GREAT WHITE guitarist Mark Kendall recently spoke with The Great Southern Brainfart - excerpts below.

Michael Wagener produced your last album and he really managed to capture the spirit of the band's more classic sound. Did it happen naturally or did he play a role in it?

“There was no such intention, because we wrote exactly the same as always. We didn't change anything. Obviously, the producing is of the highest order. When you walk into his studio, you can be blinded by the brilliance of platinum records. He works with everyone. For example, he makes you feel free. When he works with you, he makes sure you feel comfortable. We played great and he made us feel very comfortable.”

I am sure that his old-fashioned way of working suited you much better than the trend of young producers.

"Exactly. It doesn't use Auto-Tune or anything like that. He just tells you to play until everything is done right. He says: “Don’t sing smoothly!” (laughs). I want to believe and trust my ears and when I hear something and if it sounds good, then it is good. If the computer says that everything is not very good, then so what? We are not computers. We are human and we like the way music sounds. If it sounds good, it's good. If you start thinking like a computer, you will sound like a machine. It's always good for us when we all play together. And it has nothing to do with computers."

How did you record, digitally or analogue?

“For me, writing on a computer is not a problem. I love doing this. It's just a faster way. When we were working with two-inch tape, it took a lot of time to make small adjustments. Now a couple of mouse clicks and you're done. So recording can now be done very quickly. This allows the whole process to go fairly smoothly and you don't get interrupted - I just hate these huge breaks for something. I like to live in the moment while the energy is there.”

As a veteran of the scene, you've seen its ups and downs. What do you think about the current state?

“Now it is necessary that you have enough people on your team who are well acquainted with Internet realities. Now where more difficult ways to get your music to people, because the means that we used before are no longer available. We're not on the radio or on MTV every five seconds across the country. When all this was gone, we still have fans and we still play concerts, but many of those who come may not be aware that we have a new album out. I am completely into new music, because every time it is a challenge for us, an opportunity for improvement. This is our foundation and the main reason why we are still here. We want to keep writing and keep doing good things and maybe even do something even better than we did the last time. There aren't many forums for new music, but when people hear our latest album they speak very highly of it. We try our best to get our music heard. We have a history that we are proud of, but in order to maintain the necessary energy, we must create new material."

We are what we constantly do.
And perfection is not an action, but a habit.
~ Aristotle

Scientists have long suggested that for those with even a modicum of willpower, it takes about 30 days to form a new habit. As with any new business, the most important thing in this is to start and overcome the first awkward steps. This is 80% success. This is why it is so important to make small but positive changes in your life for at least 30 days.

You've heard the old saying: “How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time"? The same applies to changing your own life. Trying to bite off more than you can chew will only lead to choking. But by taking a few bites at a time - for example, by starting to eat a little healthier, exercising a little more, slightly reorganizing your workflow - you won’t even notice how the elephant is swallowed and the goal is achieved.

Below you will find 30 challenges that can be completed within 30 days. I can testify that each of them has the potential to create a new positive habit in your life. Yes, some of them overlap each other slightly. And no, you don't have to take on all 30 challenges at once. It’s better to choose from 2 to 5 tests for the next 30 days - but take them on with all your heart. And once you are completely comfortable with them, choose a few others for yourself for the next month.

1. Use words that promote happiness. – Usually, when I ask someone “How are you,” they answer me something like “Fine” or “Fine.” But one sleepy Monday morning, my colleague answered a similar question with “Simply wonderful”! It made me smile and then think. I asked him what was so wonderful that happened to him, and he replied: “Well, of course - I’m healthy, my family is fine, and we live in a free country. Isn't that wonderful?" But the difference between his life and mine was very small - the attitude towards this very life. His life wasn't necessarily better than others, but he looked twenty times happier than them. Therefore, try to use in the next 30 days more words that bring smiles to faces.
2. Try something new every day. – Variety adds spice to life. You may see or do something a million times, but the first time is only once. Our first impressions often leave an imprint on our minds for the rest of our lives. Try to learn or experience something new every day for the next 30 days. This could be anything from a new hobby to a conversation with a stranger. And once you get the hang of it, believe me, these new experiences will sooner or later open the door to a whole world of new opportunities that can change your life.
3. Try to do something selfless every day. “It’s not for nothing that they say – what goes around comes around.” And when you positively influence someone's life, you change yours at the same time. Do something selfless, something that will make someone else happy, or at least less unhappy. I promise it will be a very enjoyable experience. Perhaps one that you will remember for the rest of your life. Of course, your choices in this regard are limitless, but if you can help someone and it doesn't cost you anything, do it.
4. Learn and practice one new skill every day. – If you can rely on yourself in any situation, you will certainly live a happy and productive life. And in order to rely on yourself, you need to acquire as many useful skills as possible, becoming a kind of jack of all trades. And despite all those stories about jacks of all trades being good for nothing, in reality they are much better suited to life than specialists in one narrow field. Plus, learning new skills is fun.
5. Teach someone something new every day. – We all have our natural strengths and talents that can significantly help the people around us. What is simple for you may be quite difficult for others. We take these gifts of fate for granted, often barely realizing how much we have to offer other people, and therefore rarely share anything with them. But these invaluable gifts can help us sow happiness and the will to live around us. What do people thank you for most often? What do they most often ask you to help with? Most hobbies and inner talents can help those in their social circle in some way. For you, this may turn out to be drawing, learning mathematics, the ability to cook delicious dinners, or even becoming a teacher of some courses. Over the next 30 days, try to share your talents and experiences with others.
6. Spend at least an hour every day doing something you are truly passionate about.. – DO NOT forget to pursue your hobbies. It could be anything. Some people enjoy participating in political life their city, others find solace in faith, others participate in clubs that unite people with similar hobbies, and for others, their hobby may be the most important thing in life. But each of these cases is actually similar to the others. All these people are doing something that they are truly passionate about. And this passion fills their lives with happiness and meaning.
7. Be kind to everyone. Even to those who are rude to you.– If you talk kindly to someone who doesn’t like you, this does not mean that you are hiding your feelings. Rather, it means that you are truly an adult and are able to control them. Treat everyone around you with kindness and respect, even those who treat you less well - not because they good people, but because you are just such a person. Try this behavior for the next 30 days and little by little you will see how the rudeness around you slowly dissipates.
8. Try to always maintain a positive attitude. – Truly successful people always try to be optimistic. They cultivated the ability to independently create their own happiness and the desire to create. No matter what situation you find yourself in, remember: every successful singer was once an ordinary girl who always managed to find positivity in her life. She knows that any mistake is just an opportunity for personal growth and a chance to learn something new. Those who think optimistically see the world as a place chock full of endless possibilities, especially during challenging times. Try to look on the bright side of this world for the next 30 days.
9. Always be grateful for the lessons you are taught. life situations . – It is important to remember that whatever you encounter is a life lesson. Everyone you meet, everything you encounter, and so on. All this is part of that huge life lesson that we call life. Try to always be grateful for him, especially when things don't go the way you want them to. And if you didn’t get the job you dreamed of, or your personal relationship never led to anything serious, it just means that there are much better options waiting for you somewhere ahead. And the lesson you just learned is just the first step towards this better option. For the next 30 days, try to write down in your journal all the lessons that life has taught you.
10. Pay attention to your life - and enjoy it. – When I watched the Oscars a few months ago, I realized that most of the speeches given by award-winning actors and actresses began something like this: “This means so much to me. My whole life seemed to lead to this moment.” But do you know what the truth is? Each of our lives leads to this moment. Yes, yes, to this very moment in which we are now. Think about it. Everything you have done in your life - bad, good and indifferent - has led you to the point where you are now. Ask yourself how much are you truly living your life? And if you're like most people, the answer is likely to be, "Not enough." So try to focus a little less on achieving something and more on just living. Remember - we live for the moment. Life is here and now. So try to spend the next 30 days truly living.
11. Try to get rid of at least one thing a day for the next 30 days.– We live every moment of our lives surrounded by a huge amount of garbage and unnecessary things - and it doesn’t matter where we are at that moment (at work, in the car, at home or somewhere else). We are so used to it that we don’t even notice how it affects us. But if you clear out the external debris, a fair amount of the internal debris will also go with it. So try to choose one unnecessary item every day and get rid of it in one way or another. In fact, it is very simple, although at first it may not seem so to you. But sooner or later you will get rid of your “squirrel syndrome”, and your decluttered mind will thank you.
12. Try to create something new in these 30 days. – Creating something new... ah, this feeling cannot be compared with anything. Using your own creativity to the fullest and creating something new with my own hands gives you an inexpressibly pleasant feeling of completion, the like of which simply does not exist. The only “but” is that you must create something that you really like. If you spend all day creating financial investment plans for your clients and hating every second of it, then it doesn't count. But if you find a hobby that you really enjoy and create something that relates to it, it can change your whole life. And if you're in Lately If you don’t create something with your own hands just because you want it, try it. Let your creativity run free – at least for the next 30 days.
13. For the next 30 days, don't lie a single word.. – Yes, this may seem difficult, if not impossible, because “white”, “innocent” lies often pour out of us in a continuous stream. But you can. Stop deceiving yourself and others, speak, looking for words that come from the heart, speak the truth.
14. Try to wake up 30 minutes earlier every day. – Try to wake up 30 minutes earlier every day so you don’t run around in the morning like a rabbit bitten by a kangaroo. These 30 minutes will help you avoid speeding tickets, being late, and other unnecessary headaches. Try it - at least for the same 30 days - and see how it affects your life.
15. Get rid of 3 bad habits over the next 30 days.– Do you eat too much junk food? Playing too many video games? Are you quarreling with your relatives? In general, you yourself know your bad habits. Pick 3 of them and try to get rid of them in the next 30 days. Dot.
16. Try to watch TV no more than half an hour a day. – Better entertain yourself with something from the real world. The best memories we have are from the wonderful events that happen to us in real life, and only in it. So turn off your TV (or computer, if you watch TV on it), and go outside. Look at the world, enjoy nature, embrace the simple joys that life has to offer and just watch it unfold before you
17. Set one worthwhile goal for yourself and work on it for at least an hour a day.– Break your big, grandiose goal into small pieces, and focus on completing one piece at a time. Yes, taking one step at a time will get you there the fastest, but taking the first step is usually the hardest. For the next 30 days, try to spend at least one hour a day doing something you've always wanted to achieve. Take your dream and make it come true.
18. Read one chapter of a good book every day. – Now that the Internet opens up to us an endless stream of information, articles, dialogues and discussions, people are spending more and more time reading online. And yet, none of this can replace the time-tested wisdom of some of the classic books that have shared (and will continue to share) their wisdom for many generations. Books open many doors - both in your mind and in your life. Find a list of classic books online and visit your local library. Then spend the next 30 days reading at least one chapter a day until you finish the entire book. And then choose another one. And further. And further.
19. Try to watch or read something every morning that will inspire you to new achievements.. – Sometimes, in order to fill yourself with energy for the whole next day, you need very little. So for the next 30 days, before you leave the house, watch a motivational video, or read something (quotes, a blog post, a short story) that can inspire you.
20. Every afternoon, do something that makes you smile.. – Watch a funny video clip on YouTube, read your favorite comic book, or find a couple of recent jokes online. Healthy laughter stimulates your mind and replenishes your energy levels. And the best time to do this is after lunch, when you need the energy boost most.
21. Avoid alcohol and drugs for the next 30 days.– How difficult this test will be depends only on you. If you are susceptible to alcoholism or drug addiction, it is not recommended to try to quit the addiction on your own. Visit a doctor who can help you stop using substances slowly and in a gentle manner. But if you only drink occasionally or indulge in drugs at parties, try to give it up for at least the next 30 days. Believe me, if you want to perk up, there are healthier ways to do it.
22. Exercise for at least 30 minutes every day. – Your health is your life. Don't miss it. Eat right, exercise and don't forget about medical examinations.
23. Try to put yourself in an uncomfortable, fear-inducing situation every day.– By adopting a strategy of small forays into unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory, we are often able to bypass the most serious obstacle to positive change – fear. Sometimes we are afraid that nothing will work out for us. Sometimes we fear that we will succeed and will have to deal with all the changes and growth that success will bring into our lives. Sometimes we are afraid of rejection or afraid of looking stupid. The best way overcome fear - face it face to face. Face your fear, feel it in your mind, become aware of it and understand what to do next with it. Greet him by name if you wish. "Hello, fear." Fear can become your friend if you learn to face it fearlessly, and listen to it only when it fulfills its true purpose - to warn you of danger. Try to spend at least an hour a day for the next 30 days understanding the fear that is stopping you from moving forward.
24. Cook one new, healthy dish every day. – Cooking is not only fun, but also healthy – properly cooked food will provide your body with the nutrients and vitamins it needs. In general, a useful activity, no matter how you look at it. So find a larger cookbook – and go ahead and conquer the culinary Olympus! Try to cook at least one new and healthy dish every day for the next 30 days.
25. Every day, spend 10 minutes remembering what good happened to you today.– For the next 30 days, spend 10 minutes every day remembering the small successes that happened to you today. This will help you remind yourself how lucky you are in life, and realize how much better you are today compared to the day before.
26. Try to talk to someone every day that you don't usually talk to.. – People are very interesting creatures, and you will never find people who are exactly alike. By communicating with different people, you open yourself up to new ideas and perspectives. So, for the next 30 days, try to talk every day with someone you don't usually talk to, or even a stranger. Find out what kind of people they are.
27. In the next 30 days, pay off your debts and do not take on new ones.. – Live within your means. Don't buy things you don't need. If you are considering a major purchase, think it over as carefully as possible. Create a budget for yourself, a savings plan, and stick to it. In the next 30 days, pay for the item in cash and think about every expense - even the penny one.
28. Give up at least one relationship that does not bring you anything useful. – Try to keep close to you only those people who truly love you, motivate you, inspire you, make you better and happier. And if someone you know isn't doing any of the above, isn't it time to get rid of them, making room in your life for positive relationships? So if there is a person in your life who constantly hurts you and only takes from you without giving anything in return, try to get rid of him in the next 30 days.
29. Forgive those who deserve a second chance. – Sometimes good relationships end only because of our inflated egos and isolated quarrels. And if there is someone in your life who deserves a second chance, give it to them. Try to write a new chapter in your overall story over the next 30 days.
30. Document every day you live with one photo and one paragraph of text.. – For the next 30 days, take your camera with you wherever you go. Try to take one photo every day, the best way representing this day. And before you go to bed, write one paragraph in your diary that best describes your day. If you do this digitally, you can even combine the photo and text (for example, on a personal blog), making it easier to review in the future. And many years later, this collection of old photographs and recordings may well remind you of pleasant memories that you would otherwise simply forget.

As you move through these tests, remember: This is a slow, painstaking process. It cannot be forced. You need to work on it every day. Believe me, you still have enough time to become who you want. And don't settle for less than you deserve or less than what you are capable of. And most importantly, no matter what problems you encounter along the way, never give up. You are braver than you think, stronger than you look and smarter than you think. You are at least twice as capable as the maximum you have set for yourself.

I noticed that the most common question I received in my email was “how do you come up with new interesting ideas every week?". So I decided to try to answer this question here.

This post will be about my process for finding ideas for my games, but I think it can also be applied to almost any creative work.

Use restrictions

Once you know you want to create something, the next step is to decide what exactly to create. However, there are so many possibilities and so many choices to make to do this that it is difficult to pin down a specific idea. Because of this, many people change their decisions over and over again and end up with nothing.

One powerful tool to circumvent this pitfall is the use of constraints. With restrictions you artificially get rid of many ideas and having fewer options means it's easier to choose an idea. So instead of focusing on your idea, try to pick constraints that you find interesting.

Here are the constraints I've used so far to make 12 games:

• Each game should be made in approximately 7 days
• Every game uses retro graphics that I create myself
• Each game will follow a theme that I will determine in advance (eg: platform game)

People might think that having these restrictions makes my job harder, but in fact it's the opposite.

Get started now

At this point you should have a vague idea of ​​what you want to do, but nothing specific. Should you therefore start brainstorming to find a great idea? Well, there's one problem: you may never find the perfect idea.

Instead of brainstorming, start implementing your bare idea right now. Do something really simple or get inspired by something similar. Anyway, since you don't know exactly what you're creating, it will probably end up with something unimportant. And that's okay, you'll worry about making your idea interesting later.

For my platform game, I quickly started coding the most basic elements of the game:

There were no original ideas. The game was pretty bad, but I had something to play with.

Iterate

Now that you have a completed bare prototype, it's time to improve it. This part may be the most difficult and time consuming to create, but it is also the most interesting.

Here's how it works: have a small idea, implement it, test it, improve it, and repeat. Some ideas will turn out to be bad, some will need a lot of fine tuning, and others will turn out to be great. Just keep iterating with new ideas until you have something you like.

I'll try to show you this process using one idea I had for my platform game:

• Adding coins to games adds interest, so I coded the coins
• Looked nice but was wrong because the coins weren't used anywhere
• To fix this I changed the rules of the game: to complete the level you must collect all the coins
• Much better, but now I had to redo some of the levels to accommodate this change

Just a small idea like “adding coins” ended up completely changing my entire game. If you want, you can play my platformer.

Conclusion

Summary: Use constraints, start now and iterate.

With such a system, finding ideas is actually not that difficult. It still requires work and imagination, but eventually you will have ideas and, more importantly, you will have something you like.

Creative- an overseas word, in Russian it is often translated as creativity. Derived from English word create/creation - create/create. Accordingly, creativity is not the property and property of only artists, poets and musicians. As a person’s ability to create something significantly NEW, different from what already exists, creativity is the essence and key to the success of each specific business. Forgive me for the generalization, but everyone in an organization should be “creative” - from the cleaner to the TOP manager, each mainly in the direction of their work tasks.

Markets and products change quickly, created and disappeared in just a couple of years, and sometimes even months. The company's new strategy has a chance of implementation only with the coordinated creation of NEW products at each organizational level of the business. The owner's new ambition transforms into New Product companies, new production technologies, new forms of packaging, new logistics systems, new approaches to people management. Everything new is unique for a very limited period of time - competitors and antimonopoly committees do not allow us to enjoy our uniqueness for a long time.

But how we love to tell the client that we have prepared a unique commercial offer for him! And then we try to justify this very uniqueness to him. Colleagues, the uniqueness should be obvious! I am now deliberately missing out on such important business characteristics as applicability, economic feasibility and other criteria that, according to common sense, should accompany uniqueness. Here and now my task is to slightly shake up your interest in the ability to create something new, to create.

It's time to move on to our earthly tasks, namely creating a unique commercial offer. They say that every moment of communication is, in essence, the process of selling yourself. The term “commercial offer” also makes sense to be understood quite broadly. Any message you send to others is commercial. Others must, as it were, “buy” it.

Below are the principles for CREATING a business proposal. However, these principles are universal and can be applied to the creation of a new product or idea. But, even if you already have a product, an idea or the essence of a commercial offer, it makes sense to apply these principles here too - at least to create a new attractive “packaging”.

These principles are not so much techniques as basic guidelines that help in shaping the result. So.

Principle 1: There is no right solution.

When creating something new, we must “relax our brain” and stop worrying about the existence of some correct solution that we do not know. The very task that you have set for yourself - to create NEW - already presupposes the absence in the present of a solution prepared and tested by anyone. This principle leads us to rethink the concept of “right.” Of course, there is a correct solution, or rather there will be in the future, but it will be found by you.
If you manage to accept this principle, then you will free yourself from the fear of making a mistake - for example, due to your alleged ignorance of “correctness”.

Principle 2. Formulate ideal final properties.

Any solutions, commercial offers, any products are unique only if they have distinctive properties (or unique consumer properties, if we are talking about a product). If there are unique properties, then there is a unique offer.

Why is it so important to formulate the ideal final properties? Because it is often difficult to predict in advance what will be the content (elements, parts, services) of the “commercial offer”, but you must understand what properties your future creation should have. This allows you to clearly define the direction of searching for solutions and avoid empty trial and error. The image of final ideality provides clear criteria for setting, adjusting problems and evaluating the solutions found. So, the essence of the principle is properties first, and only then content.

Principle 3: Become a Figure in the Background. Look for a way to stand out.

Regardless of what exactly you want to create, a unique product or solution, it can be classified according to related properties and assigned to a specific group of products, services, or inventions as such. By placing our product or offer in a group of our own kind, we want the uniqueness of our offer to be obvious and clearly noticed by our target audience.

To implement the third principle, you need to thoroughly study the properties of what will act as your “background”. Study the characteristics of other offers that compete with you for audience attention. In essence, this is what advertisers usually call “detuning” from competitors. And you can use your competitors as a background if you have studied them well. This is why insider information is so expensive.

Principle 4. Combine incompatible things. .

The lion's share of all emerging new unique solutions, inventions, and concepts are formed by combining and interacting certain properties that were not previously related to each other functionally or even thematically. To implement the fourth principle, human experience has accumulated many methods and approaches, only some of which we will name: synectics, bisociation, metaphorization, analogy, etc. All of them, one way or another, are united by a common detail - to find a new solution to a problem (problem), it is necessary to go beyond the scope of the area in which this problem arose, or to introduce some properties from extraneous areas of knowledge and practice into the starting conditions of the problem.

The following pattern often appears: the more diverse your (or your team’s) knowledge, the more solutions you can develop. The consequence of this pattern is that many companies, whose success is based on innovative developments, have stopped pinning their hopes only on their “pocket” creative and design services, but have begun to take their unsolvable tasks outside the corporation, offering to brainstorm for everyone in exchange for reward. And it turned out that this approach quickly bore fruit; many problems that had not been solved over the years by professional engineers and creatives were suddenly solved by strangers, who often lived on another continent.

Principle 5. Don't be better - become different.

The essence of the fifth principle is to distinguish your future self from your present self. Many of us have been trying for a very long time and in vain to create something new, trying to change what we have, improving what we already have. Become even smarter, kinder, more sociable, etc. Yes, such improvement results in some changes, but often minor ones. If you want to achieve a truly qualitative leap, a transition to a new level of development in anything, in personal growth, in financial well-being, in business performance, then you will have to find a way to become different.

To become qualitatively different means to bring into yourself, into your product, into your commercial offer, something that was not there before. And sometimes you don’t need to add, but on the contrary, remove something from an already existing set of qualities, and then you get a new product of your creation.

The most difficult transformations are personal. But they are the most fruitful. If you manage to become different, this will very quickly affect the innovativeness of the proposals, products, and thoughts that you produce.

Develop your creativity, knowing that the ability to create is not only a divine gift and the destiny of innate talents. Technologies for developing creativity and developing new ideas for business can and should be mastered, especially in today's realities.

I would like to conclude my recommendations with the words of the most versatile and prolific creative artist of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, who said: - “If you want to develop your mind, study the science of art; study the art of science; learn to see the world holistically; understand that everything is interconnected".

Dedicated to the topic of the birth of ideas: from the history of insights that radically changed human life, to the mechanisms of thinking and methods of generating ideas in the modern world.

Video recording of the lecture

Who am I and why do I have the audacity to talk about how your brains work? I worked as a creative director for fifteen years, and my job was to come up with something every day. At some point I got tired of it and decided to do reflection. Because I think the main difficulty with thinking is that you can't think and think about how you think at the same time.

This is physically impossible. This can only be done in hindsight. Try to understand how an idea comes to your mind. This is actually a very exciting process. I spent quite a lot of time figuring out how ideas come into my head. And I came to several fundamental conclusions, for which I am entitled to a Nobel Prize.

The most important conclusion is that we all think the same. We all have exactly the same digestive system, respiratory system, nervous system, circulatory system, limbic system. There is no reason to believe that separate brains were selected for each of us.

And I don’t know about you, but this really inspires me. The very idea that my brain is no different from Richard Feyman's brains (American scientist, one of the creators of quantum electrodynamics - website), I love.

I understand that my only difference from Feyman is that I thought and quit, and Feyman continued to think

Actually, what is thinking from my point of view. There is such an author - Tatyana Chernigovskaya. Maybe you listened to it. I don't like her very much. I don’t like her because she carries syncopated nonsense - the kind from which nothing follows. Her thoughts are jumping chaotically: she starts talking about God, about the fact that the brain is the most complex device in the universe and other nonsense.

As a result, the output is some kind of water, and you don’t understand what follows from this - it seems like you listened to a lecture, but it seems like you understood absolutely nothing. From my point of view, there is no mystery in human thinking. The brain is incredibly primitive, and the only way we can come up with new ideas is by trying out options. All. There is nothing other than a selection of options.

Simply put, we can get out of our head only what we put there by regrouping it a little and changing places. The conclusion follows from this: as soon as you come across (absolutely no matter in what area) some new bright idea, your task is to steal this idea and figure out what is good about it.

Once you figure out how this idea works and why it is so cool, consider it to be a part of you, and another mechanism has been added to your constructor. The fact is that the number of thinking operations in itself is very small - they can practically be counted on one hand. And you may ask: how were all these things around us created if the number of variations is so limited?

From my point of view, the best metaphor is music. There are only seven notes, but the number of melodies is endless. Or a designer. You can have a lot of sets, there are also a lot of parts in them, but there are few ways to connect them.

I will try to expand on the topic in more detail. But first, a few words about where we are. To oversimplify it, we are in a mess. Complete and absolutely hopeless. But are there people here who are scared? For example, I am scared of what is happening now.

It's scary not because we're all going to die. The Chinese have a saying: “God forbid you live in an era of change.” It comes from the old times of the agricultural cycle, when a peasant could, up to 12 years old, learn all the basic agricultural operations, all the signs, and then live his whole life using this baggage.

Sowing, taking care of the crop, harvesting the crop, digging worms out of the ground and, in fact, processing the crop. Every year everything was repeated. And then the concept of completed higher education was still legitimate.

I think you can forget about this nonsense: education can only be incomplete. Now the absolute norm is to receive a new education every five to seven years. Because with a high degree of probability you will all change jobs. I'll try to explain why.

The fact is that we are now in the most unpleasant moment of the fourth industrial revolution. It is unpleasant because the speed has already been gained and further changes will occur incredibly quickly. I will talk very briefly about the first three revolutions, namely what they led to.

The first is the industrial revolution: steam, cast iron, the spinning jenny and the like. She radically changed the world. Industrialization began, people began to move from villages to cities.

Somewhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the second industrial revolution swept the world. Steel, electricity, conveyor belts - all this completely changed the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, 80% of Americans were farmers and struggled to feed themselves.

Today, US agriculture is the largest in the world. Maybe Kiselyov said that Americans produce nothing but dollars. This is wrong. America is the largest (including agricultural) power. The country produces slightly less than 20% of all food in the world.

And if at the beginning of the 20th century 80% of the population was doing this with much less results, today less than 3% of farmers, along with hired Mexicans for harvesting, make up farmers. From this, by the way, it follows that the communist thesis about the unity of the peasantry and workers simply does not work. There are only a few farmers left, and the number of workers is sharply declining.

In the 50-60s of the 20th century, the third industrial revolution began, which was associated with space, nuclear energy, the first computers and the emergence of transnational corporations. This changed the world very much, including collapsing the economy of the USSR - our country simply became uncompetitive.

And finally, the fourth revolution is now underway, which, it seems to me, is stronger than all the previous three combined. This is the Internet, cellular communications, neural networks, artificial intelligence and GMO (which, in fact, saves humanity).

Look at the two photos above. The first shows Fifth Avenue in 1900. The only car is highlighted with a red circle - everything else is horses. The second photo shows Fifth Avenue 13 years later. The horse is highlighted in a circle, and everything else is cars.

In the States, the most popular profession is truck driver. These drivers have families numbering about ten million. There are also small towns through which the route passes, with motels, gas stations, restaurants and brothels. These industries rely on drivers. That is, all these people will become unnecessary, because there are already systems that work perfectly without a driver.

But the problem does not only affect drivers - it affects everyone. The same thing happens in the maritime industry. Ships without a crew are already being tested. Before our eyes, the last few “defense lines” that seemed unshakable to us are falling.

It all started with chess. Everyone said that chess is a science combined with art, and therefore a machine can never compare with a person in this regard. After chess, the same thing was said about the game of Go. The number of possible moves in it is greater than the number of atoms in the Universe, so it was believed that it was impossible to calculate this “tree”.

And what’s most interesting is that even now we don’t understand how a computer learns to play Go. In fact, he plays millions of games against himself and thereby hones his skills. The next line of defense was poker. It was believed, well, chess and go are games with complete information. But poker is psychology, bluffing, an opportunity to push with money, and so on. But people are not competitive in this either.

Just a few years ago, the average holding time per share was about four years. A person invested money and after four years decided whether to sell or not sell this share, and the bank trader made about 50 transactions a day regarding purchase and sale.

Today, in some markets, the average time to hold shares is four seconds, and one trading robot performs approximately 10 thousand buy-sell transactions per second. Do you understand that we are simply not needed?

The little ball in the photo above is a Japanese robot that floats on the ISS. It is controlled from the Earth, weighs one kilogram and performs about 10% of the work of the entire crew.

Do you know how the war in Afghanistan is going now? In Nevada - on the other side of the globe - employees come into the office, sit down at the monitor and start controlling drones. They fly over the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, search for the Mujahideen and destroy them at the command of operators from the Earth.

Of course, there may be situations where the connection is lost. The dushmans also learned to use microwaves and interfere. In this case, the drone, on command, makes several circles, trying to find a connection, and then returns to the base.

But while he is flying to the base, he has an automatic target search program running. So this program is much more effective than any gunner operators. The drone kills people, it distinguishes the “good” from the “bad” and kills the conditionally bad ones much more effectively.

Another example: during the Franco-Prussian War at the end of the 19th century, it took 1,300 bullets to kill one enemy soldier. Do you think this figure has decreased over time? During vietnam war it took 200 thousand bullets to kill one enemy soldier; today in Afghanistan - 300 thousand bullets.

There are such concepts as barrage fire, warning fire, area fire, and so on. Can you imagine how much it costs to kill one enemy? The sniper is the elite of the elite. To train one good sniper, you need to spend several years of hard training and shoot a carload of ammunition. Special units work for one sniper. I don’t know if you’ve seen, there is a film called “Sniper” about an American sniper in Vietnam.

I’ll briefly tell you the plot: this sniper died, and his wife, who has nothing to do with military affairs at all, took this place. She is blind and works as a programmer. She was armed with a special smart rifle, which itself determines the enemy, the direction and strength of the wind, the number of charges in the cartridge, and even tells the person behind the other that it’s time to pull the trigger.

This rifle was given to a woman who has no experience, well, maybe knows how to pull the trigger. And they held an open competition between her and the US sniper shooting champion. As you can imagine, it was a rout. The American champion hit 58% of the targets, and the blind girl hit 100% of the targets with a rifle.

We are uncompetitive, we are forgetful, we operate with a very small amount of information. Our performance is no good at all.

Another extremely serious resource is “big data”. With the help of big data, human behavior can be predicted with very high accuracy. Recently in St. Petersburg we were looking for serial killer and they couldn’t find him - he left no traces at all.

Then someone came up with a bright idea: we know several areas in which the murders were committed, and we know the approximate time of the crimes. Let's sift through all the phone numbers: was there anyone who had a phone in all these locations at a certain time. Thus, the killer was identified.

Facebook conducted a study of 86,000 volunteers last month. These people completed a 100-question questionnaire. Facebook's only source of information about a person was the likes they gave. So, according to the data obtained, a person only needs to put ten likes on something he likes on the Internet, after which Facebook can predict his behavior.

Today, the average Facebook user leaves 270 likes, and this number is constantly growing. Perhaps the social network knows more about your behavior than your immediate family.

Basically, I just want to scare you. While our country is crushing Polish apples with tractors, a huge wave is approaching us. It’s even difficult to describe how different the world will become. From my point of view, such a concept as “pension” will disappear. But it will be replaced by an unconditional income, because this is the only way to avoid food riots.

Now let's finally move on to the topic of thinking and how people think. I want to tell a story about the first Superman in the history of European literature, who appeared before James Bond, Spider-Man and even before Sherlock Holmes. This is Rocambole. The author of "Rocambole" was the literary black Alexandre Dumas (referring to the popular French novelist Ponson du Terrail - website), who wrote several novels for him.

The story about Rocambole was published in parts, in paperback, and all of France was waiting for the continuation. Rocambole got into incredible troubles, came out of them brilliantly, fenced, seduced - a kind of James Bond of the 19th century. The only problem was that the rights to Rocambole belonged not to the author, but to the publisher.

As Rocambole's popularity grew, the author's appetites naturally also increased; he wanted to receive more money. The publisher at some point decided that he was paying the author too much, and anyone could generate such nonsense in industrial quantities.

Then he said to the author: “My friend, I had a very good time with you, but now you are finishing your last novel and we are saying goodbye. You can’t kill the hero, and a few hungry journalists will write a sequel for three times the price.”

“Okay,” said the author of Rocambole. And the last book about the adventures of Superman ended this way: the pirates caught the brave Rocambole, tied him hand and foot, locked him in a steel cage and threw him into the sea. And that’s it, the author left, and all of France froze in anticipation. Everyone became interested in what would happen next; the hero couldn’t die like that.

Then the budget successors got down to business, and they came to a dead end. Rocambole had to be saved somehow, but how to save him was unclear, because everything they offered was no good.

And a week after all these futile attempts, the publisher gave up: “Dude, forgive me, I got carried away. I'm attractive, you are damn attractive. Let us be best friends, I agree to your terms, save our guy, because France is waiting.”

A new edition is coming out. Readers excitedly open the sequel and see: “Rocambole, who had emerged from the deadly abyss, swam to the shore with confident strokes.” All. At this moment, everyone thinks the same thing: “Was it possible?”

So, from my point of view, the most important condition for productive thinking is courage. Maybe you remember the story about the man who traded a paperclip for a house. In my opinion, in just nine operations a year. Was that even possible? Or about how the guys bought a website with 1000x1000 pixels, began selling each for a dollar, and then earned $1 million. Was that also possible?

The fact is that the pressure of society on us is so great that we are all cowards and opportunists. We are very similar in our way of thinking. There was an experiment with a hungry chicken, a transparent fence and food. All the chicken had to do was run around the fence on either the left or right side.

But the chicken took a few steps in one direction, then looked and thought, “I’m moving too far away from the food,” and returned and took a few steps in the other direction. Our brains work much the same way. But Bill Gates once said it well: “If no one laughs at your idea, it’s not good enough.”

There is a very good exercise for thinking: always doubt the obvious, that which no one doubts. As a rule, this is where the fun lies.

For example: there is such a type of transport - a trolleybus. For some reason, you can only enter the trolleybus through the front door, and this takes a very long time, because the passenger puts on his bag, his sensor does not work, he turns the bag over, some grandmother meanwhile buys a pass from the driver, the queue grows, everyone swears.

And there is another type of transport - a tram, in which you can enter any door. I can’t even imagine what a titanic effort of thought would be required to take a risk and borrow the “tram” experience and apply it to a trolleybus. And so it is in absolutely everything.

There are family doctors in China who only get paid when their client is not sick. As soon as a person gets sick, it means that the doctor is not doing his job well. Can you imagine him running after his client? “Dude, you sit a lot. It seems to me that you need to move more, let’s review your diet.”

Imagine that we introduce the same system for road workers. The guys will start receiving money only when there are no potholes on the road. Do you think these people will continue to lay asphalt in the rain? Don't stop questioning the obvious.

We all studied under the so-called Prussian education system. All the children sit silently; until the teacher asks, they remain silent. And the worst thing is that until the dumbest person understands, the class does not move on. And this is a monstrous disaster, because in fact the only resource that a person has is his time. And it is spent very stupidly at school.

All school curriculum You can complete it in two years without overexertion. You cannot limit the maximum learning rate. Schools should dictate only the minimum speed: if a child is good at mathematics, let him be in the eleventh grade in mathematics, and let him be on par with the rest in singing.

Another terrible habit that is instilled in school is punishment for mistakes. If you think that you can’t handle a child without punishment and bad marks, then I’ll tell you that people thought the same thing who believed that if a child is not spanked in class, then he will not study.

The fact is that the only way to learn new things available to a person is to consistently make mistakes. What is an experiment? This is when you consistently make one mistake after another. You come up with a theory and then try to test it. Not everyone has the patience, like Edison, to do ten thousand experiments to find a spiral for a light bulb, but mistakes should be rewarded.

How does a good scientist differ from a charlatan? If a good scientist has some kind of hypothesis, then, first of all, he will look not for examples that confirm the hypothesis, but for examples that refute it. because there are any number of supporting examples.

Our tiny brain weighs about one and a half kilograms (give or take). It consumes up to 20% of the body's total energy. Thinking is very expensive. That is why a person tries to do everything without thinking. That is, he once figured out how it works, and continues to perform all such actions automatically.

I hope the future is to translate learning into play. Because a person can work hard and diligently for only a short time, but he can play endlessly. I have read a huge number of books on the technology of thinking, but nowhere have I come across the simple idea that the most important thing in the thinking process is you yourself.

Because you need to think, you need to solve a problem. Therefore, you must know how to put yourself in the right frame of mind. How, for example, does an amateur differ from a professional? An amateur can produce very good results if the work inspires him, if the stars align correctly, if he is in a good mood.

And a professional always gives a good result - regardless of whether he had a fight with his wife, whether his daughter’s hamster died, or whether his tooth hurts. The basis of professionalism is knowing yourself well. Know what gives you pleasure.

There was a German industrialist Krupp who brought Hitler to power. He was very inspired by the “smell of nature” - that’s what he called the aroma of manure. He even installed special ventilation into his office from the stables. And Agatha Christie, for example, hated washing dishes.

She did not understand why she, a great writer, should spend her time scrubbing grease off plates. And so when she needed to come up with a particularly sophisticated murder, she started washing the dishes. And her hatred for this activity transformed.

Since we are not very different from animals - in fact, we are animals - then such a thing as food reinforcement works very well for us. In other words, if you have something that you really like to eat - for example, some kind of chocolate - then put it in front of you, but do not touch it until you solve the problem.

And when you do solve it, firstly, this chocolate bar will seem much tastier to you than usual, and secondly, the most important process will take place in your head: between the center responsible for solving the problem and the organs responsible for pleasure, a connection will be established. Your task is to strengthen this connection in every possible way, because as soon as you begin to enjoy difficult things, your performance will increase dramatically.

Americans have the so-called “three B rule”. They believe that all brilliant ideas were invented in just three places: the bus, the bed and the bathroom. I encourage you to know what time is most productive for you and protect it, because then you will enjoy working.

However, I think there is one more brilliant thing missing from the list - walking. A huge number of ideas were simply thought up on the fly, when a person was just walking somewhere. Therefore, often, to solve a problem, you shouldn’t sit still, it’s better to get distracted and take a walk, while your brain will continue to work.

By the way, another good example is a traffic jam. For a modern person, this is a unique opportunity to be alone. During this time, you do whatever you want: listen to audiobooks, listen to music, think about anything. If you boil, you won't get there faster. It's a simple idea that through willpower you can make yourself a much happier person.

There is a classic example given by Adam Smith. This example at one time greatly influenced Karl Marx and, among other things, inspired him to write Capital. There was such a thing as a large safety pin. In those days, it was extremely necessary on the farm, but expensive.

Because to make one pin it was necessary to perform 18 operations: stretch the wire, chop the wire, sharpen the wire, bend it - in general, the process is not fast. A good craftsman could make up to 20 pins in a day. This is not enough, which is why they were so expensive.

And then an amazing experience was carried out. 18 masters were selected and each was given to perform only one operation. It would seem that at school we were taught that rearranging the places of the terms does not change the sum. What difference does it make: 18 multiplied by 20, or 20 multiplied by 18 - the output will still be 360.

Imagine the surprise of those present when, by the end of the working day, 18 craftsmen had made not 360, but 48 thousand pins. Such a simple experiment led to the appearance of the conveyor belt - in fact, the most inhuman thing in the world. Because forcing a person to perform the same operation throughout his life is, in my opinion, a crime.

Why did I tell this story? Because I wanted to do the same with the thinking process. I wanted to break down everything our brain can do into very simple operations. And I came to the conclusion that there are much fewer of them than 18.

Adding 1+1 is an example of a simple thinking algorithm. Imagine we have a subset of whales and a subset of sharks. At some point they intersect, and this intersection gives us whale sharks. This idea of ​​adding two realities is very effective. Now I will explain.

There is such a store in Moscow, “Respublika”. At one time it started out as a bookstore, then book sales fell, and entrepreneurs began selling basically everything there. Including a lot of all sorts of Chinese, creative crap. They even have bubblegum magnets, and I know people who think that's a cool idea.

I'll explain now: it works on the principle of two intersecting circles. Imagine that you are a company that produces these magnets, and you need to somehow diversify your product range. In one set we have magnets, and in the other subset we have something that can hang vertically on the wall.

Then we get a huge number of options. It could be a screw, it could be a nail, it could be any small animal, from a fly to a gecko, and so on.

Or another example. They also sell a stand for toothpicks in the shape of a voodoo doll. Here we do the same thing: we imagine that we are making toothpick holders. To do this, we think about where something long and thin might be sticking out.

The first thing that comes to mind is hedgehogs, porcupines, brushes, combs, Saint Sebastian, cactus and so on. Do you understand how simple it is?

Another very good way thinking - thinking with the help of things. The fact is that our brain is able to establish a connection between two objects, no matter how different they may seem. In cinema this is called the Kuleshov effect.

If we show food first and then the person’s face, then it will seem to us that the person is hungry. If we first show a naked woman and then the same face of a man, it will seem to us that he is lusting. And so on.

I'll tell you a short story about an Alpine ski resort that once encountered a problem. From time to time, the wires next to it became icy due to accumulated snow and could break, in which case the resort was left without electricity. Then the owners invited a group of engineers and gave them a task. They fought for a long time, and then, when the group finally reached a dead end, the leader said: “Guys, the brainstorming is over. Go to the village and let everyone buy some item and return with it to discuss.”

One man walked through an alpine village and brought a pot of honey. “So what?” they asked him. “So what? We place the honey pot on top of the power line. Bears, attracted by the smell of honey, will climb on it, shake the power lines, and then the snow will be shaken off them.”

Then another said: “Listen, we fly helicopters all the time. They transport sick people and take climbers and skiers to the mountains. Let's not just fly helicopters, but along or near the lines. Then they will solve this snow problem practically free of charge.”

Do you understand what I mean? It's good when a person thinks. There was such a thing on Kickstarter - a cube with different buttons, switches, shutters. In general, such chewing gum for the hands. And he enjoyed some kind of wild popularity. So, it’s very useful to keep something like this in a drawer. Lots of different things. And if a problem arises, just go through it and think about how you can solve it with their help.