Einstein can do relativity experiments in his mind, which is imagination;
Disney's animation designers conceive vivid animation images in their minds, which is also imagination;
When designing products, architects should imagine the appearance and internal structure of buildings in their minds, which is imagination.
It is undoubtedly imagination for the author of Harry Potter to make up a story that didn't happen in his mind before writing a novel.
As can be seen from the above examples, imagination is to simulate the image of things in your mind, simulate the occurrence of things, or do experiments in your mind. This ability to simulate the image of things, the occurrence of things and the experiment in your mind is called imagination. Imagination has many forms, as follows:
When a musician composes music, he should constantly combine notes in his mind until a beautiful melody is formed.
When a painter is creating, he should simulate the collocation of various colors in his mind, and also simulate the layout of each picture in the picture.
When a salesperson meets a customer, he needs to rehearse the meeting content in his mind, what to do when the other party is impatient, what to do when the other party's secretary stops, what to do when the other party asks difficult questions, what to say and how to behave according to different situations. These all need to be simulated in your mind before meeting.
An excellent football coach should be able to simulate the offensive and defensive scenes of both sides in his mind and constantly debug the formation in his mind.
Even housewives need imagination when planning to do housework. For example, she has three things to do: cleaning the furniture, sweeping the floor and washing clothes. There are several arrangements for doing these things. After doing some simulations or experiments in different order in her mind, she determined the order of doing these three things: first, put the clothes in the washing machine; The washing machine washes clothes automatically, so she can free her hands to clean the furniture; After cleaning the furniture, clean up the dust and scraps of paper that fell to the ground after cleaning the furniture; After sweeping the floor, dry the laundry. This is a very good order of things, very compact and efficient.
It can be seen that imagination is widely used in life and work. We should cultivate this ability consciously, so what good is imagination?
Two. The benefits of imagination
First of all, in many ways, imagination is essential.
In our life and work, many things have ready-made answers, and we just need to remember how to deal with them. For example, if we buy a new color TV, although the color TV has many functions, we can easily control the TV to watch programs as long as we look through the user manual and remember the relevant operations. A shop assistant, although there are many goods in the shop, can complete the sales work as long as he remembers the prices of various goods; Workers on the automobile assembly line only need to remember a few operations and then complete them very skillfully; And a student who is good at sea tactics is familiar with quite a few questions through a lot of questions. When he is faced with familiar questions in the exam, he just needs to write down what he remembers. Obviously, the above-mentioned things, with memory, just remember what to do.
Many people always try their best to improve their memory, hoping to use what they remember to do when facing any problems. Of course, memory is very important. In life and work, we really have to remember a lot of things to complete the task. However, there are quite a few things that have no ready-made answers like the above. If you want to finish the task, you need to have imagination, be able to do experiments repeatedly in your mind, and then make a plan. For example, the architect mentioned above must imagine repeatedly in his mind how to design the shape, what kind of internal structure should be adopted, and what kind of shape and structure collocation is reasonable. Only through this constant experiment in his mind can a good plan be formed. If he just copied the buildings designed by others, he could not be called an architect. Similarly, a fashion designer can only be called a fashion cutter if he can't use his imagination to combine and match various fabrics, colors and styles in his mind and can't design new clothes. Musicians must be able to combine various notes and melodies in their minds, and after repeated experiments, they can create music. A watch designer can't design a watch without a developed imagination and a three-dimensional mechanical structure in his mind. A campaign commander should also be able to conduct repeated tactical offensive and defensive drills in his mind according to different opponents, different environments and different climatic conditions, so as to design a set of operational plans.
Therefore, imagination is essential for complex work such as design, planning, creation and planning, and tasks cannot be completed by memory alone.
Secondly, a more developed imagination enables people to make more perfect plans. Let's take an architect as an example. If he has little imagination or his imagination is not developed enough, he can't keep repeating it in his mind. Then his design scheme is probably not perfect, for example, only the appearance of the building is considered, but the internal structure is not targeted. When such a hasty plan was put into practice, eureka tower's internal structure was suddenly not strong enough in the middle of construction, so it had to be demolished and rebuilt, which delayed the construction period, delayed the progress and caused huge economic losses. Architects may lose their jobs because of this. And if he has a very developed imagination and can constantly simulate buildings in his mind before making a plan, this situation will be avoided to the maximum extent.
The same is true for a marketer. If he didn't simulate the meeting scene in his mind before meeting the client, didn't imagine what would happen, didn't consider anything, and it was difficult to give a satisfactory answer to the questions thrown by the other party in a hurry, then the meeting would fail in all likelihood.
Before doing housework, housewives don't make a plan in their minds and arrange the order of doing things. For example, she decided to sweep the floor first, then clean the furniture, and then wash the clothes. It is conceivable that if you sweep the floor first, then clean the furniture, but cleaning the furniture will drop dust and scraps of paper, so that the newly swept floor is dirty and you have to sweep it again. Finally, the arrangement of washing clothes will make the housewife do nothing when the washing machine washes clothes automatically. This arrangement is both laborious (scanning again) and a waste of time. This inefficient practice is obviously not a good choice.
It can be seen that if you have considerable imagination, before you do something, you will repeatedly experiment in your mind and choose a more perfect scheme, which will obviously make things efficient and easy to succeed.
Third, because imagination is doing experiments in the mind, it runs fast and does not need any cost.
For example, in Sun Bin's Tian Ji Horse Racing, Sun Bin came up with an ingenious scheme, changed the appearance order of his upper, lower and third-class horses, and won the race. Sun Bin didn't really let the actual horse do the experiment. He just rehearsed several sequences in his mind, which obviously saved time and didn't need any consumption. But if all kinds of horses are really trained in different order of appearance, it will take a lot of ostentation and extravagance and a long time.
For example, when we move into a new house to decorate furniture, if we don't have imagination, we will put all the furniture in different positions again and again, and then see if it is reasonable. This is obviously extremely troublesome and time-consuming. And if we imagine the placement position of furniture in our mind before placing it, it is obviously much more convenient to move it after we think of a more reasonable layout.
Fourth, a developed imagination can also make people react quickly. The most typical examples are Sima Guang's smashing cans and the image of Cao Chong. In these two examples, the two children reacted very quickly and soon came up with a good idea. Sima Guang reacted quickly and saved the child's life. And Cao Chong's quick response solved the problem well on the spot. In addition, Cao Chong said that the elephant's idea is also quite imaginative. If he can come up with such a good plan in such a short time, if he was born in modern times and is not bound by the four books and five classics, he will certainly make great achievements.
In addition, many people are quick-thinking, on the one hand, because they can really imagine quickly in a short time and do experiments in their minds quickly. On the other hand, the reason is that they have foreseen the occurrence of the problem and have already figured out the countermeasures in their minds, so when the problem occurs, they just need to do it according to the plan they came up with in advance. For example, an excellent debater's agility, agility and witty remarks in actual combat actually come from repeated drills in his mind.
Imagination is so important and necessary that it can bring so many benefits. Of course, we should cultivate this ability. So how to cultivate it?
Three. The form of imagination
Before talking about the cultivation of imagination, let's look at several forms of imagination.
1. Space imagination. Spatial imagination mainly refers to the ability to imagine the shape or image of real objects in your mind. As mentioned above, architects must consider the three-dimensional shape of the house, and a developed spatial imagination is definitely essential. Similarly, mechanical engineers should also consider the shapes of various parts, the combination of these parts, and even the movement of a mechanical system, which is of course spatial imagination.
2. Search for associations in your mind and consider what to use. For example, when Edison invented lighting, he kept thinking about what material to use as a filament. And a man who lives on a desert island needs a sharp tool to cut things without a knife at hand. He searched and associated in his mind, finally broke it with a stone, and then picked a sharper slice, so he had a cutting tool. When Sima Guang saved people, he quickly thought of it in his mind, and then he thought of throwing stones at cans. A group of people went drinking in the wild and found no straw. At this time, one of them broke a straw in the wheat field. This flexible thinking is also very imaginative.
I also heard an example. A young man is engaged in road construction in an engineering team. The engineering team needs a red light bulb to remind passers-by when digging a pit to build a road. But unfortunately, when I was repairing the road, I found that the red light bulb was gone, only the ordinary light bulb. The young man came up with an idea when others didn't know what to do. He found a piece of red cloth to wrap the light bulb and played the role of a red light bulb. This young man is obviously imaginative. He finally developed well, was promoted and reused, and changed from an ordinary employee to an independent leader.
3. Combine the elements used in your mind. For example, fashion designers will consider what kind of fabrics, colors and styles to use in their minds, and then combine and change these fabrics' colors and styles in their minds, and finally form a set of reasonably matched and pleasing clothes in their minds.
When composing music, musicians will imagine it repeatedly in their minds and combine different notes into beautiful melodies. Then several melodies can be combined into a nice tune. When considering playing this piece of music, you need to experiment repeatedly in your mind to determine what kind of instrument to play and what kind of instrument combination to play in which melody. Such a combination experiment is repeated in my mind, and I can't do it without developed imagination.
For dance designers, the combination they should consider is the combination of arm posture, leg posture, trunk posture and head posture, which constitute the ever-changing dance movements. And if it is a group dance, the dancers' different positions on the stage will form different dance scenes. Obviously, the creation of dance needs the choreographer to arrange it repeatedly in his mind.
The football coach will consider in his mind how to choose a combination scheme of 1 1 from dozens or even hundreds of players, and the players of 1 1 can form different position combinations on the field. There are many options for this combination scheme, and how to determine the most suitable lineup needs to be simulated repeatedly in your mind.
An imaginative chef will combine unexpected ingredients and make unique innovations in the cooking sequence (i.e. cooking time) of various ingredients. Mediocre chefs just follow the existing recipes and regularly repeat the previous procedures.
So is Sun Bin's Tian Ji Horse Racing. We have three kinds of horses here and three kinds of horses there. If there is a competition, there will be many combinations. But Sun Bin made a combination in his mind, and listed the combination order of "excellent to good, good to bad, bad to excellent". This way is obviously better than winning once.
The same is true of the previous example of housewives doing housework. If she considers the time sequence of housework, she will save time and effort. If the order combination is not arranged well, the efficiency will be greatly reduced.
After looking at the example of a housewife, let's look at Zhu Yuanzhang, who is a talented person. While preparing for the Northern Expedition after pacifying the South, Zhu Yuanzhang and his men discussed how to carry out the Northern Expedition. Chang Yuchun said, concentrate on attacking Yuan directly. Zhu Yuanzhang said no, he thought: the defense of the hundred-year-old capital of the Yuan Dynasty must be strict and the fortifications must be strong. Suppose the army goes deep alone, and the Yuan army cuts off our grain and grass supply route, and can attack the city within a day. Yuan dynasty reinforcements will arrive, and there is no evidence to advance and retreat, and the great event will go away. Therefore, it is advisable to take Shandong first and remove most of the screens; Li went to Henan and broke his wings; Enter Tongguan and occupy its portal. When its peripheral strongholds are thoroughly cleared to ensure the smooth flow of grain and grass, it will naturally enter the surrounding area. You can see Zhu Yuanzhang's extraordinary imagination from the above. There are many kinds of attack routes or strategies in the Northern Expedition, but Zhu Yuanzhang's developed imagination enabled him to simulate these attack routes one by one in his mind, abandon the attack sequence that is not conducive to his own side, and then choose the best attack sequence according to the situation, thus ensuring the smooth progress of the Northern Expedition.
4. Consider different situations. Before you do something, you should anticipate what may happen and take relevant countermeasures. For example, when two players play chess, the higher-level player should consider how the other player should go after playing a game of chess. What if the other party takes the horse, what if the other party takes the car, and what if the other party makes a killing move? If you don't consider your opponent's various moves, you can't improve your chess skills. The same is true of chess and Go. Kasparov, the chess champion, can compete with Deep Blue, which runs trillions of times per second. Professional Go players like Li Changgao and Chang Hao can not only consider all kinds of situations when taking every step, but also extend this consideration to hundreds of steps. Their developed imagination is really amazing.
In addition, an agent who infiltrates the enemy must consider all kinds of situations. He should consider how to answer when the enemy questions him, what to do when the enemy deliberately tests himself, what to do when he meets someone he doesn't know the truth with the enemy, and so on. Only by imagining these situations repeatedly in your mind can agents protect themselves and complete their tasks.
Engineers should also consider various situations when designing elevators. For example, when the elevator stops on the eighth floor, someone presses the button on the15th floor, and then someone presses the button on the ninth floor. What should I do in this situation? When the elevator is about to run to the ninth floor, what should people on the seventh floor and 13 floor do at the same time? What should I do if someone presses the button several times in a row on the same floor … and so on. Elevator is not a high-tech product, but we can still see that the design of elevator is quite complicated.
Another example is an ancient general who led troops to fight. When camping, he should consider various situations, such as what to do if the enemy sends spies in, what to do if the enemy attacks at night, what to do if the enemy attacks with fire, what to do if the enemy harasses him, and so on. These situations should be simulated in your mind, and then a more perfect stationing plan should be formulated. If you don't think about it, once something happens, you will be in a hurry and lose your mind.
In modern warfare, the situation is more complicated, and more factors need to be considered regardless of attack and defense. Zhukov had to rehearse the attack and defense scenes repeatedly in his mind when commanding the Great Defence War of Stalingrad, and repeatedly considered what actions the enemy would take to decide how to deploy his own troops and how to launch defense. Enemy generals are also racking their brains to consider how to attack successfully. To some extent, the contest between the two sides is the contest of the imagination of their respective commanders. In the end, zhukov was even better. He not only successfully repelled the German attack, but also commanded the Soviet army to successfully turn into a counterattack.
5. unfold this story in your mind. The imagination of novelists, science fiction writers, screenwriters and directors is mainly of this type. They should consider the voices and smiles of the characters in their minds and imagine the occurrence and development of the story. This is a relatively standard imagination form of "simulating the occurrence and development of things in your mind".
We have noticed that the imagination needed for many things is actually not a single form, but is manifested in many forms. For example, the football coach above should not only be able to practice the tactical combination in his mind, but also take into account various situations during the game. A screenwriter should not only be able to unfold the story in his mind, but also need to combine the words into fluent sentences when writing, and repeatedly simulate how to match the structure of the whole novel in his mind. Others, such as film directors, chief engineers, campaign commanders and so on.
The forms of imagination mentioned above cannot cover all imaginations, but no matter what forms of imagination, they all have a common feature, that is, simulating the image of things in the mind, simulating the operation of things, and doing experiments repeatedly in the mind.
4. How to cultivate imagination
So how to cultivate imagination? Imagination is extremely important, but fortunately, it doesn't need expensive facilities and open space to cultivate imagination. As long as we are willing, we can cultivate it anytime and anywhere.
When playing chess, before moving on, think about as many steps as possible in your mind, consider as many changes as possible, imagine what would happen if you were the other side, and what should I do if the other side did so, and recall so much. Similarly, when playing confrontational games such as table tennis, you should also simulate the scenes of both sides coming and going in your mind, and repeat technical and tactical drills in your mind. Developing imagination can greatly improve a person's chess ability or competitive level, and the winning rate will naturally be greatly improved, which in turn will make a person more willing to develop imagination, thus forming a virtuous circle.
When you go out to play with friends, you can make a travel plan in your mind in advance, arrange your travel route, prepare for all kinds of problems that may arise during your trip, and come up with countermeasures.
When playing football or basketball, you should consider it from the coach's point of view, visualize the game scene in your mind, and simulate player scheduling and tactical drills in your mind.
Also, do as many puzzles as possible, such as the following three puzzles.
It takes 1 hour to burn an uneven rope from beginning to end. How to determine the time of half an hour by burning rope?
Now Xiaoming's family has crossed a bridge. It's dark when crossing the bridge, so there must be a light. Now it takes 1 second for Xiaoming to cross the bridge, 3 seconds for Xiaoming's brother, 6 seconds for Xiaoming's father, 8 seconds for Xiaoming's mother and 12 seconds for Xiaoming's grandfather. At most two people can cross the bridge at a time. The speed of crossing the bridge depends on the slowest one. The light turns on for 30 seconds and then goes out. Ask Xiaoming how to cross the bridge.
There are 12 ping-pong balls with the same characteristics, but only one has an abnormal weight. Now it is required to weigh the ball three times with a balance without weight to find out the ball with abnormal weight.
These three puzzles are typical questions to examine the imagination. They all need to simulate things in your mind, do experiments repeatedly in your mind, and constantly try various combinations. For the first two questions, many people just need to run various combinations in their minds, and they can get the answers without using paper and pen. The third question, seemingly simple, actually has too many weighing combinations, such as how many balls are put on both sides for the first time, how many balls are put on both sides for the second time, how many balls are put on the third time, which balls need to be weighed each time and which balls need to be weighed again. Obviously, the number of combinations of weighing methods is amazing. Due to the large number of combinations, ordinary people's thinking operation space is seriously insufficient, so it is necessary to use paper and pencil to expand the operation space.
Of course, you can have more opportunities to show your imagination at work, design a very creative product and plan a very effective marketing plan. This will not only improve your imagination, but also increase your salary and position. If your imagination is very developed, when you find that the internal structure of the company is not reasonable enough, you can reorganize the structure of the whole company in your mind, so as to design a more reasonable organizational structure. When your imagination reaches this level, you can already do something by yourself.
Verb (abbreviation for verb) Other factors that affect imagination.
As a thinking ability, imagination is related to many factors.
Enthusiasm can greatly promote the development of imagination, while depression will inhibit the development of imagination. Edison has been inventing all his life, and it is his abundant enthusiasm that makes him creative even when he is old. Many of his world-class inventions not only influenced the course of human history, but also brought great convenience to people's lives. However, students in exam-oriented education in China have to recite questions day after day, and the depressed life greatly restricts the development of imagination, which makes many students who have studied for more than ten years lack imagination and are unwilling to engage in high-tech work such as design, planning and making plans.
Imagination should also be combined with logical thinking. If the plan you come up with is strange but does not conform to facts and logic, such a plan is useless.
In addition, imagination is based on your own knowledge and experience. If a person doesn't have professional knowledge and experience in a certain field, then he can't talk about imagination in this field. Just like a chess master, although he moves up and down on the chessboard, if he has no military knowledge and combat experience, then he can't design a perfect battle plan. As mentioned above, Zhu Yuanzhang's ability to show his imagination on the territory of China is inseparable from his rich combat experience. He personally commanded the battle in the decisive Poyang Lake War. In this decisive battle, Zhu Yuanzhang defeated Chen Youliang, thus pacifying the south and laying a solid rear foundation for the Northern Expedition. If he didn't have rich combat experience, he wouldn't have worked out an ambitious and meticulous combat strategy. Stephen Chow's comedy performances are imaginative and creative, but many of his jokes are directly derived from imitating other movies, imitating other people's ridiculous behaviors and observing life in the market. If he had not accumulated profound jokes, he could not have created those imaginative performances. As for Einstein's relativity experiments, which he often did in his mind, he needed advanced physical knowledge as the basis.
Problems needing attention in cultivating imagination with intransitive verbs
Knowing other factors that affect imagination, let's take a look at the phenomenon that many people are imaginative in one field, but they are very general or even clumsy in other fields.
A typical example is housewives, who are very smart and creative when decorating their homes. Many unremarkable things can be transformed into magic through their hands and become good decorations for decorating the family. Their imagination has been vividly displayed in the square space of the family, making the small family warm and full because of their imagination. In addition, when knitting sweaters, they used knitting, wool and color patterns, and even the overall planning before knitting sweaters showed a high degree of imagination. However, most housewives don't have much imagination about their work. They rigidly follow the established rules, work day after day, and then go home as soon as possible after work, unwilling to stay at work for another minute.
We often hear many examples of scientists. They are all brilliant in their respective fields, and fresh, bold and creative ideas emerge one after another. However, they live in poverty and have no idea about home layout. I have no imagination about the matching of clothes. Anyway, my wife lets me wear what she wants.
In addition, many novelists are also very imaginative in novel creation. Fascinating plot, fresh and unique language and unique overall structure all reflect their extraordinary imagination. However, when faced with an intellectual problem that requires imagination, many of them are often at a loss.
A mechanical engineer has an extraordinary imagination in mechanical design, but he may not be able to express his ideas in words, let alone vivid images.
Under the examination-oriented education, there are indeed many students who show strong imagination when solving strange and strange problems. However, they are often dull in life and are often described as "bookworms".
People in China have always had the habit of playing mahjong. Many people will choose the combination of cards flexibly when playing cards, and even guess which card to play with. This imagination is not bad. But most people are not creative when they come to work. The general idea is that it is enough to be able to cope with the work.
So, why is this happening? I think there are four reasons:
1. Interest factors. For example, women pay more attention to family, while men think more about work. In addition, many people are only interested in what they are good at and are not interested in other fields. And imagination must have strong enthusiasm to get good development. If you are not interested in something, it is obvious that your imagination will not be well developed.
2. Lack of logical thinking. As I said before, logical thinking will adjust a person's imagination and make the scheme he conceived more reasonable. On the other hand, if the conceived scheme is unclean and the implementation fails, it will suppress one's creative enthusiasm.
3. Lack of learning ability. There are many ingenious people in life, but their imagination can't be developed at a higher level and in a wider range, because their learning ability is too poor. Their learning ability is poor and they can't acquire profound professional knowledge, so their imagination only shows small inventions and creations.
4. I didn't expect that imagination is actually related to all fields. In other words, although different fields need different types of professional knowledge, the demand for the thinking ability of "doing experiments repeatedly in your mind" is common. If we don't realize this, it will make people unable to effectively transfer their imagination in one field to another. Obviously, only having a strong imagination in one field and lacking imagination in other fields will greatly constrain a person's development.
From the first three points, we can realize that imagination is closely related to interest and enthusiasm, logical thinking and learning ability. If you want to cultivate your imagination, you should keep your emotions in a positive state and attach great importance to the cultivation of logical thinking and learning ability.
For the fourth point, we will realize that we should try our best to broaden our knowledge. By knowledge, we mean not only the knowledge of professional knowledge, but also the knowledge of life experience and interpersonal communication. Wider knowledge will enrich people's imagination and make it easy for them to apply their imagination developed in one field to another. This will undoubtedly become a very favorable factor for a person's development.
label
Developed imagination means that the operating space of the mind is greatly expanded, enabling our mind to complete complex and arduous tasks; The development of imagination also means that the brain's reaction speed is obviously accelerated, which enables us to make decisions at more urgent moments.
Most of us ordinary people don't have Andy Lau's handsomeness, Céline Dion's voice, supermodel figure and prominent family background. However, each of us carries the most complex and exquisite organ in the universe-the brain. The development of our mind is infinite. If we try our best to cultivate our minds and develop their imagination, obviously we can become smarter, so that we can be more confident in the face of complex and arduous tasks and be more calm and calm in the face of emergencies. Of course, the improvement of our ability will make our reasonable wishes easier to realize, thus making our life better. So why don't we cultivate this ability of "doing experiments in our heads"?