Caterpillars are so used to sticking to their instincts, habits, precedents and experiences that they can't break the habit of following them and turn to feed.
French psychologist John Faber once conducted a famous experiment called the "Caterpillar Experiment":
Putting a number of caterpillars on the rim of a flowerpot, so that their heads and tails are connected, forming a circle, and not far away around the flowerpot, sprinkled with some of the pine leaves that the caterpillars like to eat. The caterpillars began to follow one after another, walking in circles around the rim of the flowerpot, and an hour passed, and a day passed, and another day passed, and the caterpillars were still walking in circles around the rim of the flowerpot night after night, for seven days and seven nights, and they finally died of hunger and exhaustion one after another.
John Faber had envisioned that the caterpillars would soon tire of the pointless circling and move on to their favorite foods, but unfortunately the caterpillars did not. The reason for this tragedy lies in the caterpillar's habit of sticking to its old instincts, habits, precedents and experiences. The caterpillar gave its life, but nothing came of it. In fact, if one caterpillar could break the habit of tailing and turn to forage for food, the tragedy could have been completely avoided. Later, scientists called this habit of following the route in front of the "follower" habit, and the phenomenon of failure due to following was called the "caterpillar effect".
We can even say that we human beings are not immune to this effect. For example, in the process of work, study and daily life, for those who are "familiar" with the problem, will subconsciously repeat some of the existing thinking process and behavior, so it is very easy to produce inertia of thought, that is, involuntarily rely on existing experience, according to the fixed idea to consider the problem, not willing to change direction, change the angle of the problem. The first time I saw this was when I was in the middle of the night, and it was the first time I was in the middle of the night.
Zheng Banqiao, one of the "Eight Monsters" of Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty, has been a passionate calligrapher since he was a child, and he has copied the various styles of calligraphy of famous ancient calligraphers, and after a lot of hard work and practice, he finally wrote almost exactly the same as his predecessors, and was able to mess up the real thing. But people didn't really appreciate his writing, and he himself was very anxious to learn and practice even more diligently than before.
One summer night, he and his wife were sitting outside in the cool, and he wrote on his thigh with his finger, and as he wrote, he wrote on his wife. His wife angrily smacked his hand and said,
"You have your body, I have mine, why don't you write about your own body and write about someone else's?"
Zheng Banqiao was inspired by these words: each person has his own body, and each has his own font, which is not the same! Why do I always learn the font of others, but not write their own font? Even if I learn the same as others, it's just someone else's font, without my own style, so what's the point? From then on, he took the strengths of each family, integration, with the official script and seal script, cursive, rows, regular mixed, as a painting method of writing, finally formed the elegance and popularity **** appreciation of the "six and a half book", which is often referred to as the "stone paving the street", became a well-known calligraphy and painter in the Qing Dynasty. The famous painter and calligrapher of the Qing Dynasty.
Doing academic so, doing business to make money is not so? One year, market forecasts indicate that the year's apple supply will exceed demand. This caused many apple suppliers and marketers to cry out in secret, and they all seemed to have decided: they were bound to suffer losses! But while everyone was longing for the impending losses, a clever person, A, came up with a brilliant idea! He thought: if you add a "blessing" function on the apples, that is, as long as you can make the apples appear on the words that indicate joy and blessings, such as the word "happy", "blessed", you will be able to sell at a good price! The first is to make the apples look like a good deal of money.
So, when the apples were still growing on the tree, he cut the paper samples in advance and pasted them on the sunrise side of the apples, such as "happy", "lucky", "lucky", "longevity" and so on. As a result, because the sun doesn't shine where the paper is pasted, there are traces left on the apples -- for example, if the paper is pasted with "Fu", there is a clear "Fu" on the apple
The word "Fuk" is not a word. This kind of apple is indeed rare, this kind of creativity is indeed ahead of others, because his apple has this new blessing function - and this is not others, he really in that year's apple wars in the lead, and make a big money!
The next year, he had learned this trick, but his apples were still the hottest sellers, why? Because his idea is even more brilliant, his apples not only still have the "word", but also to encourage the favorites to "buy in series". Originally, he has long been his apples in a bag, and the bag that a few words of the apple can always form a sweet toast, such as "I wish you longevity than South Mountain," "I wish you sweet love," "I wish you a happy Mid-Autumn Festival! ", "always miss you", and so on. People once again came to buy his apples as gifts!
Inherent ideas and methods have a relative maturity and stability, has its positive side. It is because following the ideas and methods of predecessors helps people to think by analogy, and can shorten and simplify the process of solving, smoother and more convenient to solve certain problems; but at the same time, its negative impact can not be ignored, that is, it is easy to make people blindly use the methods of specific experience and habits, treating a number of seemingly and God's problems, the result is a waste of time and energy, impeding the solution of the problem. And for years and years in accordance with an established pattern of thinking, not only easy to make people tired, more likely to paralyze people's creative ability, affecting the potential to play.
The times are constantly changing and developing, we are also constantly growing and developing, for any problem solving can not be confined to the previous rigid mode, but to constantly innovate and keep pace with the times, so as to be able to adapt to the changing times and their own development needs. Only in the work and life to create, get rid of their own mindset, no longer follow the footprints of predecessors, but to open up a groove belonging to their own, in order to be able to step further.
The caterpillar's pointless circling around the tragedy also shows that: in practice, "one point of work, one point of harvest" myth does not exist, we can not only pay attention to how much work they have done, but also pay attention to how much of the results of this work, that is, people often say that performance. If along a wrong direction, always follow the others, may pay a lot of unnecessary efforts, only to find a new direction and ideas, can have more harvest.
So, when life and work suffer setbacks or come to a standstill, we can no longer do meaningless efforts like a caterpillar, but should change our mindset and be good at finding another way to work more skillfully and efficiently, so as to achieve twice the result with half the effort.