The Usefulness of Pink Elephants

Back in university my very first course in Computer Science was, as is common, a weed out course meant to discourage only the most fervent of students from pursuing that degree. To my unhappy surprise we did not touch a computer during the entire semester. Not even once. A computer science class that didn't involve computers?? What was that all about? Well, this course wasn't about computers specifically - it was about something else. And as it turns out it gave me skills I use every day to this day.

On the surface the course covered discrete math - concepts such as proof by induction and recursion among others. Early on in the semester one of the professor's lectures started with him posing a difficult math problem for all of us to solve. He described the problem and challenged the class to start offering approaches and solutions. The problem was far harder than anything our tender freshman minds had encountered before. He paced back and forth waiting for a worthy suggestion. He appeared to get frustrated as time ticked by in silence.

Finally he turned to us and asked us "what would you need in order to solve this problem?". After a few humorous suggestions were shouted out (like, "the ANSWER") someone in the back said that it would be easier to solve if we had more information. The professor's face lit up. "What information would you like to have?" he asked as he engaged the student. "Well we could solve it if we knew what 'X' was in the formula". "Exactly!", the Professor continued.  "Let's all pretend we knew what 'X' was. Let's finish solving the problem and go back to figure out what can we do to this equation that will allow us to figure out 'X'!" The dialog proceeded and together the class solved the problem. This problem-solving technique is called wishful thinking and it is a powerful tool.

From "The Power of Wishful Thinking and Other Problem-Solving Strategies":

What is wishful thinking? Besides being a fun pastime, it can be a useful tool in problem solving. The idea is simple: you have a problem that you don’t know how to solve. What can you do? Well, you may be able to change the problem to one you can solve. If you are clever (or lucky) about choosing what you wish for, you may get an idea about how to solve the harder problem you started with. 

Our professor enthusiastically summed up the approach this way: If you are trying to solve a problem, figure out what you wish you had and alter the problem as if you were granted your wish. If you are solving a math problem and need "X" then wish for "X". If you are solving a transportation problem and need a car then wish for a car. If you are solving whatever problem and need PINK ELEPHANTS then wish for PINK ELEPHANTS!

We all sat bewildered. Pink elephants? Pink elephants? Is he kidding? But it dawned on me over the course of the semester that this technique was very effective because it forced our minds to do two things simultaneously:

1. break the problem down into smaller, solvable chunks.
2. invite our minds to think out of the box and not be constrained by the problem as it first appears. If we can alter or simplify the problem and solve that we may have found ourselves on the path to solving the original problem.

Just thinking about pink elephants fired up deep, creative parts of my brain that became useful as I figured things out.

Rarely a time goes by that I'm meeting with one of my mentees when they aren't dealing with some challenging problems whether it be in their work or career path or with interpersonal relationships. Our primary goal as mentors/coaches is not to solve the problem for them even if we are capable of that. It's to give them the tools to arrive at a solution for themselves. I've found the wishful thinking approach to be one of the best tools I've shared with my mentees and clients.

Here's a very simple example of this in practice: a mentee of mine complained that he was not getting promoted. Getting a promotion is generally a hard thing to do in any organization. I challenged him to start acting as if he'd already gotten the promotion. As he started to visualize himself already attaining this first wish we talked about the new challenges he would face in this new role. He found that he was nervous about certain aspects all which revolved around public speaking. I then asked him to wish he was already an accomplished public speaker.

What happened next? To make that wish a reality this mentee signed up for public speaking courses and volunteering for presenting at all hands meetings. The result? While he did not get promoted at his original company he found a higher position at another company about 1 year after our wishful conversation. In that year he obtained the final piece and the confidence to get a promotional opportunity. Wishing for the promotion led to wishing he had a critical skill which led to him obtaining that skill and ultimately satisfying his desire to get to the next level.

That weed out course I wrote about earlier became informally known as the 'pink elephant' course. That whole first semester was about problem solving - a key skill not just for computer programming but for life! I keep my useful pink elephants around all the time. :)

[Author's note: After completing this article I did a Google search on this topic and my professor's name and found that he wrote a white paper on why this approach to teaching [math] was successful. If you are in education you might find it a very informative read. The link is here.]