favourite is Tom Killion)
John Atkinson Grimshaw
Eyvinde Earl
Gustave Bauman
Richard Savoi
Rockwell Kent
Robert Taverner
Paul Strangroom
Lena Mari Skjoldan Kolas
Francesco Balsamo
Annie Soudain
Gail Brodholt