The Insights Game

Have you experienced one of those moments of enlightenment when you suddenly realize how the world works and the dots are connected? Do you remember all your insights?
In The Insights Game you are searching for these moments. Every insight gives you one point. You need to have at least one point everyday, if not you are game over.

Purpose

When we get older our brain develops it’s ability to connect different facts and see new patterns and challenge old views with new knowledge. As grownups we can not memorise and learn new things as fast as when we where children but because we have more experiences we have a bigger spectrum of information to use to see the big picture. This method will help you to practice your ability to generating insights and see new patterns.

The basic idea is to take a moment to reflect upon new insights you receive and see if it fits in any patterns already in your head or if it changes any of your previous views. New thoughts creates new connections in your brain and more connections makes it possible for your brain to process even more abstract problems which is a good reason for you to practice this.

Instructions

This method is for one person, but the process can of course also be implemented on a group as well. To encourage people to start practising seeing the big pictures and challenge their previous views you can introduce them to the reflection questions.

You get one point for each insight. You need to have at least one new insight a day, if not it is Game Over and you have to start over with 0 points. For insights that changes your previous view on a subject you get extra points.

The goal and the reward of this game is that you will improve your ability to see the big picture, process more complex problems and challenge your beliefs. When you reach nirvana you have completed the game!

Do

Write down new insights and ideas when you have them to aloud yourself a moment to reflect upon what it means and how you can use it.
Aloud yourself to celebrate your victory’s in the insights game!

Don’t

Neglect your moments of enlightenment. It doesn’t matter how small the insights are, all are valuable.

Example

For the past couple of weeks you have noticed that a growing number of people are sharing the same pictures as their friends on their Facebook wall. One day you discover a new share button below photos you post on your wall and you realize that this is the reason why so many of your friends are suddenly sharing the same photos.

The following day you are reading a blog post on WordPress about Tumblr. The authors opinion about Tumblr users is that they are only re-blogging each others posts without coming up with any new ideas of their own and that the only reason why Tumblr has reached so many users is because it is so easy to regularly update your blog with new content.

Now you realize that Facebook added the share button to photos to imitate the re-blog function of Tumblr. By acknowledging this new insight you not only learn why Facebook implemented the share button but you also become aware that you have to constantly questions why the sites are changing their products the way they do – in this case to make regular Tumblr users stay on Facebook.

This process doesn’t take up a lot of your time but it will help you to learn more of what is happening around you and about how you work.

Facilitator’s role

You are the facilitator of your own learning. Use a notebook to take notes of your new insights. You can use these the below questions to get started.

Reflection questions

What happened today?
What did I learn from this?
How does this fit into the big picture?
Does this challenge any of my previous knowledge?
How can I use this in other situations?