Exploratory Writing: Everyday magic for life and work

One fun and effective inquiry experiment is to flip the familiar idea of brainstorming: instead of trying to come up with as many ideas for answers/solutions as possible, challenge yourself to come up with as many questions related to the topic you’re looking at as possible.

When Professor Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox, was working with the GB Olympic cycling team he had a rule: athletes could come and complain to him, but if they did, they had to complain for 15 minutes without stopping.

We resource ourselves best physically with the ancient, non-negotiable principles captured neatly by coach Sara Milne Rowe as the SHED method: sleep, hydration, exercise, diet.3

Let’s experiment with upwards counterfactuals first: set a timer for just one minute and write as many sentences as you can, as quickly as you can, starting with the words ‘If only…’. Don’t stop to think, don’t censor yourself, don’t consider anything as being too trivial or too painful.

The If Only/At Least Flip. This is a quick thought experiment that supports mental resilience and can be used on the fly every day as necessary. It works best for low-level regrets, but can be used, with caution, for the bigger-ticket items too. Take one of your ‘If only’ statements and flip it to find a complementary downward counterfactual. For e

I think the reason I don’t know the answer to this is…

But there’s a cognitive cost attached to metaphors too: it’s easy to forget that the metaphor isn’t actually the thing itself. If we use them intentionally, they can help us be more creative and solve problems, not to mention communicate our ideas more effectively to others. But if we’re not aware of them, they can trip us up.

If you and I were sitting together and able to do this exercise in person – wouldn’t that be great? – I’d simply ask you to take a walk outside and bring me back three things. They could literally be three things you bring back into the room with you or they might just be something you see that you come back to tell me about. So you might bring me

What story am I telling myself about this?