I haven’t blogged in almost a month, and I can totally feel it. My brain is so overflowing with ideas that I forgot to pay the electric bill this month, in between work, school, trips to DC and SF, and trying to come up with the ultimate Scrabble player ranking system.
I’m sure many of you have come across the spinning ballerina right brain/left brain test. I’m also sure many of you went through a 30 minute period of obsessively trying to make the ballerina spin the “other” way. (After several such 30 minute periods, I managed to make the ballerina switch at will, which led me to exclaim “I am master of my own mind!”) If you see the ballerina spinning counter-clockwise, you’re left brian dominant (logical, analytical, etc.) whereas if you see the ballerina spinning clockwise, you’re right brain dominant (creative, do things by feel).
For me, the ballerina spins clockwise by default, and it takes some effort to get her to switch and go counter-clockwise. I am (to my surprise, and maybe yours as well) utterly dominated by my right brain.
Well, maybe it’s not that surprising. If you look back at my post on not going to work at Facebook, there is very little evidence of any sort of rational thought. (As Facebook continues to hire amazing people and heads for a 15 billion dollar valuation, the decision seems less rational than ever.) That said, when I look back on major decisions I’ve made in my life, the only ones I regret are ones where I went with the pragmatic decision over what ‘felt’ best. I’ve been trying to learn from that, and figure out some way to get my left brain to shut the fuck up and let the right brain run the show.
Then there’s the whole math thing. For this, I’m going to reference my very first blog post ever. Looking back on it now, it reads like a plea from a right-brained student to all of those left-brained math teachers to teach math in a way that lets people like me connect with it. If I had never read The Man Who Knew Infinity, I might have become a lawyer or something (shudder.)
[ 1 comments ]
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:57 am
That test is really cool, but I have a hard time buying that it actually reveals anything, given that it also spins clockwise for me by default. Only took me about two minutes to get it to switch back and forth, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I can do it “at will”.