Green Light Red Light

There have been many studies that have shown that the two sides of the brain operate very differently. One side controls emotion and creativity and the other controls logic and analysis.

Fighter Pilot Study

An interesting study of jet fighter pilots looked at how the two sides of the brain communicated. They found that the creative side of the brain was used to actually fly the plane while the analytical side was used to check the instruments and make sure they stayed on course. When the pilots were performing at their best level, both sides of the brain checked in with each other once in a while but not too often.

When the level of communication between the two sides increased, they found that performance of the pilots decreased. Apparently more of the brain power was being used to communicate with each other and less was going to fly the plane. Once this happened, the pilot would start to feel uncertain and question their judgement which delayed their reaction times.

Analyzing Too Soon

Unfortunately, the same thing happens to us sometimes too. How many times have we started to write something and then re-read the first sentence and think “this isn’t very good.” Then we go back and try to rewrite the first sentence again and again. By this time our confidence is shot and we have a difficult time proceeding at all.

Or how about in a meeting where we suggest a solution to a problem and someone else immediately tells us why it won’t work. After that, it is very difficult to come up with other solutions. Shutting Off Creativity

What is happening in both these cases is that our creative side starts going and then gets shut down by our analytical side. Every time the creative side of the brain comes up with another idea, the analytical side thinks about what is wrong with it and cuts it off. Eventually, the creative side just stops coming up with new ideas.

Green Light

The cure for this is to use the Green Light/Red Light technique. The first step is to turn on the green light and let all your ideas come out. The important thing at this point is not to analyze anything. If you are writing something, just write it down and don’t worry about grammar or spelling or if your are communicating your ideas clearly. If you are in a meeting, just write down everyone’s ideas, no matter how crazy they are.

The whole idea here is to let the creative side of the brain work without analyzing it.

Red Light

Once you have finished writing or have written down a bunch of ideas, then turn on the red light and start analyzing them. Of course, there will be a lot of mistakes to clean up in your writing or a lot of “far out” ideas that won’t work. That is not important. What is important is that you now have a lot of material that you can work with. Summary

The important lesson to learn in the Green Light/Red Light technique is to not turn on the red light analysis too soon when doing things like writing, programming or problem solving. Make sure the creative green light goes on first to get the ideas out before you start analyzing them.