If You Are Alive, Then You Are Surrounded by Math

“Don’t Stare at a Blank Screen” is an activity that encourages the brainstorming of all ideas—regardless of whether or not they are good. The authors of The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking argue that this is a worthwhile activity because they believe that bad ideas are better than no ideas at all. A student organization that I am a part of has taken a negative turn this year and I decided to use this activity to brainstorm ways to fix the organization so that it does not run itself into the ground. I opened up a blank document on my computer, wrote my issue at the top of the page, and as the instructions suggested, started writing any ideas that came to mind. I struggle with writing things down that do not look complete or polished, so I had a really hard time at the beginning of this assignment. After about 6 minutes of re-reading every sentence that I wrote and eventually re-writing it, I decided to turn off the screen to my computer so that I would not be able to analyze my ideas as I was writing them. By turning off the screen, I was able to get my ideas out without worrying about, not only what others would think about them, but what I would think about them as well. Once I felt that I had laid out as many ideas as possible, I turned my computer screen back on and looked through what I wrote. I picked out the ideas that were impossible (i.e. changing the personality of the co-chair), tried to figure out what about them made them impossible ideas (i.e. a person’s personality is part of who they are and is something that cannot be easily changed), and then attempted to alter the idea into a good idea (i.e. appoint a new co-chair with a better attitude/personality to replace existing co-chair). While some of the ideas ...

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...ost all parts of life. For example, it could be used to brainstorm a menu for an event or to consider possible ways to solve a logic puzzle. The only change I would make to the instructions would be to have the participants turn off the monitor of their computer so that they do not have the ability to develop tunnel vision on what they already wrote and lose all the ideas that are still in their mind. Additionally, using this activity in partnership to “Say It Like You See It” could really expand the ideas and create a fuller, more rich brainstorm. In conclusion, I think that “Don’t Stare at a Blank Screen” is a really effective way to assess your ideas and it should be embraced more widely at Williams College where there seems to be this assumption that people think in perfect, completed thoughts and, therefore, in order to fit in you can never have a bad idea.