How does insight work?

On my birthday in the year 2011, I came up with the idea of asking my friends to participate in what I called “Ben’s Birthday Insight Project“. The idea was what we should all allocate some minimal amount of time, perhaps 20 minutes per week, to deliberately nurturing our own insight. The idea would be to think about, and experiment with, different circumstances in which we feel insightful.

I found that my own insight was most clear and effective when I walked in a relaxed manner, ideally through a park or natural landscape. If I wanted to be insightful about a particular subject, I found it worked best to fill my head with all the facts, figures, and ideas that I could reasonably consume on the subject and then walk leisurely. Ideally I would be walking to or from a destination, so that the walk in of itself had purpose. I find that the feelings of “getting somewhere” and “making progress towards a goal” were valuable to have when thinking about difficult problems.

I am hoping in the next few weeks / months to reinvigorate this project, and my own personal research into insight. Stay tuned.