In the last article we briefly examined the role imagination and intuition play in maintaining professional performance. Drawing from the work of McGilchrist (2021) the argument was made that when someone who gains expertise becomes so familiar with their professional situation, they systemize their thinking. This leaves the expert operating at the level of procedures and processes, and therefore ceases to imagine anything beyond their own perspective and knowledge. Even when the expert’s intuition may hint that their current reservoir of knowledge is not a fit for a novel situation, the expert explains this hint away. To be clear, this is not always the case for experts, but it is a potential risk which continually walks beside increasing amounts of experience (Kahneman and Klein, 2099).
One of the key points of the above is that when the world becomes systemized, it becomes static and lifeless, there is no perceived novelty. An effect of this perspective is that intuition, the tacit alerts which the mind and body provide about the self and the external environment, are not listened to. An overly systemized perspective disconnects the person from both their own self and the external world, failing to notice signals both internal and external (McGilchrist, 2019).
As the WHO (2015) observe, aging can be a disconnection from the external world. An aging person begins to live a life which increasingly becomes smaller (post work and the relating decrease in social and dynamic experiences for example) and heavily routinized. Routines, of course, play a positive role, allowing us to place certain activities on auto pilot and focus our attention on more demanding activities (Kahneman and Klien, 2009). However, when life becomes a narrow set of routines then nothing new and stimulating can enter or be imagined, experience becomes static.
One of the suggestions for healthy aging is to try something new (WHO, 2015). Making the same argument made to illustrate the condition of expertise previously, when something new is encountered, the imagination is applied out of necessity. With no reservoir of experience and familiarity to draw from, imagination fills the void. Intuition provides the cues to sense how well or badly things are going. In other words, encountering something new “forces” us to use our imagination and intuition. This brings the world to life as the focus shifts from what is known to what could be, the future has potential.
As physical and perhaps cognitive decline take place, there is a clear role for routines. However, routines should not dominate to the point that they strip life out of existence. Always seeking to try something new and/or always seeking to take a new perspective will ingress novelty, imagination, and intuition into life (Whitehead, 2010).
Reading
World Health Organization (2015) World report on ageing and health. World Health Organization.
McGilchrist, I (2021) The Matter of Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva
Kahneman, D. and Klein, G., (2009) Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to disagree. American psychologist, 64(6), p.515.
Whitehead, A.N., (2010) Process and reality. Simon and Schuster.
