📚TC🟡🔵 | Learning From Home | The Tilt

I was watching myself in a brainstorming session. Not the ideas. My hand. And I saw it. The hand held the sticky note up. And before it hit the board, it tilted. Just slightly. Just enough. The tilt was the evaluation. The hand was sorting the idea into “good” and “not good” before the idea was even in the shared space. And the idea that got tilted was the idea that did not get stuck on the board.

The Catch

I caught it. And I put the note back, flat. And I stuck it on the board. And the idea was not good. Not by my standards. But it was on the board. And it triggered something in the person sitting next to me. They looked at it. They said one word. And the word connected to something else on the board. And the something else was the idea that ended up being the one we used.

If I had tilted the note, the chain would not have started. The tilt is small. But the tilt is the whole thing. Because the tilt is the evaluation happening before the idea is in the room. And an idea that is evaluated before it is in the room is an idea that is not in the room.

What I Know Now

I know this now. The skill is not the generating. The skill is the not-tilting. It is the flat hand. It is the note hitting the board before the brain has finished sorting it. And the flat hand is not a rule. It is a practice. It is the thing you do every single time, in every single session, until it is not a decision anymore. Until the hand just puts the note down. Flat. Every time. And the sorting happens later. In the other mode. In the other room. Not in the hand. Not before the board.

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📚This is part of Teach Clear. The slow, honest work of staying in the question. teachclear.com